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1 results

  • 11 - THE EXACT SCIENCES

  • Edited by R. N. Frye
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Iran
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1975, pp 378-395

  • Summary

    This chapter describes scientific activity in Iran during the four centuries beginning about 30/650. Early ‘Abbāsid scientists tended to be astronomer-astrologers whose techniques and theories were inherited from Indian and Sāsānian forebears and whose role as innovators was small. Their sole major contribution was in the form of numerous and meticulous astronomical observations. Present knowledge of the scribal arithmetic is due largely to study of a textbook for the use of government employees written by Abu'l-Wafā' al-Buzjānī, a thinker of great originality and power. Computational mathematics did not reach the degree of sophistication it achieved later, in Mongol and Timurid times, but numerical tables of functions were considerably more extensive and precise than those produced by the Greeks and the Indians. Among the more complicated arithmetic processes, the operation of root extraction received considerable attention in ‘Abbāsid times.