3. MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE

~ 127 ~ The writer of Lailawati tells us that “the Indian numbers first entered Spain, then Italy, France, England and Germany ... Indian numbers were accepted completely .... Their adoption turned out to be the turning point in the history of mathematics and science.”59 It is true that the concept of zero originated in India, but it is not true that it reached the western world directly from India: it was through the Arabs that it reached the West. That is why the West calls these numerals Arabic rather than Indian. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: Arabic numerals—the numbers, 0, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 they may have originated in India, but were introduced to the western world from Arabia. 60 The Encyclopaedia tells us, moreover, that these numbers became known to western intellectuals in the ninth century through the writings of the Arab mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, whose explanations of numbers in Arabic reached Europe through Latin translations.61