<story><title>Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)</title><url>http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Arabic_mathematics.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thepete2</author><text>The word Algorithm comes from a mathematician named al-Khwarizmi. Many words that begin with Al (Arabic definite article) are of Arabic origin. Alcohol is another one :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Rattled</author><text>I was told of Algebra coming from Al-Jabr meaning &amp;quot;number games&amp;quot;. I was surprised I didn&amp;#x27;t see this mentioned in the article, until I found the book mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi&amp;#x27;s biography [1]. The book&amp;#x27;s title is &amp;quot;Hisab al-jabr w&amp;#x27;al-muqabala&amp;quot; but no translation is given and Google&amp;#x27;s translation &amp;quot;Al Jaber account and interview&amp;quot; is not helpful. Can anyone confirm or deny the explanation I was given?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;Mathematicians&amp;#x2F;Al-Khwarizmi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;Mathematicians&amp;#x2F;Al-Kh...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)</title><url>http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Arabic_mathematics.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thepete2</author><text>The word Algorithm comes from a mathematician named al-Khwarizmi. Many words that begin with Al (Arabic definite article) are of Arabic origin. Alcohol is another one :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marzell</author><text>Alhambra is another example.&lt;p&gt;This is also the origin of some definite articles in romance languages - el in Spanish and l&amp;#x27; in French. So Alhambra in Spain might have been called Al Hambra or similar instead.&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, in Persian (which uses Arabic script and shares some loanwords) which is a totally different language, the definite article is assumed, and it instead has an explicit indefinite article (-i or -yi) added to a noun&amp;#x2F;adjective.</text></comment>