The ancient Greeks used aspects of that sexagesimal system but wrote numbers using letters rather than special characters and, also unlike the Babylonians, used a character to represent zero. Ancient Greek mathematicians were mainly concerned with geometry — lengths, shapes and angles, all labelled using letters rather than numbers — and their ideas had a huge impact on the development of that discipline.
In the early centuries AD, however, a different tradition of mathematics began to flourish in India, probably based on ideas borrowed from Chinese civilisation. Scholars began to use nine special digits to represent the first nine numbers and, in around AD, they began writing these characters in order, according to their value.
The final piece of the puzzle was the zero, which is vital to a system of positional notation based on the number It was originally written as a dot, to denote an empty value in a sequence of numbers.
Crucially, this system was described around AD by an Indian mathematician named Brahmagupta in an elaborate astronomical treatise, written in Sanskrit poetry, called the Siddhanta.
There are divergent accounts of how and when this manuscript arrived in Baghdad, the city founded in by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur on a bend in the river Tigris as the capital of his burgeoning Muslim empire. One suggests that it was brought directly from India in by a visiting scholar, but it is possible that the Hindu-Arabic numerals were already known in Baghdad by that point. It was also the largest and most important city on Earth, capital of the vast Muslim empire that stretched from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the river Indus, spanning an astonishing five million square miles.
People came from across the empire to seek their fortune, and the city became a vibrant centre of learning and culture. Following the lead of several enlightened caliphs, the elite poured their considerable wealth into creating libraries and funding learning. Scholars flocked to be part of the intellectual endeavour, and manuscripts were brought from across the Middle East and beyond to be translated and the knowledge they held put to use.
Astronomy and mathematics were two of the subjects most urgently pursued, and the achievements of the scholars who studied them were truly astonishing. They built the first observatory in the Muslim world, where they produced data that transformed human understanding of the universe.
They translated, corrected and improved ancient Greek scientific theories, combining them with those from India and with their own ideas, propelling knowledge forward. His name suggests that his origins lay in the province of Khwarazm, far to the north-east on the shores of the Aral Sea.
Claims range from invention of alegbraic formulae, sine, cosine, numbers, astronomy, distance between Earth and Sun, ancient aircrafts, stem cell research and above all close relationship of German and Sanskrit. Usually Wikipedia and other dubious sources are quoted.
BBC even made a report on it, sadly this is being propagated by some obscure university professors. One can only imagine how many students are misled. Perhaps these awed students are posting a series of these questions all over the web. India: scientists dismiss Einstein theories. The moral of the story is that paper never refused ink. Web is worse, because everyone can propagate false ideas.
Our job is to filter junk vs. The first 3 digits can be easily explained by the rapid tracing of strokes without lifting the writing stylus from the surface of the paper. Digit 0 is the representation of an empty space. Sign up to join this community.
The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What is the origin of Arabic numerals Ask Question. Asked 2 years, 7 months ago. Active 1 year, 9 months ago. Viewed 3k times. Improve this question.
Cajori, A History of Mathematical Notations , para for details and useful tables summarizing the complex evolution of the numerals from Boethius and on. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. For instance, OED entry for Arabic numerals traces the word usage history: Designating the system of numerals written 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
Arabic numerals reached western Europe through Arabia by c, but probably originated in India The earliest usage goes back to s: Gentleman's Mag. India: scientists dismiss Einstein theories The moral of the story is that paper never refused ink. Improve this answer. By the middle of the second century B. It took until the ninth century A. However, archaeological evidence unearthed in central India and Iran indicates the use of all nine numerals as far back as the seventh century A.
Between the years and , Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi and Arab mathematician Al-Kindi each wrote separate books on the principles of using Arabic numerals. These books led to the diffusion of the numbers into the Middle East and parts of the West. In the 10th century, Middle Eastern scholars used the numerals to develop fractions and percentages. This becomes clear from the references by al-Baghdadi to the lost work. However the numerous references to al-Khwarizmi 's book on the Indian nine symbols must mean that he did write such a work.
Some degree of mystery still remains. At first the Indian methods were used by the Arabs with a dust board. In fact in the western part of the Arabic world the Indian numerals came to be known as Guba or Gubar or Ghubar numerals from the Arabic word meaning "dust". A dust board was used because the arithmetical methods required the moving of numbers around in the calculation and rubbing some out some of them as the calculation proceeded.
The dust board allowed this in the same sort of way that one can use a blackboard, chalk and a blackboard eraser. Any student who has attended lectures where the lecturer continually changes and replaces parts of the mathematics as the demonstration progresses will understand the disadvantage of the dust board!
In it al-Uqlidisi argues that the system is of practical value:- Most arithmeticians are obliged to use it in their work: since it is easy and immediate, requires little memorisation, provides quick answers, demands little thought Therefore, we say that it is a science and practice that requires a tool, such as a writer, an artisan, a knight needs to conduct their affairs; since if the artisan has difficulty in finding what he needs for his trade, he will never succeed; to grasp it there is no difficulty, impossibility or preparation.
In the fourth part of this book al-Uqlidisi showed how to modify the methods of calculating with Indian symbols, which had required a dust board, to methods which could be carried out with pen and paper. Certainly the fact that the Indian system required a dust board had been one of the main obstacles to its acceptance. For example As-Suli, after praising the Indian system for its great simplicity, wrote in the first half of the tenth century:- Official scribes nevertheless avoid using [ the Indian system ] because it requires equipment [ like a dust board ] and they consider that a system that requires nothing but the members of the body is more secure and more fitting to the dignity of a leader.
Al-Uqlidisi 's work is therefore important in attempting to remove one of the obstacles to acceptance of the Indian nine symbols. It is also historically important as it is the earliest known text offering a direct treatment of decimal fractions. Despite many scholars finding calculating with Indian symbols helpful in their work, the business community continued to use their finger arithmetic throughout the tenth century.
Abu'l-Wafa , who was himself an expert in the use of Indian numerals, nevertheless wrote a text on how to use finger-reckoning arithmetic since this was the system used by the business community and teaching material aimed at these people had to be written using the appropriate system. Let us give a little information about the Arab letter numerals which are contained in Abu'l-Wafa 's work.
The numbers were represented by letters but not in the dictionary order. The numbers from 1 to 9 were represented by letters, then the numbers 10 , 20 , 30 , There were 28 Arabic letters and so one was left over which was used to represent
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