rabic did not
cease for a long time thereafter. `Al[=i] ibn A[h.]med al-Nasaw[=i], in his
arithmetic of c. 1025, tells us that the symbolism of number was still
unsettled in his day, although most people preferred the strictly Arabic
forms.[395]

We thus have the numerals in Arabia, in two forms: one the form now used
there, and the other the one used by Al-Khow[=a]razm[=i]. The question then
remains, how did this second form find its way into Europe? and this
question will be considered in the next chapter.

* * * * *

{99}

CHAPTER VII

THE DEFINITE INTRODUCTION OF THE NUMERALS INTO EUROPE

It being doubtful whether Boethius ever knew the Hindu numeral forms,
certainly without the zero in any case, it becomes necessary now to
consider the question of their definite introduction into Europe. From what
has been said of the trade relations between the East and the West, and of
the probability that it was the trader rather than the scholar who carried
these numerals from their original habitat to various commercial centers,
it is evident that we shall never know when they first made their
inconspicuous entrance into Europe. Curious customs from the East and from
the tropics,--concerning games, social peculiarities, oddities of dress,
and the like,--are continually being related by sailors and traders in
their resorts in New York, London, Hamburg, and Rotterdam to-day, customs
that no scholar has yet described in print and that may not become known
for many years, if ever. And if this be so now, how much more would it have
been true a thousand years before the invention of printing, when learning
was at its lowest ebb. It was at this period of low esteem of culture that
the Hindu numerals undoubtedly made their first appearance in Europe.

There were many opportunities for such knowledge to reach Spain and Italy.
In the first place the Moors went into Spain as helpers of a claimant of
the throne, and {100} remained as conquerors. The power of the Goths, who
had held Spain for three centuries, was shattered at the battle of Jerez de
la Frontera in 711, and almost immediately the Moors became masters of
Spain and so remained for five hundred years, and masters of Granada for a
much longer period. Until 850 the Christians were absolutely free as to
religion and as to holding political office, so that priests and monks were
not infrequently skilled both in Latin and Arabic, acting as off