Thabit ibn Qurra

Thabit ibn Qurra was an Islamic mathematician who worked on number theory, astronomy and statics, born in Harran in Mesopotamia in 836 and dying in Baghdad on 18 February 901. He belonged to the Sabian sect of star worshippers, spoke Syriac as his native language, and was fluent in Greek and Arabic. Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir, impressed by his knowledge of languages, persuaded him to go to Baghdad, where he became court astronomer. He translated and revised many Greek works into Arabic, and his revision of the third Arabic translation of Euclid's Elements is the source of all later Arabic versions. In number theory he studied amicable numbers, and gave a theorem for finding such pairs.