href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@22599@[email protected]#Nt_22" id="NtA_22" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">^[22] that the wise men of India, assembled by the king, composed the Sindhind. Further on^[23] he states, upon the authority of the historian Moḥammed ibn ‛Alī ‛Abdī, that by order of Al-Manṣūr many works of science and astrology were translated into Arabic, notably the Sindhind (Siddhānta). Concerning the meaning and spelling of this name there is considerable diversity of opinion. Colebrooke^[24] first pointed out the connection between Siddhānta and Sindhind. He ascribes to the word the meaning "the revolving ages."^[25] Similar designations are collected by Sédillot,^[26] who inclined to the Greek origin of the sciences commonly attributed to the Hindus.^[27] Casiri,^[28] citing the Tārīkh al-ḥokamā or Chronicles of the Learned,^[29] refers to the work

as the Sindum-Indum with the meaning "perpetuum æternumque." The reference^[30] in this ancient Arabic work to Al-Khowārazmī is worthy of note.

This Sindhind is the book, says Mas‛ūdī,^[31] which gives all that the Hindus know of the spheres, the stars, arithmetic,^[32] and the other branches of science. He mentions also Al-Khowārazmī and Ḥabash^[33] as translators of the tables of the Sindhind. Al-Bīrūnī^[34] refers to two other translations from a work furnished by a Hindu who came to Bagdad as a member of the political mission which Sindh sent to the caliph Al-Manṣūr, in the year of the Hejira 154 (A.D. 771).

The oldest work, in any sense complete, on the history of Arabic literature and history is the Kitāb al-Fihrist, written in the year 987 A.D., by Ibn Abī Ya‛qūb al-Nadīm. It is of fundamental importance for the history of Arabic culture. Of the ten chief divisions of the work, the seventh demands attention in this discussion for the reason that its second subdivision treats of mathematicians and astronomers.^[35]

The first of the Arabic writers mentioned is Al-Kindī (800-870 A.D.), who wrote five books on arithmetic and four books on the use of the Indian method of reckoning. Sened ibn ‛Alī, the Jew, who was converted to Islam under the caliph Al-Māmūn, is also given as the author of a work on the Hindu method of reckoning. Nevertheless, there is a possibility^[36] that some of the works ascribed to Sened ibn ‛Alī are really works of Al-Khowārazmī, whose name immediately precedes his. However, it is to be noted in this connection that Casiri^[37] also mentions the same writer as the author of a most celebrated work on arithmetic.

To Al-Ṣūfī, who died in 986 A.D., is also credited a large work on the same subject, and similar treatises by other writers are mentioned. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the Arabs from the early ninth century on fully recognized the Hindu origin of the new numerals.

Leonard of Pisa, of whom we shall speak at length in the chapter on the Introduction of the Numerals into Europe, wrote his Liber Abbaci^[38] in 1202. In this work he refers frequently to the nine Indian figures,^[39] thus showing again the general consensus of opinion in the Middle Ages that the numerals were of Hindu origin.

Some interest also attaches to the oldest documents on arithmetic in our own language. One of the earliest

treatises on algorism is a commentary^[40] on a set of verses called the Carmen de Algorismo, written by Alexander de Villa Dei (Alexandra de Ville-Dieu), a Minorite monk of about 1240 A.D. The text of the first few lines is as follows:

"This boke is called the boke of algorim or augrym after lewder use. And this boke tretys of the Craft of Nombryng, the quych crafte is called also Algorym. Ther was a kyng of Inde the quich heyth Algor & he