>Hindu-Arabic numerals

I think we call them Arabic more often because we got them through the Arabs. The Persian mathematician Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi (whence our words algoreism and algorithm) was the first to describe the numbering system in his book on algebra, Hisab al-jabr wa al-muqabala, in ca.820 CE. The book was translated in Latin and was a big hit into the Middle Ages.

One of the best editorials I've read on al-jazeera's site was lamenting the reversal of esteem in which learning is held in the Arab world, courtesy of the fundamentalists, Wahhabis and madrasas. It looked back wistfully to the time when it was the enlightened Islamic world that shared knowledge with the uncultivated, ignorant and superstitious West.


noho ora mai
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