The Commentary of al-Nayrizi on Book I of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry: with an Introduction on the Transmission of Euclid’s Elements in the Middle Ages

For more than two millennia, the Elements of Geometry by the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria (c.300 BCE) was held to be the supreme example of the exercise of human reason and a paradigm of rational certainty . The Commentary of al-Nayrizi on Book I of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry introduces readers to the transmission of Euclid’s Elements from the Middle East to the Latin West in the Mediaeval period and then offers the first English translation of al-Nayrizi’s (d.c.922) Arabic commentary on Book I.