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Eastern Arabic numerals

The Eastern Arabic numerals (also called Arabic-Indic numerals and Arabic Eastern Numerals) are the symbols used to represent the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet in Egypt, Sudan as well as asian non-Arabic countries, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India, as well as with the obsolete Ottoman Turkish alphabet (٠.١.٢.٣.٤.٥.٦.٧.٨.٩). A variant of the Eastern Arabic numerals is used in Persian and Urdu (۰،۱،۲،۳،۴،۵،۶،۷،۸،۹). In Arabic, these numbers are referred to as "Indian numbers" (أرقام هندية arqām hindiyyah). This name is also used in North Africa to refer to the numbers used in the Arabic Middle East.

Other names

They are sometimes also called "Indic Numerals" in English.^[1] However, this nomenclature is sometimes discouraged as it "leads to confusion with the digits currently used with the scripts of India"^[2] (see Indian numerals).

North Africa

In most of present-day North Africa, the usual Arabic numerals (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) are used; in medieval times, a slightly different set (from which, via Italy, Western "Arabic numerals" derive) was used. The numerals are arranged with their lowest value digit to the right, with higher value positions added to the left. This arrangement was adopted identically into the numerals as used in Europe. The Latin alphabet is running from left to right, unlike the Arabic alphabet. Hence, numerals in western texts have an inverse arrangement of their glyphs relative to the direction of writing.

See also

• Indian numerals

References