The Book of Origins

: Origin of the Arabic Numerals       Natural Foundations of Arabian Civilisation   Volume I Natural Foundations of Arab Civilisation Origins of Alphabets, Numeration, Numerals, Measurements  Weights, Litigation and Money ----------------------------------------  Adel S. Bishtawi

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In the Origin of Arabic Numerals - A natural history of numbers readers were promised two stories that have never been told in a book before: the first is the true origin of the Arabic numeral system and its amazing numerals; the second is the story of the actors that staged the astonishingly brazen act of highjacking the Arabic system along with its non-value cipher (zero) and other nine value numerals towards the end of the 19th century.

Before the publication of the Origin of Arabic Numerals, many Arabs had a vague idea about the origin of their amazing numeral system generally repeating centuries’ old myth that claims to be 'Hindi’. Now 'Hindi" today could mean the India that was created in 1947 by the departing British colonialists, but 'Hind' in the 8th century A.D. meant much more than the geographical confines of the Republic of India. The roots of the misunderstanding are sufficiently explained in the book, and so too is how the Orientalists of India engineered and executed the high-jacking of the Arabic numeral system in one of the greatest confiscation of universal numeric intellectual and scientific copyright property ever staged.

Any amateur historian attempting to unravel the mystery of the origin of Arabic numerals is bound to discover not before long that the hindunisation of the Arabic system is nothing more than a bungled myth. No credible proof was ever presented to confirm the origination story of the Orientalists, but more importantly, all the sources employed by Orientalists to support their mythical fabrication are Arabic. Once re-examined effortlessly, because the Arabic used to write those sources is very much the Arabic of today, it becomes crystal clear that the historical facts do not support the non-Arab authoring of the Arabic numeral system and its family of numerals be it 'Hindi', Greek, Roman or European.

This is also amply explained in the English version of the Origin of the Arabic Numerals before work began to prepare an Arabic version. However, two years had passed before the Arabic version was ready at last to be sent to the publishers. By then, much more than the unveiling of the origin of the Arabic numeral system and its highjackers became available.

The Arabic version was twice as large as its English origin, the topics increased substantially and the content enriched with original research based on the successful reconstruction of ancient Arabic, the oldest language in use today by more than 1.5 billion in the four continents. Thanks to this additional original research, not just the origin of the Arabic numerals was revealed but also the origin of alphabets, numeration, numerals and measurements, weights, litigation and money. Those who proposed that etymology is history appear to be right, at least as far as our own etymological analysis of ancient Arabic is concerned.

Another discovery made during the latter stage of researching the origin of the Arabic numerals system concerned the surprising similarity between certain numeral shapes and certain letters of ancient and modern alphabets. For over 100 years one of the unchallenged conclusions reached by historians and scholars is that numerals were invented before letters. The need for our ancestors to devise shapes to express and document ownership of property, animals and important acquisitions in their time preceded that of documenting ideas and thought. Thus, numeric shapes were already available to those who attempted to devise alphabetical signs and symbols. The resemblance of many numeral shapes to letters of many old inscriptions is clear and convincing, at least to our team.

We are confident that most of what we have discovered is probably correct, but we have no problem at all with people calling our findings ‘claims’ until they can be evaluated by experts who are better suited to judging the significance of what we have found. This may take years, and it should. The Orientalist heavies did not simply re-write history and re-construct facts. Due to their phenomenal influence, their books to academic institutions were as foundational as the Bible to the church. Replacing complex, make-believe facts with simple truth will take time.

Any intelligent reader of the Origin of Arabic Numerals would immediately realize that our job would have been completed successfully with the sole and simple presentation of the pictograms of the numeral hand and finger formations. As narrated in the book, the discovery that our numerals are nothing  but simple finger and hand formations was accidental. It has been sufficient to show people the pictograms before hearing them say that it should have been obvious to historians of numbers that the numeral shapes could have come from no other source but hand and finger formations.

