Who is Thābit ibn Qurra and what language did he speak?

Thābit ibn Qurra was born on 826 AD in Harran,turkey. He died at 901 AD in bagdad, iraq. his father was a rich man that was at high standards named Qurra Ibn Marwan al-Sabi al-Harran. Thābit ibn Qurra was a native of Harran and a member of the sabian sect. The sabian religious sect were star worshipers and that meant that had high motivation for the study of astronomy and mathematics. The sect were strongly connected to the greek, and it was common for the members to speak greek although after the conquest of the sabians by islam, they became arabic speakers. There was another language that was spoken in southern turkey name syriac. This was Thābit ibn Qurra’ native language, but he spoke fluent Arabic and Greek. He studied many diffrent subjects, but the ones that he was most famous for were mathmatics, astronomy, astrology, magic, medicine, and philosophy.

How did Thābit ibn Qurra start his career?

Most people say that Thābit ibn Qurra was a money changer at a very young age. this is possible because he comes from a family of very high standards in the community. one day a man named Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir saw Thabit and was impressed by his knowledge of math, and languages. he thought that Thabit had potential in his life. Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir ended up persuading Thabit to take mathematic lessons in bagdad from him and his brothers. In bagdad he recived mathmatical trainnig as well as medical traning. Beacuse of his hard work he ws appointed court astronomer in bagdad.

This is a picture of bagdad

Does Thābit ibn Qurra have any children?

Thābit ibn Qurra had one son named Sinān. he was also very close with his grandsons ibrahim and Thabit. The three of them grew up to become one of the worlds most well known and best scholars in mathematic, astronomy, and medicine. when Sinān got older he decided to convert to islam, and leave the sabian religion that his father and family believes in.

What did Thābit ibn Qurra do to become a well known scholar?

In astronomy Thābit was one of the first reformers of the Ptolemaic system, and in mechanics he was a founder of the Arabic tradition of the science of weights. In mathematics, Thābit ibn Qurra translated or edited in full or in part many Greek mathematical works of Euclid. Thābit ibn Qurra also wrote a book called Kitāb al-Mafrūdāt (Book of Data) which contain information about the thirty-six propositions in geometry and geometrical algebra with was popular in the medieval times.

Some of his achievments

• In a Latin text Thabit described the length of a year as 365 days, 9 minutes and 12 seconds which is an error of 2 seconds.
• In mechanics he wrote a book on the beam balance which proves the principle of equilibrium of levers.
• He was the founder of statics.
• In mathematics he discovered the equation for determining amicable numbers.
• He described the ratios between geometrical quantities.
• He studied physics and determined that the order of the universe is a result of two competing attractions.