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and Abdelmalek Bouzari has detailed the origins of the Indian calculus and
its path from Baghdad to Iceland.8
The Manuscripts
A complete copy of the Algorismus appears in three manuscripts: in ad-
dition to the copies in GKS 1812 4to, folios 13v–16v, and AM 544 4to,
folios 90r–93r, there is a copy in AM 685 d 4to, folios 24v–29r. A frag-
ment of the text appears in AM 736 III 4to, folios 4r–4v, as well. AM 544
may have been copied between 1306 and 1308.9 GKS 1812 is a composite
manuscript. Written over a length of time stretching from the twelfth to
the fourteenth centuries, it consists primarily of computational and related
texts, along with maps, diagrams, and illustrations.10 It is traditionally
divided into four sections, each identified with a different scribe. The sec-
tion which contains the Algorismus has been dated to the latter part of the
first half of the fourteenth century and so is not much younger than the
Hauksbók copy.11 The other two copies are significantly younger: AM 685
d is most likely from the second half of the fifteenth century,12 and AM
736 III is thought to be from the middle of the sixteenth century.13 Kristín
Bjarnadóttir and Bjarni V. Halldórsson have argued that the copies of the
Algorismus in AM 544 and GKS 1812 are only once or twice removed from
the same original, while the copies in AM 685 and AM 736 are drawn in
part from the same stem but are significantly further from the original.14
8 Abdelmalek Bouzari, “The Calculus of Al­Khwārizmī,” A World in Fragments: Studies on the
Encyclopedic Manuscript GKS 1812 4to.
9 Gunnar Harðarson and Stefán Karlsson, “Hauksbók,” Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclo-
pedia, eds. Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf (New York: Routledge, 2016), 271–72.
10 Gunnar Harðarson, “Medieval Encyclopedic Literature and Icelandic Manuscripts,” A
World in Fragments: Studies on the Encyclopedic Manuscript GKS 1812 4to, 27–29.
11 Haraldur Bernharðsson, “Scribes and Scribal Practice in GKS 1812 4to,” A World in
Fragments: Studies on the Encyclopedic Manuscript GKS 1812 4to, 63.
12 “AM 685 d 4to,” ONP: Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (Copenhagen: Den Arnamagn-
æanske Kommission), https://onp.ku.dk/onp/onp.php?m135.
13 “AM 736 III 4to,” ONP: Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (Copenhagen: Den Arnamagn-
æanske Kommission), https://onp.ku.dk/onp/onp.php?m136.
14 Kristín Bjarnadóttir and Bjarni V. Halldórsson, “The Norse Treatise Algorismus,” 75, and
“Algorismus: Hindu-Arabic Arithmetic in GKS 1812 4to,” 189.
ALGORISMUS IN GKS 1812 4TO