Al-Khwarizmi indicated his reason for writing "Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi Hisab al-jabr wa al-muqabalah" was to teach

"... what is easiest and most useful in arithmatic, such as men constantly require in cases of inheritance, legacies, partition, lawsuits, and trade, and in all their dealings with one another or where the measuring of lands, the digging of canals, geometrical computations, and other objects of various sorts and kinds are concerned."