Ibn al-Raqqām's notes on practical geometry (Q2871015)

The paper under review is about a booklet on practical geometry written by the thirteenth-century Islamic writer Ibn al-Raqqām. The booklet is entitled ``Note and instruction on the rules for measurement'' and contains 29 rules or formulas for calculating areas and volumes of surfaces and solids. These include areas of rectangles, triangles (using either Pythagoras' theorem or Heron's formula), trapezoids, rhombi, polygons, and circular sectors, and volumes of parallelopipeds, prisms, cylinders, cones, and spheres. The paper contains the Arabic text of the aforementioned booklet, together with a translation and a commentary that includes a treatment in modern terminology and notation. It contains notes on other relevant works, and also interesting spectulations about meanings of certain ambiguous technical terms used in Ibn al-Raqqām's booklet. This reviewer finds it interesting to compare the terminology used nowadays (e.g., for a square, a rhombus, etc.) and that used in those days.