Last amended on 4 agosto 1996. I am working on a history of recreational mathematics. I have found a number of topics which have Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Arabic or Turkish connections which I am gathering here for convenience in correspondence.
Separate letters deal with Russian questions and with Oriental questions, i.e. China and Japan.
Some questions relate to the whole of the Middle East, while others are more specific to parts of it. I give the general questions first. That is, the apparent transmission from the Orient has a gap in it. There are also problems which appear quite fully developed in Fibonacci or Alcuin which seem as though they must have some earlier appearances, probably in Arabic, though Byzantine sources are also possible. There are also a few cases where transmission seems to have gone from Europe to the Orient.