Latest / Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History
Tamerlane's Captive Mathematicians: Algebra in Samarkand
When Tamerlane conquered Damascus in 1401, he didn't just cart away gold and silk — he captured scholars. Among them was Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid al-Kashi, one of the greatest mathematicians of the Islamic world. Lucas and Luna explore how al-Kashi ended up in Samarkand, his revolutionary work on decimal fractions, his calculation of pi to 16 decimal places — a record that stood for nearly 200 years — and his role in designing the observatory that Tamerlane's grandson Ulugh Beg would later build. They also discuss the debate over whether al-Kashi was a captive or a voluntary émigré…
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