Mapping the Earliest Paths of Place-value Numbers Across West Asia, Part Two: the Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Abstract

In this second of two articles, a new technique considers Nagari and Hindu-Arabic numerals on medieval coins to identify the earliest paths for transmitting place-value numbers town by town and year by year. The first article developed paths from Anatolia and the Crimean Peninsula eastward to the border of China during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries CE. This second article traces a southern path in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries westward from India to Aden on the Arabian Peninsula and continuing to southern Persia. The acceptance of place-value numbers in Cairo stemmed from the Crimean Peninsula.