Abstract
This article analyzes new material on the history of the amicable numbers. It discusses Hebrew texts which throw new light on the diffusion in Medieval Europe of Ṯābit ibn Qurra's (9th century) work. We find Ṯābit's theorem on amicable numbers in a Hebrew translation, made in Saragossa in 1395, of an arithmetical commentary written by Abū al-Ṣalt al-Andalusī (ca. 1068–1134), and also in an original Hebrew text probably written by the Jewish Provençal scholar Qalonymos ben Qalonymos (1287 – after 1329). These texts lend strong support to the surmise that the Arabic tradition concerning amicable numbers could not have remained unknown to European mathematicians before the work of Descartes and Fermat in the 17th century.
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