This rich intellectual environment nurtured some of the greatest thinkers in world history, from the ninth-century Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, known as the “father of algebra,”* and his contemporary, the brilliant chemist Jabir ibn-Hayyan, to the eleventh-century medic Ibn Sina (“Avicenna”) and twelfth-century geniuses such as the Andalusian mapmaker Muhammad al-Idrisi and philosopher Ibn Rushd (“Averroës”).
