When Khalifah al-Ma'mun (ruled 813-833) of Baghdad appointed Musa ibn Shakir as his court astronomer, he began a long tradition of scholars who brought renown to his Bayt al Hikmah (House of Wisdom). Musa's three sons, Muhammad, Ahmad, and al-Hasan, known collectively as the Banu Musa, that is, Sons of Musa (Moses), all devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge. They focused their efforts on geometry, mechanics, dynamics, astronomy, and music (which medieval scholars considered a theoretical science). After first studying ancient texts, particularly those of the Greeks, the Banu Musa wrote a large number of books based on their own research, mostly in geometry and other areas of mathematics. Muhammad wrote The Measurement of the Sphere, Trisection of the Angle, and Determination of Two Mean Proportionals to Form a Single Division Between Two Given Quantities, as...