The ancient sciences were greatly extended--new ones were brought into existence.

The Indian method of arithmetic was introduced, a beautiful invention, which expresses all numbers by ten characters, giving them an absolute value, and a value by position, and furnishing simple rules for the easy performance of all kinds of calculations.

Algebra, or universal arithmetic--the method of calculating indeterminate quantities, or investigating the relations that subsist among quantities of all kinds, whether arithmetical or geometrical--was developed from the germ that Diophantus had left.
Mohammed Ben Musa furnished the solution of quadratic equations, Omar Ben Ibra him that of cubic equations.

The Saracens also gave to trigonometry its modern form, substituting sines for chords, which had been previously used; they elevated it into a separate science.
Musa, above mentioned, was the author of a "Treatise on Spherical Trigonometry." Al-Baghadadi left one on land-surveying, so excellent, that by some it has been declared to be a copy of Euclid's lost work on that subject.
ARABIAN ASTRONOMY.

In astronomy, they not only made catalogues, but maps of the stars visible in their skies, giving to those of the larger magnitudes the Arabic names they still bear on our celestial globes.
They ascertained, as we have seen, the size of the earth by the measurement of a degree on her surface, determined the obliquity of the ecliptic, published corrected tables of the sun and moon fixed the length of the year, verified the precession of the equinoxes.