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🧪 Science 🔢 Maths and numbers

Arabic numerals

A passage from a manuscript of al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra (he died early in the third century AH), showing his use of Arabic numerals.
A passage from a manuscript of al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra (he died early in the third century AH), showing his use of Arabic numerals.

📖 In short

The digits we write numbers with in arithmetic, like 1, 2 and 3, are called Arabic numerals, or Hindu-Arabic numerals. With just ten symbols, from 0 to 9, we can write any number, however big!

🤩 Did you know?

  • Zero is one of the greatest inventions in mathematics.
  • Pope Sylvester II spread Arabic numerals in Europe after learning them in al-Andalus.
  • From the Arabic word “sifr” come words in other languages, like “zero” and “cipher”.
  • With Arabic numerals we can easily write very big numbers.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Ten symbols

The ten symbols are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. We make every number from them by placing them in columns: ones, tens, hundreds and thousands.

🔍 From India to the Arabs

Scholars in India invented this way of writing numbers along with zero, then Arab and Muslim scholars like al-Khwarizmi took it up, explained it, improved it and spread it.

💡 From the Arabs to Europe

Europeans used to write numbers with hard Roman letters like XII, then learned Arabic numerals from al-Andalus and Arabic books, found them much easier, and they spread all over the world.

🎯 Two forms of digits

In the Maghreb and Europe the digits are written like this: 1 2 3, and in the Arab East they're written another way: ١ ٢ ٣. Both come from the same origin!

🧩 Test yourself

1 How many basic symbols are there in Arabic numerals?

2 Where did the Arabs get the number system and zero from?

3 Which picture shows “Arabic numerals”?

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