section_path: History/Middle Ages/Transmission to Europe
section_name: Transmission to Europe
paragraph_text: Transmission to Europe
  
  The Hindu–Arabic numeral system (base 10) reached Western Europe in the 11th century, via Al-Andalus, through Spanish Muslims, the Moors, together with knowledge of classical astronomy and instruments like the astrolabe. Gerbert of Aurillac is credited with reintroducing the lost teachings into Catholic Europe. For this reason, the numerals came to be known in Europe as "Arabic numerals". The Italian mathematician Fibonacci or Leonardo of Pisa was instrumental in bringing the system into European mathematics in 1202, stating:
  
  After my father's appointment by his homeland as state official in the customs house of Bugia for the Pisan merchants who thronged to it, he took charge; and in view of its future usefulness and convenience, had me in my boyhood come to him and there wanted me to devote myself to and be instructed in the study of calculation for some days. There, following my introduction, as a consequence of marvelous instruction in the art, to the nine digits of the Hindus, the knowledge of the art very much appealed to me before all others, and for it I realized that all its aspects were studied in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence, with their varying methods; and at these places thereafter, while on business. I pursued my study in depth and learned the give-and-take of disputation. But all this even, and the algorism, as well as the art of Pythagoras, I considered as almost a mistake in respect to the method of the Hindus. Therefore, embracing more stringently that method of the Hindus, and taking stricter pains in its study, while adding certain things from my own understanding and inserting also certain things from the niceties of Euclid 's geometric art. I have striven to compose this book in its entirety as understandably as I could, dividing it into fifteen chapters. Almost everything which I have introduced I have displayed with exact proof, in order that those further seeking this knowledge, with its pre-eminent method, might be instructed, and further, in order that the Latin people might not be discovered to be without it, as they have been up to now. If I have perchance omitted anything more or less proper or necessary, I beg indulgence, since there is no one who is blameless and utterly provident in all things. The nine Indian figures are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0... any number may be written.
  
  From the 13th century, manuals on calculation (adding, multiplying, extracting roots, etc.) became common in Europe where they were called algorismus after the Persian mathematician al-Khwārizmī. One popular manual was written by Johannes de Sacrobosco in the early 1200s and was one of the earliest scientific books to be printed, in 1488. The practice of calculating on paper using Hindu–Arabic numerals only gradually displaced calculation by abacus and recording with Roman numerals. In the 16th century, Hindu–Arabic numerals became the predominant numerals used in Europe.