Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

INTRODUCTION. 15
bearing the title of "Liber Abbaci compositus a Leonardo filio
Bonacci Pisano in anno 1202;" and a transcript of another treatise
entitled " Leonardi Pisani de filiis, Bonacci... Practica Geometria
composita anno 1220, " were found about 1750 by Targioni Tozzetti
in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence, of which he had the care.
In his preface to the Liber Abbaci, Leonardo relates that he had
travelled into Egypt, Barbary, Syria, Greece, and Sicily. During
his youth, at Bugia, in Barbary, where his father was scribe at the
custom house for the merchants of Pisa who resorted thither, he
there learned the Indian method of counting by nine figures.
He states it to be more commodious than the methods used in other
countries which he had visited; he therefore prosecuted the study,
and, with some additions of his own, and some things taken from
Euclid's Elements, he undertook the composition of his treatise that
"the Latin race might no longer be found deficient in the complete
knowledge of that method of computation." In the epistle prefixed to the revision of his Liber Abbaci in 1228, he professes
to have taught the complete doctrine of numbers according to the
Indian method.
The study of the Indian method of computation through the
medium of Arabic in an African city having been introduced into
Italy, the Italians were the first European people who cultivated this
and its kindred sciences.
After the introduction of this new knowledge into Italy, numerous
treatises were composed, and manuscript copies of the works of that
age are found in the libraries of Italy and other parts of Europe.
Villani, the earliest Florentine historian, writes of Paoli di Dagomari,
who died about 1350, as a great geometer and most skilful arithmetician, and who surpassed both the ancients and moderns in the
knowledge of equations. And Raffaelo Caracci, a Florentine arithmetician of the same century, wrote a work entitled "Ragionamento
di Algebra," in which he speaks of Gugliello di Lunis, who before
his time had translated a treatise on Algebra from Arabic into
Italian. This was most probably a translation of the Algebra of
Mohammed Ben Musa, which Bombelli some years after spoke of as if
it were well known in Italy.
Matthew Paris writes of John de Basingstoke:-" This IMaster
John, moreover, brought into England the Greek numerical characters, and explained to his friends the knowledge and meaning of
them. And this is chiefly remarkable of them, that every number is
represented by a single character, which is not the case in the Roman
numerals or in Algorithm."l It may be remarked that the word
algorithm, as well as the word algebra, were, at that time, both new
words from the Arabic, the former word being applied to the science
of arithmetic with the Arabic numerals, and the latter to the generalised science of number.
John de Basin gstoke was advanced to the Archdeaconry of
Leicester by Robert Grosstete, Bishop of Lincoln, who was at that
time a zealous promoter of Greek learning and of the sciences. He was
1 Hic insuper magister Joannes figuras Grmcorum numerales, et earum notitiarn
et significationes in Angliam portavit, et familiaribus suis declaravit. Per quas
figuras etiam literte representantur. De quibus figuris hoc maxime admirandum,
quod unica figura quilibet numerus reprasentatur; quod non est in Latino, vel il
Algorismo. —Jatthew Paris.