The Greek monk Maximus Planudes, writing in the first half of the fourteenth century, followed the Arabic usage in calling his work Indian Arithmetic.[[378]] There were numerous other Arabic writers upon arithmetic, as that subject occupied one of the high places among the sciences, but most of them did not feel it necessary to refer to the origin of the symbols, the knowledge of which might well have been taken for granted.
One document, cited by Woepcke,[[379]] is of special interest since it shows at an early period, 970 A.D., the use of the ordinary Arabic forms alongside the ġobār. The title of the work is Interesting and Beautiful Problems on Numbers copied by Aḥmed ibn Moḥammed ibn ‛Abdaljalīl, Abū Sa‛īd, al-Sijzī,[[380]] (951-1024) from a work by a priest and physician, Naẓīf ibn Yumn,[[381]] al-Qass (died c. 990). Suter does not mention this work of Naẓīf.
The second reason for not ascribing too much credit to the purely Arab influence is that the Arab by himself never showed any intellectual strength. What took place after Moḥammed had lighted the fire in the hearts of his people was just what always takes place when different types of strong races blend,—a great renaissance in divers lines. It was seen in the blending of such types at Miletus in the time of Thales, at Rome in the days of the early invaders, at Alexandria when the Greek set firm foot on Egyptian soil, and we see it now when all the nations mingle their vitality in the New World. So when the Arab culture joined with the Persian, a new civilization rose and flourished.[[382]] The Arab influence came not from its purity, but from its intermingling with an influence more cultured if less virile.
As a result of this interactivity among peoples of diverse interests and powers, Mohammedanism was to the world from the eighth to the thirteenth century what Rome and Athens and the Italo-Hellenic influence generally had
been to the ancient civilization. "If they did not possess the spirit of invention which distinguished the Greeks and the Hindus, if they did not show the perseverance in their observations that characterized the Chinese astronomers, they at least possessed the virility of a new and victorious people, with a desire to understand what others had accomplished, and a taste which led them with equal ardor to the study of algebra and of poetry, of philosophy and of language."[[383]]
It was in 622 A.D. that Moḥammed fled from Mecca, and within a century from that time the crescent had replaced the cross in Christian Asia, in Northern Africa, and in a goodly portion of Spain. The Arab empire was an ellipse of learning with its foci at Bagdad and Cordova, and its rulers not infrequently took pride in demanding intellectual rather than commercial treasure as the result of conquest.[[384]]
It was under these influences, either pre-Mohammedan or later, that the Hindu numerals found their way to the North. If they were known before Moḥammed's time, the proof of this fact is now lost. This much, however, is known, that in the eighth century they were taken to Bagdad. It was early in that century that the Mohammedans obtained their first foothold in northern India, thus foreshadowing an epoch of supremacy that endured with varied fortunes until after the golden age of Akbar the Great (1542-1605) and Shah Jehan. They also conquered Khorassan and Afghanistan, so that the learning and the commercial customs of India at once found easy
access to the newly-established schools and the bazaars of Mesopotamia and western Asia. The particular paths of conquest and of commerce were either by way of the Khyber Pass and through Kabul, Herat and Khorassan, or by sea through the strait of Ormuz to Basra (Busra) at the head of the Persian Gulf, and thence to Bagdad. As a matter of fact, one form of Arabic numerals, the one now in use by the Arabs, is attributed to the influence of Kabul, while the other, which eventually became our numerals, may very likely have reached Arabia by the other route. It is in Bagdad,[[385]] Dār al-Salām—"the Abode of Peace," that our special interest in the introduction of the numerals centers. Built upon the ruins of an ancient town by Al-Manṣūr[[386]] in the second half of the eighth century, it lies in one of those regions where the converging routes of trade give rise to large cities.[[387]] Quite as well of Bagdad as of Athens might Cardinal Newman have said:[[388]]
"What it lost in conveniences of approach, it gained in its neighborhood to the traditions of the mysterious East, and in the loveliness of the region in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land, where all archetypes of the great and the fair were found in substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and all diversities of intellectual power exhibited, where taste and philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal court, where there was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of genius, where professors were