The word algorithm traces its roots to the name of a ninth-century Persian mathematician, Mohammad Kharazmi, as pronounced in Persian. He lived in Baghdad, though, and his name became Arabic: Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. The Arabic al means the, an article, grammatically-speaking. Al-Khwarizmi was a scholar at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where he made significant contributions to algebra, arithmetic, and astronomy. As his writings were translated into Latin during the 12th century, his name was Latinized to Algoritmi. Over time, algoritmi became associated with the systematic procedures he described, eventually evolving into the modern word algorithm, now defined as a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or performing a task.
