Zero and nothing in medieval Arabic arithmetic

Abstract

Whether explaining calculations with decimal or sexagesimal notation, arithmetic books composed in Arabic beginning in the ninth century CE consistently describe the zero (ṣifr) as a sign indicating an empty place where there is no number. And yet we find that some arithmeticians explicitly performed operations on this zero. To understand how the zero was conceived and manipulated in medieval Arabic texts we first address the way that numbers themselves were conceived and how ‘nothing’ entered into arithmetical problem-solving. From there we examine arithmetic books for their treatment of zero. We find that there is no inconsistency in operating on what is literally nothing, and thus there was no motive for arithmeticians to regard zero as a number.