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The 'Banū Mūsā' brothers (, "Sons of Mūsā") were three Persian^[1][2] scholars, of Baghdad, active in the House of Wisdom:

★ Ja'far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (800-873), who specialised in astronomy, engineering, geometry and physics.

★ Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (805-873), who specialised in engineering and mechanics.

★ Al-Hasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (810–873), who specialised in engineering and geometry.
The Banu Musa were the sons of Mūsā ibn Shākir, who had been a highwayman and later an astrologer to the Caliph al-Ma'mūn. At his death, he left his young sons, in the custody of the Caliph, who entrusted them to Ishaq bin Ibrahim al-Mus'abi, a former governor of Baghdad. The education of the three brothers was carried out by Yahya bin Abu Mansur who worked at the famous House of Wisdom library and translation centre in Baghdad.

Contents

Works

''Astral Motion'' and ''The Force of Attraction''

''Book of Ingenious Devices''

''On mechanics''

''Premises of the book of conics''

''The Book of the Measurement of Plane and Spherical Figures''

''The elongated circular figure''

See also

Notes

References

Works

''Astral Motion'' and ''The Force of Attraction''

Muhammad ibn Musa, in his ''Astral Motion'' and ''The Force of Attraction'', discovered that there was a force of attraction between heavenly bodies,^[3] foreshadowing Newton's law of universal gravitation.^[4]

''Book of Ingenious Devices''

Main articles: Book of Ingenious Devices

''On mechanics''

Ahmad (c. 805) specialised in mechanics and wrote a work on pneumatic devices called ''On mechanics''.

''Premises of the book of conics''

The eldest brother, Ja'far Muḥammad (c. 800), wrote a critical revision on Apollonius' ''Conics'', called the ''Premises of the book of conics''.

''The Book of the Measurement of Plane and Spherical Figures''

The Banu Musa's most famous mathematical treatise is ''The Book of the Measurement of Plane and Spherical Figures'', which considered similar problems as Archimedes did in his ''On the measurement of the circle'' and ''On the sphere and the cylinder''.

''The elongated circular figure''

The youngest brother, al-Hasan (c. 810), specialised in geometry and wrote a work on the ellipse called ''The elongated circular figure''.

See also

★ Muslim inventions

★ Islamic science

★ Islamic astronomy

★ Islamic mathematics

★ Islamic Golden Age

Notes

1. ''When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty'', Hugh Kennedy, p. 254
2. Professor Jeff Oaks, The University of Indianapolis [1]
3. K. A. Waheed (1978). ''Islam and The Origins of Modern Science'', p. 27. Islamic Publication Ltd., Lahore.
4. Robert Briffault (1938). ''The Making of Humanity'', p. 191.

References

★

★ Les Mathématiques Infinitésimales du IXe au XIe Siècle '1': Fondateurs et commentateurs: Banū Mūsā, Ibn Qurra, Ibn Sīnān, al-Khāzin, al-Qūhī, Ibn al-Samḥ, Ibn Hūd, , Roshdi, Rashed, , 1996, Reviews: Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1998) in ''Isis'' '89' (1) pp. 112-113; Charles Burnett (1998) in ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London'' '61' (2) p. 406.