LITERATURE OF THE ARABS. 109 



kendi, besides his own treatise, De Sex Quanfi- 

 tatibus, translated that of Autolycus, De Sphcera 

 Mota. Algebra, though not the invention of the 

 Saracens, received valuable accessions from their 

 talents ; and, on comparing them with their prede- 

 cessors, their advances will perhaps be found as 

 conspicuous as the improvements which have been 

 suggested and the progress that has been made by 

 later and even by modern proficients. Ibn Korrah 

 and Ibn Musa are the earliest Arabian mathema- 

 ticians who have treated on this science. The 

 former wrote on the certainty of the demonstrations 

 of the algebraic calculus, and the latter is accounted 

 the inventor of the solution of equations of the second 

 degree. There is an original treatise by Omar ibn 

 Ibrahim, on the Algebra of Cubic Equations, which 

 exists in manuscript in the library of the University 

 at Leyden ; and we learn from Casiri that the prin- 

 ciples and the praises of this science were sung in an 

 elaborate poem by Alcassem, a native of Granada. 



The numerical characters, which have tended so 

 much to simplify and abridge calculations, and 

 without which none of the exact sciences could have 

 been carried to the point at which they have arrived 

 in our day, were beyond all doubt communicated 

 to us by the Arabs. They were not, however, the 

 inventors of these digits which, as well as their 

 arithmetic, they acknowledge to have received from 

 the East ; and many of their treatises on this subject 

 they denominate " Indian Arithmetic," "The Art of 

 Computing according to the Indians," &c. It is well 

 known that the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and 

 perhaps other nations, used alphabetical letters for 

 the representation of numbers. The Indians adopted 



YOL. II. G 



