“That fondness for science, ... that affability and condescension which God shows to the learned, that promptitude with which he protects and supports them in the elucidation of obscurities and in the removal of difficulties, has encouraged me to compose a short work on calculating by al-jabr and al-muqabala , confining it to what is easiest and most useful in arithmetic.”

Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khawarizmi, astrologer, mathematician, astronomer, scientist, and author of "An Abridged Treatise on the Jabr and Muqâbala (Type of) Calculation"