The Hindu-Arabic numerals / by David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski.

  • David Eugene Smith
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Hindu-Arabic numerals / by David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    among them such influential writers as Tartaglia1 in Italy and Kobel2 hi Germany, asserted the Arabic origin of the numerals, while still others left the matter unde- cided 3 or simply dismissed them as “ barbaric.”4 Of course the Arabs themselves never laid claim to the in- vention, always recognizing them indebtedness to the Hindus both for the numeral forms and for the distin- guishing feature of place value. Foremost among these writers was the great master of the golden age of Bag- dad, one of the first of the Arab writers to collect the mathematical classics of both the East and the West, pre- serving them and finally passing them on to awakening Europe. This man was Mohammed the Son of Moses, from Khowarezm, or, more after the manner of the Arab, Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowarazmi,6 a man of great 1 & que esto fu trouato di fare dagli Arabi condiece figure.” [La prima parte del general trattato di nvmeri, et misvre, Venice, 1556, fol. 9 of the 1592 edition.] 2 “Vom welclien Arabischen auch disz Kunst entsprungen ist.” [Ain nerv geordnet Rechenbiechlin, Augsburg, 1514, fol. 13 of the 1531 edition. The printer used the letters rv for w in “new” in the first edition, as he had no w of the proper font.] 8 Among them Glareanus : “ Characteres simplices sunt nouem sig- nificatiui, ab Indis usque, siue Cliahkeis asciti .1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9. Est item imus .0 circulus, qui nihil significat.” [Be YI. Arithmeticae practicae speciebvs, Paris, 1539, fol. 9 of the 1543 edition.] 4 “ Barbarische Oder gemeine Ziffern.” [Anonymous, Das EinmaJd Eins cum notis variorum, Dresden, 1703, p. 3.] So Vossius (De universae matheseos natura et constitutione liber, Amsterdam, 1650, p. 34) calls them “ Barbaras numeri notas.” The word at that time was possibly synonymous with Arabic. 6 His full name was 'Abu 'Abdallah Mohammed ibn Musa al- Khowarazml. He was born in Khowarezm, “the lowlands,” the country about the present Khiva and bordering on the Oxus, and lived at Bagdad under the caliph al-Mamun. He died probably be- tween 220 and 230 of the Mohammedan era, that is, between 835 and 845 a.d., although some put the date as early as 812. The best ac- count of this great scholar may be found in an article by C. Nallino, “Al-Huwarizml,” in the Atti della R.Accad. dei Lincei, Rome, 1896. See