Arabic numerals
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The ten Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) are the most commonly used
symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...
s for writing numbers. The term often also implies a positional notation number with a decimal base, in particular when contrasted with
Roman numerals Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...
. However the symbols are also used to write numbers in other bases, such as octal, as well as non-numerical information such as trademarks or license plate identifiers. They are also called Western Arabic numerals, Western digits, European digits, Ghubār numerals, or Hindu–Arabic numerals due to positional notation (but not these digits) originating in India. The ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'' uses lowercase ''Arabic numerals'' while using the fully capitalized term ''Arabic Numerals'' for
Eastern Arabic numerals The Eastern Arabic numerals, also called Indo-Arabic numerals or Arabic-Indic numerals as known by Unicode, are the symbols used to represent numerical digits in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet in the countries of the Mashriq (the east o ...
. In contemporary society, the terms ''digits'', ''numbers'', and ''numerals'' often implies only these symbols, although it can only be inferred from context. Europeans first learned of Arabic numerals , though their spread was a gradual process. After Italian scholar
Fibonacci Leonardo Bonacci ( – ), commonly known as Fibonacci, was an Italians, Italian mathematician from the Republic of Pisa, considered to be "the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages". The name he is commonly called, ''Fibonacci ...
of Pisa encountered the numerals in the Algerian city of Béjaïa, his 13th-century work ' became crucial in making them known in Europe. However, their use was largely confined to Northern Italy until the invention of the
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...
in the 15th century. European trade, books, and
colonialism Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...
subsequently helped popularize the adoption of Arabic numerals around the world. The numerals are used worldwide—significantly beyond the contemporary spread of the Latin alphabet—and have become common in the writing systems where other numeral systems existed previously, such as Chinese and Japanese numerals.


History


Origin

Positional decimal notation including a zero symbol was developed in India, using symbols visually distinct from those that would eventually enter into international use. As the concept spread, the sets of symbols used in different regions diverged over time. The immediate ancestors of the digits now commonly called "Arabic numerals" were introduced to Europe in the 10th century by Arabic speakers of Spain and North Africa, with digits at the time in wide use from Libya to Morocco. In the east from Egypt to Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabs were using the
Eastern Arabic numerals The Eastern Arabic numerals, also called Indo-Arabic numerals or Arabic-Indic numerals as known by Unicode, are the symbols used to represent numerical digits in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet in the countries of the Mashriq (the east o ...
or "Mashriki" numerals: ٠, ١, ٢, ٣, ٤, ٥, ٦, ٧, ٨, ٩. Al-Nasawi wrote in the early 11th century that mathematicians had not agreed on the form of the numerals, but most of them had agreed to train themselves with the forms now known as Eastern Arabic numerals. The oldest specimens of the written numerals available are from Egypt and date to 873–874 AD. They show three forms of the numeral "2" and two forms of the numeral "3", and these variations indicate the divergence between what later became known as the Eastern Arabic numerals and the Western Arabic numerals. The Western Arabic numerals came to be used in the Maghreb and Al-Andalus from the 10th century onward. Some amount of consistency in the Western Arabic numeral forms endured from the 10th century, found in a Latin manuscript of Isidore of Seville's ' from 976 and the Gerbertian abacus, into the 12th and 13th centuries, in early manuscripts of translations from the city of Toledo. Calculations were originally performed using a dust board (, Latin: ), which involved writing symbols with a stylus and erasing them. The use of the dust board appears to have introduced a divergence in terminology as well: whereas the Hindu reckoning was called in the east, it was called 'calculation with dust' in the west. The numerals themselves were referred to in the west as 'dust figures' or 'dust letters'. Al-Uqlidisi later invented a system of calculations with ink and paper 'without board and erasing' (). A popular myth claims that the symbols were designed to indicate their numeric value through the number of angles they contained, but there is no contemporary evidence of this, and the myth is difficult to reconcile with any digits past 4.


Adoption and spread

The first mentions of the numerals from 1 to 9 in the West are found in the 976 ', an illuminated collection of various historical documents covering a period from antiquity to the 10th century in
Hispania Hispania was the Ancient Rome, Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two Roman province, provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. During the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was divide ...
. Other texts show that numbers from 1 to 9 were occasionally supplemented by a placeholder known as , represented as a circle or wheel, reminiscent of the eventual symbol for zero. The Arabic term for zero is (), transliterated into Latin as , which became the English word '' cipher''. 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 Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
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 reception of Arabic numerals in the West was gradual and lukewarm, as other numeral systems circulated in addition to the older Roman numbers. As a discipline, the first to adopt Arabic numerals as part of their own writings were astronomers and astrologists, evidenced from manuscripts surviving from mid-12th-century Bavaria. Reinher of Paderborn (1140–1190) used the numerals in his calendrical tables to calculate the dates of
Easter Easter, also called Pascha ( Aramaic: פַּסְחָא , ''paskha''; Greek: πάσχα, ''páskha'') or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in t ...
more easily in his text '.


