The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c9.12

c9.12

The ġobār numerals themselves were first made known to modern scholars by Silvestre de Sacy, who discovered them in an Arabic manuscript from the library of the ancient abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés.² The system has nine characters, but no zero. A dot above a character indicates tens, two dots hundreds, and so on, 5 meaning 50, and 5 meaning 5000. It has been suggested that possibly these dots, sprinkled like dust above the numerals, gave rise to the word *ġobār*,³ but this is not at all probable. This system of dots is found in Persia at a much later date with numerals quite like the modern Arabic;⁴ but that it was used at all is significant, for it is hardly likely that the western system would go back to Persia, when the perfected Hindu one was near at hand.