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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

What alphabet is used for the letters in the diagrams[0]? It's not Arabic, and it looks sort of like Greek (or maybe Phoenician), but different.

0. Such as this one: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Al-jazari...

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It is Arabic, Islamic calligraphy[0] can be confusing, I'll reckon that.

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_calligraphy

He's asking about the symbols against the diagram itself, not the preface.

I have no idea. While searching for an answer I found this which is too interesting to not post. Especially the "table of alphabets". Perhaps some of the "old Hebrew" characters fit?

http://www.gentlewisdom.org/qaya/academic/hebrew/Phoenician....

It is Arabic, for example "من بین الحوضین" on the beginning of the first line means "between the two tanks".

I don't mean the caption at the top. I'm referring to the letters on the diagram itself: http://i.imgur.com/Bj31AxJ.jpg

aha, well it does look like Old Turkic Alphabet[0], I am not sure.

0.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Turkic_alphabet#Table_of_ch...

Edit: Some characters don't seem to render properly, an Image seems more practical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Turkic_alphabet#mediaviewer...

Do you know why he didn't just use Arabic characters? Based on a brief survey of the Arabic Wikipedia, it looks like Latin letters are standard for variables in math these days, but what was the reason for using non-Arabic characters back then?

It is odd, given that other scientists did use Arabic characters to notate their diagrams (notably, Al-khwarizmi and Ibn Al-Haytham). Perhaps it's because of his roots.

Seems like an alchemical alphabet such as:

http://www.925-1000.com/alchemy.html

http://alchemylab.com/download_fonts.htm

I think they are numbers, more specifically showing device dimensions & others may refer to some formulas .

The Arabic notation for numbers as we know it now (1,2,3 ..etc) wasn't yet formed! i suppose!!

You will find most of the mentioned symbols in this image showing the developing of numbers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#mediaviewer/Fil...

Note: (in the image the development in vertical, first line lists numbers from 1 to 10)

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