Italy

Leonardo Fibonacci was a Pisan mathematician who had studied in the Pisan trading colony of Bugia, in what is now
Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...
, and he endeavored to promote the numeral system in Europe with his 1202 book ':
When my father, who had been appointed by his country as public notary in the customs at Bugia acting for the Pisan merchants going there, was in charge, he summoned me to him while I was still a child, and having an eye to usefulness and future convenience, desired me to stay there and receive instruction in the school of accounting. There, when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable teaching, knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it.
The 's analysis highlighting the advantages of positional notation was widely influential. Likewise, Fibonacci's use of the Béjaïa digits in his exposition ultimately led to their widespread adoption in Europe. Fibonacci's work coincided with the European
commercial revolution In European history, the commercial revolution saw the development of a European economy – based on trade – which began in the 11th century AD and operated until the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century. Beginning wit ...
of the 12th and 13th centuries centered in Italy. Positional notation facilitated complex calculations (such as currency conversion) to be completed more quickly than was possible with the Roman system. In addition, the system could handle larger numbers, did not require a separate reckoning tool, and allowed the user to check their work without repeating the entire procedure. Late medieval Italian merchants did not stop using Roman numerals or other reckoning tools: instead, Arabic numerals were adopted for use in addition to their preexisting methods.


Wider Europe

By the late 14th century, only a few texts using Arabic numerals appeared outside of Italy. This suggests that the use of Arabic numerals in commercial practice, and the significant advantage they conferred, remained a virtual Italian monopoly until the late 15th century. This may in part have been due to language barriers: although Fibonacci's ' was written in Latin, the Italian abacus traditions were predominantly written in Italian vernaculars that circulated in the private collections of abacus schools or individuals. The European acceptance of the numerals was accelerated by the invention of the
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...
, and they became widely known during the 15th century. Their use grew steadily in other centers of finance and trade such as Lyon. Early evidence of their use in Britain includes: an equal hour horary quadrant from 1396, in England, a 1445 inscription on the tower of Heathfield Church, Sussex; a 1448 inscription on a wooden lych-gate of Bray Church,
Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...
; and a 1487 inscription on the belfry door at Piddletrenthide church,
Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...
; and in
Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
a 1470 inscription on the tomb of the first Earl of Huntly in Elgin Cathedral. In central Europe, the
King of Hungary The King of Hungary () was the Monarchy, ruling head of state of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1000 (or 1001) to 1918. The style of title "Apostolic King of Hungary" (''Magyarország apostoli királya'') was endorsed by Pope Clement XIII in 1758 ...
Ladislaus the Posthumous, started the use of Arabic numerals, which appear for the first time in a royal document of 1456. By the mid-16th century, they had been widely adopted in Europe, and by 1800 had almost completely replaced the use of counting boards and Roman numerals in accounting. Roman numerals were mostly relegated to niche uses such as years and numbers on clock faces.


Russia

Prior to the introduction of Arabic numerals, Cyrillic numerals, derived from the Cyrillic alphabet, were used by South and East Slavs. The system was used in Russia as late as the early 18th century, although it was formally replaced in official use by Peter the Great in 1699. Reasons for Peter's switch from the alphanumerical system are believed to go beyond a surface-level desire to imitate the West. Historian Peter Brown makes arguments for sociological, militaristic, and pedagogical reasons for the change. At a broad, societal level, Russian merchants, soldiers, and officials increasingly came into contact with counterparts from the West and became familiar with the communal use of Arabic numerals. Peter also covertly travelled throughout Northern Europe from 1697 to 1698 during his Grand Embassy and was likely informally exposed to Western mathematics during this time. The Cyrillic system was found to be inferior for calculating practical kinematic values, such as the trajectories and parabolic flight patterns of artillery. With its use, it was difficult to keep pace with Arabic numerals in the growing field of ballistics, whereas Western mathematicians such as
John Napier John Napier of Merchiston ( ; Latinisation of names, Latinized as Ioannes Neper; 1 February 1550 – 4 April 1617), nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the 8 ...
had been publishing on the topic since 1614.


China

The Chinese Shang dynasty numerals from the 14th century BC predates the Indian Brahmi numerals by over 1000 years and shows substantial similarity to the Brahmi numerals. Similar to the modern Arabic numerals, the Shang dynasty numeral system was also decimal based and positional. While positional Chinese numeral systems such as the counting rod system and Suzhou numerals had been in use prior to the introduction of modern Arabic numerals, the externally-developed system was eventually introduced to medieval China by the
Hui people The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Islam in China, Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the Northwest China, northwestern provinces and in the Zhongy ...
. In the early 17th century, European-style Arabic numerals were introduced by Spanish and Portuguese
Jesuits The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
.


Encoding

The ten Arabic numerals are encoded in virtually every character set designed for electric, radio, and digital communication, such as
Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...
. They are encoded in
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
(and therefore in
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
encodings) at positions 0x30 to 0x39. Masking all but the four least-significant binary digits gives the value of the decimal digit, a design decision facilitating the digitization of text onto early computers. EBCDIC used a different offset, but also possessed the aforementioned masking property.


See also

* Arabic numeral variations * Regional variations in modern handwritten Arabic numerals * Seven-segment display * Text figures


Footnotes


Sources

*


Further reading

* * * * * *


External links

* Lam Lay Yong
"Development of Hindu Arabic and Traditional Chinese Arithmetic"
''Chinese Science'' 13 (1996): 35–54.
"Counting Systems and Numerals"
''Historyworld''. Retrieved 11 December 2005. * . 16 April 2005. * O'Connor, J. J., and E. F. Robertson

. November 2000. * History of the numerals *
Arabic numerals
*

*

*
Gerbert d'Aurillac's early use of Hindu–Arabic numerals
a
Convergence
{{Authority control Numerals