History of medieval Islamic mathematics: Research in Uzbekistan (Q1309145)

The main title of this article is rather misleading, because it is only a brief summary of the recent trends of the study of Islamic mathematics in Uzbekistan, which is indicated only in the subtitle. As the author remarks, Uzbekistan libraries have preserved many valuable Arabic manuscripts on mathematics. After a couple of centuries during which `unfavorable political and economic changes' prevented the continuation of the tradition of the scientific activities in this area, the last several decades found an impressive number of researchers who could utilize the primary sources in this tradition. Those recent publications written in Russian or Uzbek are listed in the References of this article. It is regrettable that most of the papers and books listed here are not available to the present reviewer and that, even if they are available, the language barrier is not easy to overcome. Certainly Russian is one of the essential modern languages for the ambitious historian of Islamic mathematics, but, on the other hand, it is hoped that the younger scholars in Uzbekistan publish, at least some essential parts of their papers, in English, just as Matvievskaya tried in this short essay.