Luckily for history, it was the Orientalists themselves who sent historians of numbers down the dead-end road of finding the origin of the Arabic numerals system and its numerals. By insisting that the original set of numerals was the ‘western’ version, and that the ‘eastern’ numerals were but modified copies of the western originals, it was impossible for even one of the cleverest authors, Menninger, to trace the numerals back to finger and hand formations. The key to discovering the origin of our numerals is the simple examination of the shapes of the eastern set. A strange psychological barrier has to be crossed first. Once done it takes a few minutes of studying hands and fingers to realize that one is looking at the oldest calculus known to man. Even today we use our hands and fingers to express certain numbers. Wouldn’t it have been easy and logical to conclude that our numerals must have come from the same source?

A huge number of text books about the history of numbers and mathematics taught at millions of schools and colleges will have to be re-written. This will take time. Meanwhile, we hope that some of our findings will bring immense relief to millions. We are aware that those findings may also bring frustration to others. We were guided in our research by a sincere desire to bring closure to a serious controversy that was sparked essentially by two orientalists hired by the East India Company two centuries ago, but ended in discovering  the process much more than we every imagined.

Symbols that can be recognised by a computer must be special. Symbols that can be recognised by monkeys must also be special, but symbols that can be recognised by machines, monkeys and humans must be the only universal script invented by human beings in a time beyond the horizon of our remotest past. This is the simple story of the birth of the first and most celebrated quinary system that was supplemented later by another quinary system. The Arabic numeral system is not strictly decimal. It is a bi-quinary system – the first relying on finger formations; the second on hand formations, and both are linked together by a circle produced by joining the thumb and index fingers in the form of a ring in three different sizes for 5, 10 and the zero.

Speech is said to be one of the main discoveries that changed history. Writing is another, whether involving numeral or alphabetical shapes, and both were essential tools for the creation of civilisations and the recording of history.

The reader of the pages of this website will find many extracts from the Origin of the Arabic Numerals as well as to a substantial number of tables, charts and illustrations supporting the topics discussed in the book particularly a large number of hand and finger numeral formations using both the eastern and western numeral pictograms. A number of PowerPoint and PDF presentations covering various aspects of Arabic cipher system and its numerals are now available to download free of charge.

We expect this websites to remain ‘under construction’ for a long time. The main reason is that the continuous analysis of the original roots of ancient Arabic and the work aiming to reconstruct the grammatical structure and vocabulary of that most ancient of continuously used language will provide new surprises almost at every turn. For this reason, the origin of the Arabic numerals system has become a modest part in the first part of The Book of Origins which was launched in London in November 2010. It is unsafe to suggest a timetable for the publication of the next three parts but a very rough estimate is 4-5 years. The preparation of English versions of the four parts of The Book of Origins in English will be a major undertaking hence the decision to involve a select number of researchers in this project.

Interesting discoveries whether already made or expected along the long road of research will be made available to readers of this site. Patience is required but it must be realised that most of our research is original and extends to pre-historical times. Along with archaeology, carbon-dating, genealogy, palaeontology and other scientific branches dedicated to the study of human beings and their civilisation, we will be providing supporting evidence based on analysing the human concepts, situations, environment and cultural, innovative and scientific achievements of our ancestors as expressed by the all-comprehensive original linguistic roots of ancient Arabic.

Lastly, an important clarification has to be made. In the Origin of the Arabic Numerals we have used the terms ‘Ursemitisch’ and ‘Proto-Semitic’ to describe the ancient mother of Arabic. If either term is meant to describe an ancient tongue that can be viewed as the linguistic mother of some 70 languages that include Arabic, then we have made no mistake in the book provided it is stripped from its possible religious undertones. Otherwise, let us apologize now for inadvertently making a mistake.

