This book provides an annotated English translation of Gerard of Cremona’s Latin version of Book I of al-Nayrizi's Commentary on Euclid’s Elements. Lo Bello concludes with a critical analysis of the idiosyncrasies of Gerard’s method of translation.

This book provides an annotated English translation of Gerard of Cremona's Latin version of Book I of al-Nayrizi's Commentary on Euclid's Elements. Lo Bello concludes with a critical analysis of the idiosyncrasies of Gerard's method of translation.

For more than two millennia, the Elements of Geometry by the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria (ca. 300 B.C.E. ) was held to be “the supreme example of the exercise of human reason” and “a paradigm of rational certainty” (from the preface, after Simon Blackburn). The Commentary of al-Nayrizi on Book I of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry introduces readers to the transmission of Euclid’s Elements from the Middle East to the Latin West in the medieval period and then offers the first English translation of al-Nayrizi’s (d. ca. 922) Arabic commentary on Book I. The Three Volumes are also available as set (ISBN 0 391 04197 5)

The Commentary of al-Nayrizi (circa 920) on Euclid’s Elements occupies an important place in the history of mathematics and of philosophy. The present work presents an annotated English translation of Books II-IV and of a hitherto lost portion of Book I.

The Commentary of al-Nayrizi (circa 920) on Euclid s "Elements of Geometry" occupies an important place both in the history of mathematics and of philosophy, particularly Islamic philosophy. It is a compilation of original work by al-Nayrizi and of translations and commentaries made by others, such as Heron. It is the most influential Arabic mathematical manuscript in existence and a principle vehicle whereby mathematics was reborn in the Latin West. Furthermore, the Commentary on Euclid by the Platonic philosopher Simplicius, entirely reproduced by al-Nayrizi, and nowhere else extant, is essential to the study of the attempt to prove Euclid s Fifth Postulate from the preceding four. Al-Nayrizi was one of the two main sources from which Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), the Doctor Universalis, learned mathematics. This work presents an annotated English translation of Books II-IV and of a hitherto lost portion of Book I.