Public Science & Reference

The achievements of Muslims in the field of mathematics are extremely remarkable. A regular study of this science, like all other sciences, was begun during the reign of the second Abbasi Caliph, Al-Mansür in. the second half of the eighth century A.C. During this period the work on mathematics was exclusively done by Muslims.1 Some stimulus came from Indian and Greek works which were later translated into ‘Arabic. The investigations were carried out, and until the end of the fifth century A.H. /the 11th century A.C., nearly all of the original and creative work was done by Muslims, and even the non-Muslims wrote all the works on mathematics in Arabic. In the 12th century the Christians and Jews started the work of translation from Arabic into Latin and Hebrew, and also began to conduct research in this field. But until, the end of the 13th century no mathematical work comparable to that of Muslims could be done by the Christians or Jews.

                                    The Muslims used numerals including zero for counting in contrast with writing the amounts in words, or counting with the letters of alphabet. Thus they made arithmetic simple and applicable to the problems of everyday life in connection with commerce and trade and the division of estates and inheritance. The zero has a great importance in arithmetic. Without zero it is not possible to indicate the figures like tens, hundreds, etc. If zero is not used it becomes necessary to use a table (named abacus) with columns of units, tens, hundreds, etc., to keep each figure in its place.2 The zero was used by the Muslims centuries before it was known in the West. The Latin word ciphra for zero is of Arabic origin; the Arabic word for it being sifr, meaning empty or nil.