Detail map of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Comunidad de Madrid, Spain Overview map of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Comunidad de Madrid, Spain

A: San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Comunidad de Madrid, Spain

The Earliest Record of the Use of Arabic Numerals in Europe

976 CE
Reproduction of the earliest recorded use of Arabic numerals in Europe from Frugon, Inventions of the Middle Ages, figure 36.
Creative Commons LicenseJeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
Reproduction of the earliest recorded use of Arabic numerals in Europe from Frugon, Inventions of the Middle Ages, figure 36.

The so-called Arabic numerals were invented in India and tranferred to the Arabs who developed the system in in the moorish empire of Al-Andalus in the Iberian peninsula. The oldest record of the use of Arabic numerals in Europe is a leaf in the codex Virgilianus, ms. lat. DI.2f.9v preserved in Madrid at the Biblioteca S. Lorenzo del Escorial.

Frugon, Inventions of the Middle Ages (2007) 52, figure 36, & footnote 95.

Timeline Themes

Mathematics / Logic
Survival of Information / Philology