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The Conclusion on the Arabic Numerals
Here they are the Arabic manuscript books on teaching arithmetic, so where are those of India? I have hardly searched for them but to no avail except the Bakhshali manuscript which is written on birch bark and found in 1881 AD near the village of Bakhshali, Peshawar district (now in Pakistan). This manuscript's date has been of long controversies, and the nearest agreeable estimation is the seventh century (650 AD, in average). Meanwhile, Indians unreasonably allege that their (claimed) inventions in mathematics have verbally been inherited through the generations, centuries before Christ!!The Arab calculators and historians using the tantamount "Alhendi" to such numerals and the related arithmetic operations because of the dedicated use of them at start in the Arabs' trade with India, has mistakenly translated by the European transcribers in the past, and by the contemporaries - especially the orientalists - as these numerals are of Indian invention or origin, the thing that the numerals themselves, with all their applicable forms in the Indian subcontinent, deny on the light of the numerous evidences and proofs I presented!
The Arabic trade activity, deeply rooted in the history, sea-wise and land-wise, and what has resulted in civilizations they founded early and medially, were the real qualification for inventing the Arabic numerals and arithmetic science. That sea trade activity has centered on the Indian subcontinent long before Christ. These trade connections led the Arabic traders to first invent the numerals from one to nine, then the Indian learnt them from the Arabs. In a later time, mostly before Islam, those Arabic traders of India have come up with the decimal positions' concept, then they invented the zero too, and so Indians have learnt that also. The Two-trips-of-summer-and-winter, as well as other land trade convoys of Arabs, made to the transmittance of such numerals from the most southern to the most northern of the Arabian Peninsula. This transmittance was confined to the traders and those who were dealing therewith like Severus, the Syrian monk and head of monastery.
By the appearance of Islam and its spreading westward by the north of the African continent (not only from Egypt and Sudan to Morocco, yet Chad, Niger, north of Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal) the Arabic numerals have transmitted with Moslems, conquerors and emigrants. By the Arabic-Islamic conquest to Andalusia, and the enlargement of the Arabic trade bridge with Europe, the Arabic numerals transmitted to Europe from north of Africa too and in their ancient form whose reference - in Arabic - has been deviated into "Ghebar" in the Arabic Africa.
While tangible transformation - by the pass of time - has come over the prototype numerals in the Arabic-East, in particular to: 0, 4, 5, 6, and 8, due to the ethnic plurality and the raise of human activity, the transformation that came over its Ghebari sibling, in the African Sahara, was lesser and came especially over the 3, 6, and 8 than the prototype from which it has separated. The nations of the Indian subcontinent continued to derive the Arabic numerals - with their intervening transformation - for a long period of time with the continuity of the Arabic trade therewith before the numerals take a final form for every Indian nation.
Yet,
| 1- | The Arabic desert environment which is adversarial to the writing and noting; and the Arabic nature that inclines to relying on the memory and the verbal dealing; and the simplified Arabic life;
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| 2- | The misunderstanding for the Arabic word "Alhendi"'s meaning, or the others' fraud in seeking merit or being hateful to the Arabs and Islam;
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| 3- | The origination's existence between the two numeral forms: the Arabic-Eastern and Ghebari (the more ancient);
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| 4- | The relationship of the dual Arabic numerals' structure (formation) to the Arabic alphabet characters/letters rather than to the Indian alphabet characters;
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| 5- | The gathering of some forms of the Arabic numerals being time-wise and place-wise distant (Eastern and Western) within the numerals used in the Republic of India alone affirming the origin's Arabism of such numerals from the Arabic-East;
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| 6- | The Arabs taking the names without translating them, and the plurality of the zero's names at the Indians with its oneness at the Arabs;
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| 7- | Applying the Arabic right-direction in reading the two-digit numbers from right to left in the majority languages of India;
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| 8- | The Arabic right-direction of the numbers' increasing (the arranging direction of the decimal positions from right to left) - which is equal to all previous proofs' and justifications' importance; |
All the aforesaid affirm the Arabic origination of the invention of the numerals including the zero. Thence, the two forms of the Arabic numerals - Eastern and Ghebari - are two branches of a sole stem of Arabic concept and script. Using our Arabic-Eastern numerals should be the basis in writing from the Arabic-East to the Arabic-West for they are more going well in shape with the Arabic alphabet characters, and the Arabic-Western numerals would be used as context requires without blame; and we should be proud of both of them.
