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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    The first of the Arabic writers mentioned is Al-KindT (800-870 A.d.), who wrote five books on arithmetic and four books on the use of the Indian method of reckoning. Sened ibn 'All, the Jew, who was converted to Islam under the caliph Al-Mamun, is also given as the author of a work on the Hindu method of reckoning. Nevertheless, there is a possibility1 that some of the works ascribed to Sened ibn 'All are really works of Al-Ivhowarazml, whose name immediately precedes his. However, it is to be noted in this connection that Casiri2 also mentions the same writer as the author of a most celebrated work on arithmetic. To Al-SufI, who died in 986 a.d., is also credited a large work on the same subject, and similar treatises by other writers are mentioned. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the Arabs from the early ninth century on fully recognized the Hindu origin of the new numerals. Leonard of Pisa, of whom we shall speak at length in the chapter on the Introduction of the Numerals into Europe, wrote his Liber Abbaei3 in 1202. In this work he refers frequently to the nine Indian figures,4 thus showing again the general consensus of opinion in the Middle Ages that the numerals were of Hindu origin. Some interest also attaches to the oldest documents on arithmetic in our own language. One of the earliest 1 Suter, loc. cit., note 165, pp. 62-63. 2 “ Send Ben Ali, . . . turn arithmetica scripta maxima celebrata, quae publici juris fecit.” [Loc. cit., p. 440.] 8 Scritti di Leonardo Pisano, Vol. I, Liber Abbaei (1857); Yol. II, Scritti (1862); published by Baldassarre Boncompagni, Rome. Also Tre Scritti Inediti, and Intorno ad Opere di Leonardo Pisano, Rome, 1854. 4 “ Ubi ex mirabili magisterio in arte per novem flguras indorum introductus” etc. In another place, as a heading to a separate divi- sion, he writes, “De cognitione novem figurarum yndorum” etc. “ Novem figure indorum lie sunt 987 654321.”