ABSTRACT
The borrowings from al-Karaji, are certainly important for situating Fibonacci's contributions to the history of mathematics. Not only did Fibonacci borrow entire chapters from the mathematicians, but also his work presents itself in some sense as an extension into Latin of the Arabic mathematics of the first period. John of Palermo asks Fibonacci to solve a specific equation. He found an identical equation with the very same coefficients appears in the Treatise of Algebra by al-Khayyan, as Woepcke long ago noted. The second 'challenge' hat John of Palermo set for Fibonacci is reported by himself in the prologue to his Liber quadratorum. Dophantine analysis that was emerging in the middle of the 10th century and would prosper among such mathematicians as Kama al-Din ibn Yunus, fibonacci drew upon the means at his disposal, namely the Elements and Euclidean and neo-Pythagorean arithmetic. This is precisely called as characterizing Fibonacci's work as 'the Latin extension of Arabic mathematics'.
