The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c9.21

c9.21

The fact seems to be that, as already stated,⁵ the Arabs did not immediately adopt the Hindu zero, because it resembled their 5; they used the superscript dot as serving their purposes fairly well; they may, indeed, have carried this to the west and have added it to the *ġobār* forms already there, just as they transmitted it to the Persians. Furthermore, the Arab and Hebrew scholars of Northern Africa in the tenth century knew these numerals as Indian forms, for a commentary on the *Sēfer Yeṣīrāh* by Abū Sahl ibn Tamim (probably composed at Kairwān, c. 950) speaks of "the Indian arithmetic known under the name of *ġobār* or dust calculation."⁶ All this suggests that the Arabs may very likely have known the ġobār forms before the numerals reached them again in 773.¹ The term "ġobār numerals" was also used without any reference to the peculiar use of dots.² In this connection it is worthy of mention that the Algerians employed two different forms of numerals in manuscripts even of the fourteenth century,³ and that the Moroccans of to-day employ the European forms instead of the present Arabic.