 | Arabic numerals: Encyclopedia II - Arabic numerals - History
Arabic numerals - History
Arabic numerals - Origins
Main articles: History of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, and [[{{{2}}}]], and [[{{{3}}}]], and [[{{{4}}}]], and [[{{{5}}}]]
Buddhist inscriptions from around 300 B.C. use the symbols which became 1, 4 and 6. One century later, their use of the symbols which became 2, 4, 6, 7 and 9 was recorded.
The system was adopted by the Arabs in the 8th century. The first certain positional use of zero dates to the 9th century, in an inscription at Gwalior dated to 870, and in the work of Al-Khwarizmi.
The numeral system came to be known to both the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, whose book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals written about 825, and the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi, who wrote four volumes, "On the Use of the Indian Numerals" (Ketab fi Isti'mal al-'Adad al-Hindi) about 830, are principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration in the Middle-East and the West [1]. In the 10th century, Middle-Eastern mathematicians extended the decimal numeral system to include fractions, as recorded in a treatise by Syrian mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi in 952-953.
In the Arab World—until modern times—the Arabic numeral system was used only by mathematicians. Muslim scientists used the Babylonian numeral system, and merchants used a numeral system similar to the Greek numeral system and the Hebrew numeral system. Therefore, it was not until Fibonacci that the Arabic numeral system was used by a large population.
Arabic numerals - West Arabic numerals
A distinctive "West Arabic" variant of the symbols begins to emerge in ca. the 10th century in the Maghreb and Al-Andalus, called the ghubar ("sand-table" or "dust-table") numerals.
The first mentions of the numerals in the West are found in the Codex Vigilanus of 976 [2]. From the 980s, Gerbert of Aurillac began to spread knowledge of the numerals in Europe. Gerbert studied in Barcelona in his youth, and he is known to have requested mathematical treatises concerning the astrolabe from Lupitus of Barcelona after he had returned to France.
Arabic numerals - Adoption in Europe
Al-Khwarizmi's 825 treatise On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals was translated into Latin in the 12th century, as Algoritmi de numero Indorum (Algoritmi being the translator's rendition of the author's name, al-ḫwārizmī, ultimately leading to the term algorithm).
Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician who had studied in Bejaia (Bougie), Algeria, promoted the Arabic numeral system in Europe with his book Liber Abaci, which was published in 1202, still describing the numerals as "Indian" rather than "Arabic".
"When my father, who had been appointed by his country as public notary in the customs at Bugia acting for the Pisan merchants going there, was in charge, he summoned me to him while I was still a child, and having an eye to usefulness and future convenience, desired me to stay there and receive instruction in the school of accounting. There, when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable teaching, knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it.."
The numerals are arranged with their lowest value digit to the right, with higher value positions added to the left. This arrangement was adopted identically into the numerals as used in Europe. The Latin alphabet running from left to right, unlike the Arabic alphabet, this resulted in an inverse arrangement of the place-values relative to the direction of reading.
The European acceptance of the numerals was accelerated by the invention of the printing press, and they became commonly known during the 15th century. By the mid 16th century, they were in common use in most of Europe.[3] Roman numerals remain in use mostly for the notation of years of the Common Era, and for numbers on clockfaces. Sometimes, Roman numerals are still used for enumeration of lists (as an alternative to alphabetical enumeration), and numbering pages in prefatory material in books.
Other related archives0, 1, 10, 10th century, 11, 12, 1202, 12th century, 13, 15th century, 16, 16th century, 2, 20, 24, 26, 27, 3, 30, 32, 36, 4, 5, 6, 60, 64, 7, 8, 825, 830, 870, 8th century, 9, 952, 953, 976, 980s, 9th century, ASCII, Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi, Al-Andalus, Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Kindi, Algeria, Algorism, Arab, Arabic alphabet, Babylonian numeral system, Barcelona, Bejaia, Bougie, Brahmi numerals, Buddhist, Common Era, Devanagari, Early Modern, Eastern Arabic, Eastern Arabic numerals, Europe, Fibonacci, Gerbert of Aurillac, Greek, Greek numeral system, Gwalior, Hebrew numeral system, Hindu-Arabic numeral system, History, History of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, Indian family, Indian numerals, Iraq, Italian, Latin alphabet, Liber Abaci, Lupitus of Barcelona, Maghreb, Middle Ages, Middle-East, Middle-Eastern, Persian, Roman, Symbol sets, Syrian, Thai, Unicode, al-Andalus, algorithm, astrolabe, decimal, glyphs used with the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, positional, printing press, text figures, typographic
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
