The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c10.38

c10.38

rulers, and princes did homage, thither flocked continually from the very corners of the *orbis terrarum* the many-tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into manhood, in order to gain wisdom." For here it was that Al-Manṣūr and Al-Māmūn and Hārūn al-Rashīd (Aaron the Just) made for a time the world's center of intellectual activity in general and in the domain of mathematics in particular.¹ It was just after the *Sindhind* was brought to Bagdad that Moḥammed ibn Mūsā al-Khowārazmī, whose name has already been mentioned,² was called to that city. He was the most celebrated mathematician of his time, either in the East or West, writing treatises on arithmetic, the sundial, the astrolabe, chronology, geometry, and algebra, and giving through the Latin transliteration of his name, *algoritmi*, the name of algorism to the early arithmetics using the new Hindu numerals.³ Appreciating at once the value of the position system so recently brought from India, he wrote an arithmetic based upon these numerals, and this was translated into Latin in the time of Adelhard of Bath (c. 1130), although possibly by his contemporary countryman Robert Cestrensis.⁴ This translation was found in Cambridge and was published by Boncompagni in 1857.⁵