It was a landmark work in the history of mathematics, with its title being the ultimate etymology of the word "algebra" itself, later borrowed into Medieval Latin as algebrāica.

[f] Translated into Latin by Robert of Chester in 1145, it was used until the sixteenth century as the principal mathematical textbook of European universities.

R. Rashed and Angela Armstrong write: Al-Khwarizmi's text can be seen to be distinct not only from the Babylonian tablets, but also from the Diophantus' Arithmetica.

It no longer concerns a series of problems to be resolved, but an exposition which starts with primitive terms in which the combinations must give all possible prototypes for equations, which henceforward explicitly constitute the true object of study.

[9]The book was a compilation and extension of known rules for solving quadratic equations and for some other problems, and considered to be the foundation of algebra, establishing it as an independent discipline.

The word algebra is derived from the name of one of the basic operations with equations described in this book, following its Latin translation by Robert of Chester.

[13] About half of the book deals with Islamic rules of inheritance, which are complex and require skill in first-order algebraic equations.