The history of Arabic numerals (1) - History - Thoughts and Knowledge (2024)

Gamal Khairy

Published On:8/10/2011 A.D. - 10/11/1432 H.Visited: 38963 times

Muslims interested long time ago in many sciences, of which are: Arithmetic and mathematics.

So, they invented geometry and algebra and developed them. Then they created suitable Arabic numbers to help them do calculations and math easily.

Figures were used at that time, so they invented these new Arabic numerals in the Abbasid era instead, which were used by Muslims, then spread to the entire world. These figures were part of the cultural advancement which humanity lived under the banner of Islam.

I wanted to clarify in this section, in short, the role that Arabic numerals played in human renaissance and to reach the digitization at Arabs; I shall mention the digitization system and its types in old civilizations.

First: Egyptian Pharaonic digitization:

The history of the Pharaonic civilization is ancient and traces back to fifty century BC[1] but they have started with writing since the 35 century BC by carving on stones then they found out how to make paper and ink, so they wrote on papyri and their writings coped the development of the means of writing. The first writing was called Hieroglyphics, which means pictography.[2]

Second: The Sumerian and Babylonian digitization:

Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and others admit that the bases of their civilization were established at the hand of the Sumerians. Those civilizations were located on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates.

The history of Sumerian civilization traces back to 50 centuries BC but writing was known since the 35 century BC. So, they were like Pharaonic Egyptian but they neither carved on stones nor wrote on papers, but they created moldings out of clay to write on, dried them, then burn it to be backed brick.[3]

Third: Grecian and Roman digitization:

No doubt that Greek played a prominent role in the advancement of material civilization, however it is important to know that they benefited a lot from the many civilizations which preceded them, such as: Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylon, Ancient Egyptian, and the Indian Civilizations, as they benefited greatly from the Phoenician who used numeral letters in the first century BC.

Thus, the Greek learnt writing from the Phoenician as well as their letters and used them for a long period in their writing until their language changed by the passing of time which led to changing of letters.[4]

Fourth: Indian digitization:

Indians have reached a high degree of human civilization and presented through the science of stars and arithmetic amazing theories, which people adopted after them.

Al Mas`uday said about that: "A group of scientists and researchers, who connected conclusions with contemplating in this world, mentioned that India in ancient times was good and wise, but with the passage of time and generations after generation came, parties were ruined and India tried to establish a Kingdom and assigned a king, who was the grand Barhamn, the greatest king.

In his days, wisdom spread, sciences developed, India subjected to him, and the land became fertile. He gathered wise people to write a book which was called "As-Sind Hind" (Indus is India)[5] and its explanation which was entitled "Dahr Ad-Duhur" (Age of Ages) from which all books were written, such as: (Al Arjabahr)[6], and (Al Mijsaty), then mixed between them to make the nine Indian letters."[7]

I would like to indicate here that the oldest reference to the Indian figures was mentioned in the speech of the Syriac monk (Sawiris Saboukt) who was in the monastery of Guensrin in his book which was written after year 622 AD, which was corresponding to the Migration Year.

He blamed the people for their narrow-mind because they only receive their knowledge from the Greek although others "i.e., Indians" brought a useful knowledge by referring to any digit by only nine symbols.[8]

Arithmetic at the people of the East and the Maghrib

Arithmetic at the people of the East:

Arabs used figures before and after the advent of Islam as other nations and recorded them by words. Moreover, they used their alphabet to indicate numbers and called it (arithmetic of sentences).

They arranged the letters (of alphabet) as follows: (Abgad Hawwaz Huty Kalamun Sa`fas Qarshat Thakhdh Dazhgh).[9]

Their way in counting letters is as follows:

Arithmetic at the people of Maghrib:

The arrangement of letters was different at the people of Maghrib, as follows: (Abgad Hawwaz Huty Kalamun Sa`fad Qarsat Thakhdh Zhaghsh), so the difference was in three positions.

The digitization of the Maghrib people is as follows:

The alphabetic digitization which the people of the East and the Maghrib followed depended on the naive decimal system, where they divided it into degrees (Singles, decimals, hundreds, and thousands) but they did not know the zero digit.[10]

The first one who used the Indian figures in the Arab countries is Al Khawarizmy in the time of Al Ma'mun then the Arabs developed and improved them to cope with their nature (1, 2, 3, 4).

As for what the West now write or call as Arabic figures, they were taken from the figures which the Andalusian Arabs developed then called them Arabic letters because they took them from the Arabs.

Al Khawarizy spoke about the structure of alphabetical letters as follows: If you put two or three letters together, you may advance the bigger digit and delay the less, such as (Yb) twelve and (Fkg) hundred and twenty three.[11]

Al Khawarizmy composed figures according to the number of the angles each letter contains. Number one contains one angle, number two contains two angles, and so on; the following figure explains the shapes of numbers in angles.