The Status of Mathematics in India and Arabia during the “Dark Ages” of Europe

Abstract

Political and economic world historians have found it convenient to divide the time from the fall of Rome to the discovery of America into two periods, and to designate the first of these by the term “Dark Ages.” One work accounts for this name by “the inrush into Europe of the ba rbarians and the almost total eclipse of the light of classical culture.” The period covers, roughly, the time from 500 to 1000 A.D. Part of these “barbarians” came down from the north and the rest attacked from the south, the latter bound together politically and religiously by the great, although probably totally illiterate, leader Mohammeed into a vast dominion that at one time or another covered all of eastern Asia, northern Africa, Spain, France in part, and the European islands of the Mediterranean Sea. It was during this period that Europe was dark, learning at low ebb, and the development of mathematics almost negligible. The world as a whole was not dark, and as applied to general history the expression “Dark Ages” is a gross misnomer. Throughout the entire period there was considerable intellectual (including mathematical) activity among the Hindus and, beginning about 750, there developed many centers of Muslim civilization which rose to the very peak of mathematical productivity.