Christian History Home > Issue 74 > Christians & Muslims: Did You Know?
Christians & Muslims: Did You Know?
Unusual fruits of Western encounters with Islam.
Elesha Coffman | posted 4/01/2002 12:00AM
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The smoke of the infernal cave,
Which half the Christian world o'erspread,
Disperse, Thou heavenly Light, and save
The souls by that Impostor led,
That Arab-chief, as Satan bold,
Who quite destroyed Thy Asian fold.
O might the blood of sprinkling cry
For those who spurn the sprinkled blood!
Assert Thy glorious Deity,
Stretch out Thine arm, Thou Triune God
The Unitarian fiend expel,
And chase his doctrine back to hell.
Count on it
Westerners call our numbers "Arabic," because the notation system came to Europe via Islamic Arab mathematicians sometime in the Middle Ages. The first written record of Arabic numbers in the West is a Spanish codex from 976. Adoption crept along among the educated elite until the fourteenth century, when Italian merchants finally ditched their Roman I's and V's. Other traders wisely followed suit. Interestingly, Arabs didn't develop the "Arabic" number system. They picked it up around 750 from Hindus, who had invented it some 150 years earlier.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History magazine.
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