Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The Muslim Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a faculty member of the "House of Wisdom" (...) in Baghdad, which was established by Al-Mamun." . . . He published 'The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing.' Translated into Latin by Robert of Chester in 1145, it was used until the sixteenth century as the principal mathematical text-book of European universities." [Wikipedia] "By stressing the relationship between analytic and geometric solutions to such problems and introducing the decimal place system, al-Khwarizmi, for the first time in mathematical history, established the art of analysis as a worthy discipline in its own right and put in on an equal footing with the more glamorous geometry." [Lyons: House of Wisdom, p. 74] "It was he who adopted Indian numerals and made use of zero, which facilitated calculation to an extent hitherto unknown and prepared the way for great scientific advance. The word 'zero' comes from the Arabic sifr which means 'empty'. . . . Al-Kharazmi was also the originator of algebra, which attained its highest development within the pale of the Islamic civilization, at the hands of the celebrated 'Umar Khayyam." [Balyuzi: Muhammad and the Course of Islam, p. 292]