Ibn al-Banna' al-Marrakushi


Ibn al‐Bannāʾ al‐Marrākushī, also known as Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Uthman al-Azdi
, was a Moroccan-Arab mathematician, astronomer, Islamic scholar, Sufi, and a one-time astrologer.

Biography

Ibn al-Banna' was born in Marrakesh in 1256; he is named al‐Marrākushī after that city. Having learned basic mathematical and geometrical skills, he translated Euclid's Elements into Arabic.

Works

Ibn al-Banna' wrote between 51 and 74 treatises, encompassing such varied topics as Algebra, Astronomy, Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Logic. One of his works, called Talkhīṣ ʿamal al-ḥisāb , includes topics such as fractions, sums of squares and cubes etc. Another, called Tanbīh al-Albāb, covers topics related to:
He also wrote Rafʿ al-Ḥijāb which covered topics such as computing square roots of a number and the theory of continued fractions. This was the first known mathematical work to use an algebraic notation, further developed by Abū al-Hasan ibn Alī al-Qalasādī two centuries later.

Legacy

The crater Al-Marrakushi on the Moon is named after him.