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6 - All Polygons Created Equal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

Greg N. Frederickson
Greg N. Frederickson
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Indiana
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Summary

Seated humbly on the ground, with writing paper balanced on my knees, I faithfully transcribe the words of my master. Praise to Allah, I am blessed to be a disciple of the renowned Abū'l-Wafā at the caliph's palace school. The great House of Wisdom here in Baghdad stores amidst its treasures his scholarly commentaries on mathematics. From his lips I am honored to learn the geometry of the Greeks. And he holds us spellbound with his own remarkable constructions: How wondrous are his divisions of squares that in their unity form a large square! The master reminds us that this is the fruit of many centuries and many civilizations. It is so perfect; I do not think it can ever be surpassed…. Now how am I to comprehend that last construction?

Alas, they don't write instructor evaluations like they used to, at least if you would believe this counterfeit passage, masquerading as the musings of an Arabian student in tenth-century Baghdad. More authentic than these supposed musings of an adolescent mind is the role that Arabic-Islamic civilization played in the preservation and extension of the learning of the Greeks, at a time when European civilization was in eclipse. The dissection of squares referred to was but a tiny part of the remarkable activity carried on not only in mathematics but also in the many other disciplines that flowered during that period.

Type
Chapter
Information
Dissections
Plane and Fancy
 , pp. 51 - 59
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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