Place · Andalusi capital · Spain
Córdoba
The Umayyad capital of al-Andalus, whose library and translation activity carried Arabic mathematics, astronomy and medicine into Latin Europe — and with them the Indian decimal place-value numerals that Arabic writers called al-arqam al-hindiyya, the Indian figures.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 37.888, -4.779
Worth knowing
Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, learned the numerals in Catalonia in the 960s and tried to introduce them; they took another three centuries to displace Roman numerals in European accounting, largely through Italian merchants and Fibonacci.
Connections (3)
- TransmissionThe decimal place-value numerals
Arabic mathematics called the decimal place-value digits al-arqam al-hindiyya, the Indian figures, and carried them west to al-Andalus, where Latin Europe met them. Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, learned them in Catalonia in the 960s and failed to get them adopted; it took Fibonacci, Italian merchants and three more centuries. Florence banned them from account books in 1299 on the ground that a nought was too easy to alter.
- AnalogueDamascus
Damascus steel and the Indian numerals both reached Europe through the Islamic world and both lost their origin on the way. The ingots were made in Tamil and Sinhala crucible furnaces and forged in Syria; the digits were Indian and are still called Arabic. Al-Khwarizmi's ninth-century treatise on Indian reckoning is the text Cordoba's translators passed to Latin Europe.
- TransmissionKalīla wa Dimna
From Arabic the book went to Hebrew, then to John of Capua's Latin Directorium humanae vitae about 1270, and from that into German, Italian, Spanish and English. Al-Andalus and Sicily are where Arabic learning crossed into Latin, and the Indian numerals and the Indian fables crossed at the same places and in the same centuries, by the same translators.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Córdoba, Spain”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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