Transcript Arabic (Hindu) NumBER System

Hindu-Arabic numerals are ten digits
(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). They are descended from
the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by
Indian mathematicians, in which a sequence of
numerals such as "975" is read as a whole number.
The Indian numerals were adopted by the Persian
mathematicians in India, and passed on to the
Arabs further west. They were transmitted to
Europe in the Middle Ages. The use of Arabic
numerals spread around the world through
European trade, books and colonialism. Today
they are the most common symbolic representation
of numbers in the world.
As befitting their history, the digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, and 9) are also known as Hindu numerals or
"Hindu-Arabic numerals". The reason they are more
commonly known as "Arabic numerals" in Europe
and the Americas is that they were introduced to
Europe in the 10th century by Arabs of North Africa,
who were then using the digits from Libya to
Morocco.
Europeans did not know about the numerals'
origins in ancient India, so they named them
"Arabic numerals". Arabs, on the other hand, call
the system "Hindu numerals", referring to their
origin in India. This is not to be confused with
what the Arabs call the "Hindi numerals",
namely the Eastern Arabic numerals
(٠.١.٢.٣.٤.٥.٦.٧.٨.٩) used in the Middle East, or
any of the numerals currently used in Indian
languages (e.g. Devanagari: ०.१.२.३.४.५.६.७.८.९).
In English, the term Arabic numerals can be
ambiguous. It most commonly refers to the numeral
system widely used in Europe and the Americas.
Arabic numerals is the conventional name for the
entire family of related systems of Arabic and Indian
numerals. It may also be intended to mean the
numerals used by Arabs, in which case it generally
refers to the Eastern Arabic numerals.
The decimal Hindu-Arabic numeral system was
invented in India around 500 CE. The system was
revolutionary in that it included a zero and
positional notation. It is considered an important
milestone in the development of mathematics. One
may distinguish between this positional system,
which is identical throughout the family, and the
precise glyphs used to write the numerals, which
vary regionally. The glyphs most commonly used in
conjunction with the Latin alphabet since early
modern times are 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
Although the phrase "Arabic numeral" is
frequently capitalized, it is sometimes written in
lower case: for instance, in its entry in the Oxford
English dictionary. This helps distinguish it from
"Arabic numerals" as the East Arabic numerals
specific to the Arabs.
The digits 1 to 9 in the Hindu-Arabic
numeral system evolved from the Brahmi
numerals. Buddhist inscriptions from around
300 BCE use the symbols which became 1, 4
and 6. One century later, their use of the
symbols which became 2, 7 and 9 was
recorded.
The first universally accepted inscription
containing the use of the 0 glyph is first recorded
in the 9th century, in an inscription at Gwalior in
Central India dated to 870. By this time, the use
of the glyph had already reached Persia, and was
mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi's descriptions of
Indian numerals. Numerous Indian documents
on copper plates exist, with the same symbol for
zero in them, dated back as far as the 6th century
CE.[10]
The numerals used in the Bakhshali
manuscript, dated between the 2nd century
BCE and the 2nd century CE.
Brahmi numerals (lower row)
in India in the 1st century CE
Modern-day Arab telephone keypad with
two forms of Hindu-Arabic numerals: Western
Arabic/European numerals on the left and
Eastern Arabic numerals on the right
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 in Arabic, 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. Their work was principally responsible for the
diffusion of the Indian system of numeration in the
Middle East and the West In the 10th century,
Middle-Eastern mathematicians extended the
decimal numeral system to include fractions, as
recorded in a treatise by Syrian mathematician Abu'lHasan al-Uqlidisi in 952–953. The decimal point
notation was introduced by Sind ibn Ali he also
wrote the earliest treatise on Arabic numerals.
A distinctive West Arabic variant of the symbols
begins to emerge around the 10th century in the
Maghreb and Al-Andalus, called ghubar ("sand-table"
or "dust-table") numerals, which are the direct
ancestor of the modern Western Arabic numerals
used throughout the world.
The first mentions of the numerals in the
West are found in the Codex Vigilanus of 976.
From the 980s, Gerbert of Aurillac (later, Pope
Sylvester II) used his position to spread
knowledge of the numerals in Europe. Gerbert
studied in Barcelona in his youth. He was
known to have requested mathematical
treatises concerning the astrolabe from Lupitus
of Barcelona after he had returned to France.
The numeral system employed, known as algorism, is
positional decimal notation. Various symbol sets are
used to represent numbers in the Hindu-Arabic numeral
system, all of which evolved from the Brahmi numerals.
The symbols used to represent the system have split into
various typographical variants since the Middle Ages:
The widespread Western Arabic numerals used with
the Latin alphabet, in the table below labelled European,
descended from the West Arabic numerals developed in
al-Andalus and the Maghreb. (There are two typographic
styles for rendering European numerals, known as lining
figures and text figures).
The Arabic-Indic or Eastern Arabic numerals used
with the Arabic alphabet developed primarily in
what is now Iraq. A variant of the Eastern Arabic
numerals used in the Persian and Urdu languages is
shown as East Arabic-Indic. There is substantial
variation in usage of glyphs for the Eastern ArabicIndic digits, especially for the digits four, five, six,
and seven.
The Devanagari numerals used with Devanagari
and related variants are grouped as Indian numerals.
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References (6 books/articles)
G Ifrah, A universal history of numbers : From prehistory to the
invention of the computer (London, 1998).
G G Joseph, The crest of the peacock (London, 1991).
R Kaplan, The nothing that is : a natural history of zero (London,
1999).
L C Karpinski, The history of arithmetic (New York, 1965).
K W Menninger, Number words and number symbols : A cultural
history of numbers (Boston, 1969).
D E Smith and L C Karpinski, The Hindu-Arabic numerals
(Boston, 1911).
Other Web sites:
Astroseti (A Spanish translation of this article)
Islamic City
Main Web site
http://www-history.mcs.standrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/References/Arabic_numerals.htm
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Talha ÇÖGEN & Hakan ÇOLAK
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