Algebra found its way into modern mathematics via the early-modern rediscovery of Diophantus of Alexandria, who appropriated it from the Arabs.
It is worthy of note that the ‘original’ algebra was conceived by the Arabic savants as an art. And yet not merely an art like no other; rather something more akin to what, in our idiom, we would call a ‘dark’ art.
This ‘dark arts’ origin cannot but make one wonder. Does this shed any light on the unadulterated power which modern mathematics—of which algebra plays the integral role—has given us over Nature? Does it manifest one—of perhaps several—of the reasons modern science has been likened by some as a kind of ‘Faustian bargain’?
Scientia, after all, potentia est.