Page:A History of Mathematics (1893).djvu/119

 is extant. In astronomy they solved plane and spherical right triangles.[18]

It is remarkable to what extent Indian mathematics enters into the science of our time. Both the form and the spirit of the arithmetic and algebra of modern times are essentially Indian and not Grecian. Think of that most perfect of mathematical symbolisms—the Hindoo notation, think of the Indian arithmetical operations nearly as perfect as our own, think of their elegant algebraical methods, and then judge whether the Brahmins on the banks of the Ganges are not entitled to some credit. Unfortunately, some of the most brilliant of Hindoo discoveries in indeterminate analysis reached Europe too late to exert the influence they would have exerted, had they come two or three centuries earlier. 

THE ARABS.

After the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D., an obscure people of Semitic race began to play an important part in the drama of history. Before the lapse of ten years, the scattered tribes of the Arabian peninsula were fused by the furnace blast of religious enthusiasm into a powerful nation. With sword in hand the united Arabs subdued Syria and Mesopotamia. Distant Persia and the lands beyond, even unto India, were added to the dominions of the Saracens. They conquered Northern Africa, and nearly the whole Spanish peninsula, but were finally checked from further progress in Western Europe by the firm hand of Charles Martel (732 A.D.). The Moslem dominion extended now from India to Spain; but a war of succession to the caliphate ensued, and in 755 the Mohammedan empire was divided,—one caliph reigning at Bagdad, the other at Cordova