984: Some Letters by Gerbert d’Aurillac Dealing with “Arabic” Mathematics and Astrology: Difference between revisions

'''Figure 1''': ''Codex conciliorum Albeldensis seu Vigilanus'', Madrid: El Escorial, MS D.I.2, fol. 12v.<ref name="ftn58">[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Codex_Vigilanus_Primeros_Numeros_Arabigos.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Codex_Vigilanus_Primeros_Numeros_Arabigos.jpg]. For a printed reproduction, see Szpiech, From Mesopotamia to Madrid, p. 44. The text runs: “Scire debemus in Indos subtilissimum ingenium habere. et ceteras gentes eis in arithmetica et geometrica. et ceteris liberalibus disciplinis concedere. Et hoc manifestum est in nobem figuris quibus designant unumquemque gradum. Cuiuslibet gradus quarum hec sunt forma. 987654321”, i.e. “We should know that we find subtle inventiveness among the Indians and among several peoples, which they have given to them in arithmetics and geometry and other liberal disciplines. This becomes manifest in nine figures, each of which designate a specific [numeric] position. These are the forms of each position: 987654321.” Note that the list of numbers still lacks zero.</ref>

Based on the research of Menso Folkerts, Charles Burnett, Paul Kunitzsch, and others<ref name="ftn59">Folkerts, Frühe Darstellungen, pp. 23-43; Folkerts, Names and Forms, pp. 245-265; Burnett, Abacus at Echternach, pp. 91-108; Kunitzsch, Transmission of Hindu-Arabic Numerals, pp. 3-22.</ref>, Marek Otisk has listed the early pictorial and textual evidence for ''ġubār''-numerals in Latin manuscripts produced east of the Iberian Peninsula. The earliest evidence dates from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries and includes