"Arabic numerals" are the numerical symbols 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0. Historically, Indian numerals evolved in Arab usage roughly 1000 A.D., and there was rare European usage in that period. Common use in Europe took another four to five centuries, with one highlight being when Fibonacci wrote in his famous book Liber abaci published in Pisa in 1202, "When my father, who had been appointed by his country as public notary in the customs at Bugia acting for the Pisan merchants going there, was in charge, he summoned me to him while I was still a child, and having an eye to usefulness and future convenience, desired me to stay there and receive instruction in the school of accounting. There, when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable teaching, knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it, for whatever was studied by the art in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence, in all its various forms."

Greek numerals | numeral | Roman numerals