LAUSR

Abstract Mathematical commentaries in Arabic and Persian have come down to us in abundant numbers and manifoldness. There is no study of them as a literary genre, their distribution over time, space, or topic, nor of their forms or styles. The commentaries that have been scrutinized so far are few in number and focusing in topic mostly on geometry and in scope on those with innovative contributions. In this paper, I will try to survey more generally purposes, forms, and styles of mathematical commentaries based on a larger number of texts with different thematic content and range and produced in different contexts, periods, and localities.