Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 75

73
DANIEL SLOUGHTER
ALGORISMUS IN GKS 1812 4to
Transcription and Translation
Introduction
the Algorismus is an Old Norse prose translation of the Carmen de
Algorismo of Alexander of Villedieu (c. 1170–c. 1240). The two earliest
witnesses to this translation are found in AM 544 4to, a part of Hauksbók,
and GKS 1812 4to. These versions are very close to one another and, pos-
sibly, to the original, perhaps being only once or twice removed.1 Not-
withstanding the similarities, the orthography and context of the copy in
GKS 1812 is notably different from that of the Hauksbók copy. Whereas
previous transcriptions of the Algorismus have been based on the version
in Hauksbók, this paper provides a transcription of the Algorismus as it
appears in GKS 1812, as well as an English translation.
The Carmen de Algorismo is a rendering, in Latin hexameter, of the
techniques for working with the Indo-Arabic system of writing numbers.2
It is itself a descendant of twelfth-century Latin translations of a ninth-
century Arabic treatise written by Muḥammed ibn Mūsā al­Khwārizmī
(c. 780–c. 850).3 This work of al­Khwārizmī, known by its Latin title,
De Numero Indorum, introduced Western Europe to the techniques of
arithmetic which came to be referred to as the Indian calculus or algorism
(derived from the author’s toponym). Written in the first half of the thir-
teenth century, the Carmen de Algorismo helped spread the methods of
1 Kristín Bjarnadóttir and Bjarni V. Halldórsson, “The Norse Treatise Algorismus,” Actes
du 10ème Colloque maghrébin sur l’histoire des mathématiques arabes (Tunis: Association
Tunisienne des Sciences Mathématiques, 2011), 69, and “Algorismus: Hindu-Arabic Arith-
metic in GKS 1812 4to,” A World in Fragments: Studies on the Encyclopedic Manuscript
GKS 1812 4to, eds. Gunnar Harðarson with Christian Etheridge, Guðrún Nordal, and
Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir (forthcoming), 189.
2 The Carmen Algorismo appears in Rara Mathematica on pages 73 to 83.
3 For background on these works, see Muḥammed ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī: Le calcul indien
(Algorismus), ed. André Allard (Namur, Belgium: Société des études classiques, 1992).
Gripla XXXII (2021): 73–99