Hindu Achievements in Exact Science: A Study in the History of Scientific Development c7.13

c7.13

It was probably in the twelfth century that the Europeans learnt this Hindu science from their Saracen masters. Leonardo of Pisa,⁶¹ an Italian merchant, was educated in Barbary, and thus became acquainted with the so-called Arabic numerals and Musa’s work on Algebra based on the Sanskrit. In 1202 was published his “Liber Abbaci.” This was the beginning of modern arithmetic in Europe. The pioneering work may have been done by Gerbert, a Frenchman, who learnt the Hindu system from the Mohammedan teachers at Cordova in Spain (*c* 970–80).⁶⁹ Musa, the distinguished Moslem mathematician, was thus the connecting link between the algebra and arithmetic of the Hindus and the mediæval European mathematics.