Islamic Mathematics
About 630 AD, just before the Islamic empire got started, people in West Asia learned from traders or traveling scholars about "Arabic" numbers, which really came from India. The Arabic word for numbers, in fact, is hindsah, which means "from India". This new way of writing numbers, including for the first time a way to write the number "zero", was very exciting to West Asian mathematicians. Just a little later, the Islamic Empire united all the land from northern India to Spain under the same rulers, speaking the same language. This made it easier for everyone to learn to use the new numbers, and encouraged the spread of other new ideas too. Arab scientists, especially the Persian Mohammed Al-Khwarizmi, used the new numbers (and possibly the work of Greek mathematicians like Diophantus of Alexandria) to develop algebra around 830 AD (The English word "algorithm" comes from Al-Khwarizmi).
Algebra is a way of
