This man lived in the time of the first Ptolemy; for Archimedes, who followed closely upon the first Ptolemy makes mention of Euclid, and further they say that Ptolemy once asked him if there were a shorted way to study geometry than the Elements, to which he replied that there was no royal road to geometry. ... From the al-jabr in the title we get algebra. ... The work studies arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry and, despite the lack of originality, was to provide a basis for the major progress in mathematics that took place in Europe shortly after this time. ... An encyclopaedic...

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