Page:The Algebra of Mohammed Ben Musa (1831).djvu/193

 للاخر “benefitting others,” if the verb could be construed with the preposition ل.

To the words رجل سبق a marginal note is given in the manuscript, which is too much mutilated to be here transcribed, but which mentions the names of several authors who first wrote on certain branches of science, and concludes with asserting, that the author of the present treatise was the first that ever composed a book on Algebra.

An interlinear note in the manuscript explains فلم شعثه by جمع مفترقه.

gives no definition of the science which he intends to treat of, nor does he explain the words جبر jebr, and مقابلة mokābalah, by which he designates certain operations peculiar to the solution of equations, and which, combined, he repeatedly employs as an expression for this entire branch of mathematics. As the former of these words has, under various shapes, been introduced into the several languages of Europe, and is now universally used as the designation of an important division of mathematical science, I shall here subjoin a few remarks on its original sense, and on its use in Arabic mathematical works.

The verb جبر jabar of which the جبْرٌ jebr is derived, properly signifies to restore something broken,