1180 biography

Al-Samawal's father was Abul-Abbas Yahya al-Maghribi, a Jewish scholar of religion and literature. Abul-Abbas was born in Fez in Morocco and later moved to Baghdad where he was living at the time of al-Samawal's birth.

Al-Samawal's mother, Anna Isaac Levi, had moved from Basra in Iraq.

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Certainly al-Samawal was brought up in a family where learning was highly valued and the first topic which interested him was medicine. Perhaps the main attraction of this topic came from the fact that he had an uncle who was a medical doctor.

At about the same time as he began to study medicine, al-Samawal also began to study mathematics. He was about thirteen years old when he began serious study, beginning with Hindu methods of calculation and a study of astronomical tables.

Baghdad at this time was not a great centre for mathematical learning, and al-Samawal had soon mastered all the mathematics which his teachers knew. These teachers had covered topics includ