The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c11.17

c11.17

There were also ambassadors passing back and forth from time to time, between the East and the West, and in particular during the period when these numerals probably began to enter Europe. Thus Charlemagne (*c.* 800) sent emissaries to Bagdad just at the time of the opening of the mathematical activity there.¹ And with such ambassadors must have gone the adventurous scholar, inspired, as Alcuin says of Archbishop Albert of York (766–780),² to seek the learning of other lands. Furthermore, the Nestorian communities, established in Eastern Asia and in India at this time, were favored both by the Persians and by their Mohammedan conquerors. The Nestorian Patriarch of Syria, Timotheus (778–820), sent missionaries both to India and to China, and a bishop was appointed for the latter field. Ibn Wahab, who traveled to China in the ninth century, found images of Christ and the apostles in the Emperor's court.³ Such a learned body of men, knowing intimately the countries in which they labored, could hardly have failed to make strange customs known as they returned to their home stations. Then, too, in Alfred's time (849–901) emissaries went