Springs of Islamic Civilization: Islamicity

Al-Khwarizmi's legacy to Islamic society included a way of representing numbers that led to easy methods of computing ..

By: J. L. Berggren

Al-Khwarizmi

"The springs which fed Islamic civilization sprang from many lands. Symptomatic of this is the fact that the family of its greatest early scientist, the Central Asian scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, came from the old and high civilization that had grown up in the region of Khwarizm. This is the ancient name for the region around Urgench in the U.S.S.R., a city near the delta of the Amu Dar'ya (Oxus) River on the Aral Sea.

Al-Khwarizmi served the Caliph al-Ma'mun in the House of Wisdom and is connected to a later caliph, al - Wathiq (842 - 847), by the following story told by the historian al - Tabari. It seems that when al-Wathiq was stricken by a serious illness he asked al-Khwarizmi to tell from his horoscope whether or not he would survive. Al- Khwarizmi assured him he would live another fifty years, but al-Wathiq died in ten days. Perhaps al-Tabari tells this story to show that even great scientists can make errors, but perhaps he told it as an example of al- Khwarizmi's political astuteness. The hazards of bearing bad news to a king, who might mistake the bearer for the cause, are well known."

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