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Mathematical Treasure: Sephardic Arithmetic from Islamic Spain

Author(s): 
Frank J. Swetz (Pennsylvania State University)

Joseph ben Moses Sarfati (fl. 1400-1450) was a Jewish scholar and mathematician living and writing in Islamic Spain. His untitled text on commercial arithmetic is written in Sephardic semi-cursive script. In the following collection of pages from this manuscript, numbers can be discerned by the dot above a character distinguishing that character from literary context.

The images above were obtained through the courtesy of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, University of Pennsylvania Library, where it has reference number LJS 312.

Index to Mathematical Treasures

Frank J. Swetz (Pennsylvania State University), "Mathematical Treasure: Sephardic Arithmetic from Islamic Spain," Convergence (July 2018)