Having analyzed more than 50% of bi-consonantal roots of Arabic, we are certain that Arabic is not a mere descendent of the ancient tongue – it is the ancient tongue or ancient Arabic. Let’s say for now that ancient Arabic is basically a natural language. Tens of original roots can be described as onomatopoeic. They are not the ‘tic-tock’ type. These are essential roots from which tri-consonantals were coined to express situational linguistic cases such as ‘fly’, ‘drag’, ‘chase’, ‘flee’, ‘fall down’, etc. There lies the most important characteristic of ancient Arabic – the roots are simple words but all comprehensive linguistic cases banded together to produce another unique feature of ancient Arabic – The Linguistic Units.

Nevertheless, tribes living in the Arabian Peninsula prior to the middle agrarian era didn’t describe themselves as ‘Arabs’. It is a relatively new term. We feel more comfortable in describe ancient Arabic as ancient Arabian in the same way we describe those living in Europe as ‘Europeans’ and their tongues as ‘European tongues’. Arabs do speak Arabic but it is a clear anachronism to say that ancient Arabians were Arabs. The bi-consonantal root of ‘Arab’ means a large number of people. It was a by-product of an era of abundance that changed the world – the agricultural era.

How do we know that for certain?

We don’t for certain.

Let's say that we, humans, are not certain of any of the biggest existentialist and religious issues that dominate our thinking and beliefs. Let's also add that we have doubts whether many of these big issues can be ever proven conclusively and without any doubt. However, what we know for certain as far as our original question is concerned is that another word for camel is derived from the same root. We have a rough idea of when Arabs began to domesticate camels for trade.

How do we know that?

Because the word ‘camel’ (جمل) is not a tri-consonantal root as every one believes. It is a type of compound that means ‘the thing that can be loaded with a great deal of things’. We are hopeful that we will at one stage identify a tri-consonantal that can be considered as a ‘root’. We haven’t yet. Arabic tri-consonantals considered by every scholar and his uncle as roots are not roots at all but derivatives from bi-consonantals. The implications can be phenomenal enabling us to reconstruct the history of modern human beings, their culture, civilization and many aspects of their daily life.

Again, the agricultural era was the main cause for a linguistic revolution created to generate sufficient words to express all things agricultural and for which several hundred words were needed. No doubt, bi-consonantals were still used extensively at the time, as they are today, but the bulk of bi-consonantals belong to the hunting era. Let’s then ask ourselves in what era did ancient Arabians used mono-consonantal words. Or maybe we should ask ourselves instead in what geographical area they spoke that mono-consonantal language.

It does look as though etymology can be history at least as far as ancient Arabian is concerned. There can be two narratives of history or even three or ten but only one chronicle - one correct chronicle. We are now certain that such a chronicle exists in the original concepts and ideas embodied in bi-consonantal roots. Human beings can lie and they do but words cannot. Even the word 'lie' does not pretended to be anything but an expression of a lie. Not all events and concepts can be reconstructed etymologically. We have found many ways that can help us identify missing roots and reconstruct the linguistic units they belong to. Nevertheless there will exist misreading, misunderstanding and misinterpretation but many of the records provided by etymology can be viewed as crystallized truth. Compared to the mountains of lies and re-worked facts found usually in what we call 'history' books, the etymological history of modern human beings appear to be unadulterated facts. Lying is an advanced human concept. Truth is even more so. The word 'correct' (صح) in ancient Arabic was a concept derived from simple addition and subtraction using pebbles. The root 'lie' comes from a situation akin to walking on soft ground. It will take some time to re-build pre-historic dictionaries but in many aspects and spheres, we are confident that at the end of all the work ahead we will have a history we can teach our children with confidence.

A great deal of pulping lies ahead before our minds can be cleansed of the rubbish we store inside. After that we may begin to understand ourselves and the world around us sensibly. We may begin to view ourselves as one family - a family of human beings who discovered at the dawn of their history that the odds against them were stacked high but they did survive and flourished. Their fears were natural but awesome and persistent. The word 'miracle' is the daughter of weakness. It was simply a wish.  But we owe our existence today not the wish but to the determination of turning that wish into reality.

[1] Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols, 1992.

[2] James Gilchrist, Philosophic Etymology, or Rational Grammar, (1816), pp. 24-25.