Professor Dmitri Baiuk's Review of “The History of Mathematics and Its Philosophical Evolution”

Professor Mahmoud Al-Hamza's proposed volume, A Brief History of Mathematics and Its Intellectual and Philosophical Development, is an ambitious and intellectually valuable work. It is conceived not merely as a chronological survey of mathematical discoveries, but as a broad introduction to mathematics as a historically evolving form of thought, a philosophical discipline, and a field shaped by the interaction of several civilizations.

The book begins with general questions concerning the origins, meaning, and philosophical status of mathematics; then moves to ancient civilizations; devotes substantial attention to mathematics in the Arab-Islamic world; includes a section based on the author's own research on Arabic mathematical texts, terminology, and transmission; and finally places these developments in relation to modern European mathematics.

Professor Al-Hamza is particularly well qualified to write on this subject. His background as a mathematician, his training and extensive professional experience in the history of mathematics, and his work with Arabic scientific manuscripts lend the book an authority not always found in general textbooks. His intellectual formation within the Moscow school of the history of mathematics — the influence of A. P. Juschkewitsch, B. A. Rosenfeld, Miriam Rozhanskaya and Galina Matvievskaya — is visible throughout.

In conclusion, I strongly support the publication of this book. Professor Al-Hamza's work is the product of a long scholarly trajectory that began with mathematical training, developed through research in the history of mathematics, and matured in sustained engagement with Arabic scientific manuscripts and with the Russian/Soviet school of historiography. Its publication in English would make available to a wider audience an important synthesis of materials, perspectives, and scholarly traditions that deserve much greater international visibility.