The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c12.20

c12.20

Leonardo's father was a commercial agent at Bugia, the modern Bougie,⁵ the ancient Saldae on the coast of Barbary,⁶ a royal capital under the Vandals and again, a century before Leonardo, under the Beni Hammad. It had one of the best harbors on the coast, sheltered as it is by Mt. Lalla Guraia,⁷ and at the close of the twelfth century it was a center of African commerce. It was here that Leonardo was taken as a child, and here he went to school to a Moorish master. When he reached the years of young manhood he started on a tour of the Mediterranean Sea, and visited Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence, meeting with scholars as well as with merchants, and imbibing a knowledge of the various systems of numbers in use in the centers of trade. All these systems, however, he says he counted almost as errors compared with that of the Hindus.¹ Returning to Pisa, he wrote his *Liber Abaci*² in 1202, rewriting it in 1228.³ In this work the numerals are explained and are used in the usual computations of business. Such a treatise was not destined to be popular, however, because it was too advanced for the mercantile class, and too novel for the conservative university circles. Indeed, at this time mathematics had only slight place in the newly established universities, as witness the oldest known statute of the Sorbonne at Paris, dated 1215, where the subject is referred to only in an incidental way.⁴ The period was one of great commercial activity, and on this very account such a book would attract even less attention than usual.¹