Arabic numerals Arabic numerals Arabic numerals, also called Hindu–Arabic numerals, are the ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; or numerals written using them in the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (where the position of a digit indicates the power of 10 to multiply it by). It is the most common system for the symbolic representation of numbers in the world today. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system was developed by Indian mathematicians around AD 500 using quite different forms of the numerals. From India, the system was adopted by Arabic mathematicians in Baghdad and passed on to the Arabs farther
Arabic numerals via Alexandria, but this theory is not accepted by scholars. Some popular myths have argued that the original forms of these symbols indicated their numeric value through the number of angles they contained, but no evidence exists of any such origin. In 825 Al-Khwārizmī wrote a treatise in Arabic, "On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals", which survives only as the 12th-century Latin translation, "Algoritmi de numero Indorum". "Algoritmi", the translator's rendition of the author's name, gave rise to the word "algorithm". The first mentions of the numerals in the West are found in the "Codex Vigilanus" of 976. From the