Aidy Segura - The Hindu-Arabic Numeral System The first positional numerical system developed in Babylon in the 2nd mil- lennium BC. In the last few centuries, the European variety of Arabic numbers was spread around the world and gradually became the most commonly used numeral system in the world. 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. Arabic numerals or Hindu numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals are the ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). The Indian numerals were adopted by the Persian mathematicians in India, and passed on to the Arabs further west. They were taken 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. The digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) are also known as Hindu numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals. Europeans did not know about the numerals’ origins in ancient India because they were introduced to them by Arabs, so they named them Arabic numerals. But Arabs, called the system Hindu numerals, referring to their origin in India. There is a difference between Hindu numerals and Hindi numerals which are namely the Eastern Arabic numerals used in the Middle East. Arabic numerals are the standard name for the entire family of related systems of Arabic and Indian numerals. Its glyphs are descended from the Indian Brahmi numerals. The Brahmi numerals have been found in inscriptions in caves and on coins. The full system emerged by the 8th to 9th centuries, and is first described in Al-Khwarizmi’s On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, and Al-Kindi’s four volume work On the Use of the Indian Numerals. Al-Khwarizmi’ was a Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer during the Abbasid Caliphate, a scholar in the House of Wisdom (considered to be the first university of the world) in Baghdad, born in 780 and died in 850. His major works introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concepts of algebra into European mathematics. Al-Khwarizmi developed the concept of the algorithm in mathematics. To Al-Khwarizmi we owe the world ”algebra” coming from the title of his greatest mathematical work. It was thought that Al-Kindi was born around 800 AD and we know that Al- Kindi died after 866 AD. He was a member of the Arab tribe of Kinda, which had played an important role in the early history of Islam. His lineage earned him the title philosopher of the Arabs among later writers. He was born in Basra and educated in Baghdad. He worked with a group of translators who depicted works of Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and Greek mathematicians and scientists into Arabic. He wrote numerous works on philosophical topics. His philosophical career peaked under Al-Mutasim, and whose son Ahmad was tutored by Al- Kindi. Euclid influenced his methodology as well as his mathematics. But the most important influence on his philosophy was from Aristotle. Using his mathematical and medical expertise, he was able to develop a scale that would allow doctors to quantify the potency of their medication.

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