Ancient Greek Babylonian and Indian mathematicians had all found ways of calculating missing numbers. Al-Khwarizmi combined these methods together to develop algebra. The word algebra comes from the Arabic “al-jabr” which means “bringing back order.” Al-jabr was one of the terms used by al-Khwarizmi to describe how to find the missing numbers in an equation. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi lived in the 9th century and worked in Baghdad where he was an important scientist at the Bayt al-Hikma. Al-Khwarizmi wrote the first book on algebra.
Source: Talim Primary 3