Early Ottoman arithmetics

Mustafa bin Isa el-Hallac (scribe). Kitab Tetimme-i Mecmua el-Kavaid [The Completion of Mecmua el-Kavaid].

€ 25.000,00

A complement to the important arithmetical work "Mecmua el-Kavaid", composed in the late 15th century by Atmacaoglu Muhyeddin Muhammed, which was a Turkish manual on the mathematics of accounting that did much to advance the transmission of Arab and Persian mathematics into Ottoman Turkish.

The present continuation expands on subjects that are omitted or not satisfactorily treated in Muhyeddin Muhammed's work. The author takes pains to explain complex mathematical problems in easily accessible language: at the beginning of his book, he presents an Arabic poem from the scholarly "Kitab Kafi", the fourth couplet of which contains an unsolved riddle, and undertakes to solve this riddle with the help of the science of arithmetic. The colophon states that the book was copied by Mustafa bin Isa el-Hallac on the 5th of Jumada al-Awwal 939 AH. It is possible that this scribe was also the author of the work.

Covers worn; aside from a few smudges, text is quite bright and clean.