I read a very interesting claim at another site and found it to be plausible. It said that Algebra came into being as a necessity to solve the complexities of Muslim Inheritence Law. The claim does make sense as the inheritence law is quite complex and gets quite complex when the inheritence has to be divided amongst many family members and probably not possible by simple arithmetic.
Does anyone know about this and prove it or at least perform a research to dig up its history. I am interested to find out if it is true but not interested enough to perform the research.