Arab and other Muslims had very practical reasons for their interest in mathe­matics. The calculation of the precise direction of the qibla (the direction of prayer to Mecca), something that was required for the proper orientation of mosques, relied upon rather sophisticated mathematical operations. So did the calculation of the exact date of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. (Being a lunar month, Ramadan moves through the seasons. Sometimes it occurs in win­ter, sometimes summer, sometimes fall or… Read more

      For whatever it’s worth, I’m scheduled to participate in Sunday night’s Interpreter Radio Show and, on Monday night, to speak via computer to elders and sisters in the Ukraine Dnipro Mission.  Technology is a wonderful thing.   ***   I share here some notes from Ronald E. Romig, Eighth Witness: The Biography of John Whitmer (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2014), on a topic that is briefly addressed in the Interpreter Foundation’s forthcoming Witnesses theatrical film:   In… Read more

    Newly posted today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, the introduction (by Daniel C. Peterson) to Volume 39 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Reckoning with the Mortally Inevitable” Abstract: Every human enterprise — even the best, including science and scholarship — is marred by human weakness, by our inescapable biases, incapacities, limitations, preconceptions, and sometimes, yes, sins. It is a legacy of the Fall. With this in mind, we should approach even the… Read more

    In the ninth century, translation from Greek into Arabic devel­oped rapidly. Since possibly the middle of the eighth century there had been periodic translations, but the ninth century saw the estab­lishment of a systematic, organized effort. The caliph al-Ma’mun, son of Harun al-Rashid, founded a translation bureau called the Dar al-Hikma (“House of Wisdom”), over which presided a Nestorian Christian named Hunayn ibn Ishaq.[1] (Hunayn’s son eventually succeeded him in the leadership of the institution.) The Nestorians were… Read more