By the 30s of the 7th century, a large state was formed on the territory of Arabia, the rulers of which concentrated enormous power in their hands and created the Islamic empire of the Arab Caliphate. By the middle of the VIII century, it included many states, including the Northwestern part of India. This was the time of the rapid development of astronomy, mathematics and other sciences. And the forward-thinking Arabs began to adopt the discoveries and achievements of other Asian scholars. So, in 711, a system of ten digits was borrowed from India.
Instructions
Step 1
The new system immediately proved its superiority over the Roman and Greek. It turned out to be much more convenient to use ten digits for displaying large numbers. Its main advantage was that the value of the number was determined by the position of the number. Subsequently, the technique was improved, and the signs changed their shape more than once, but the very principle of the decimal system remained unchanged.
Step 2
From the Arabs, the decimal system spread throughout Spain and North Africa, and at the beginning of the 13th century it became known in the rest of Europe. This happened after the translation into Latin of the book "On the Indian Account", written by the great Persian scholar of that time, Al-Khwarizmi. The new methodology led to the rapid development of the exact sciences. Without it, the emergence of modern mathematics, astronomy, chemistry and other fields of knowledge would have been impossible.
Step 3
However, the introduction of the decimal system met with stubborn resistance from scholastic scholars and governments of many states. The history of the church mathematician Herbert is known - he is also Pope Sylvester II, who, for his attempts to introduce a new method, was accused by the Inquisition of “selling his soul to the Saracen devils”. Arabic numerals became widespread in Europe only in the 15th century. The appearance of decimal fractions and logarithms in mathematics dates back to the same time.
Step 4
Around the 13th century, Arabic numerals became known in Russia as well. And they also met with fierce resistance from the Orthodox Church. The decimal number system was recognized as witchcraft. Books about her were banned, and their owners faced severe punishment. Most likely, the reason for this rejection was the exacerbated conflict between Catholics and Orthodox. And in the new method of counting, Russian churchmen saw the danger of strengthening Catholicism.
Step 5
As a result, in Russia, Arabic numerals began to be used in printing only at the end of the 17th century. The first Russian coins with new numbers appeared in 1654. But until 1718, coins were issued with both new Arabic and old Slavic numbers. The decimal number system was widely used and completely replaced the Slavic one only at the end of the reign of Peter I.
Step 6
The outline of the numbers has changed several times. And today it differs significantly not only from the original, but also from the accepted in the current Arab countries. It is not known how the appearance of the numbers was formed and why they look exactly like that. There are many different theories about the origin of these symbols. According to one of them, a figure was chosen to designate a figure, the number of corners in which corresponded to its designation. Over time, the need to calculate angles has disappeared and the writing of signs has become smoother.
