Egypt trip, Dec 2008 - Get your numbers right

When you are in Egypt and Jordan, you will find that most of the prices are written in Arabic numbers. If you don't know how to read there, you are likely to be overcharged.

So here is a list of the numbers in Arabic.

(Source: http://smile93.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/numbers.jpg)

Funnily enough, our "Arabic numerals" are called "Indian/ Hindi numerals" in Egypt and the Middle East. This is because the positional decimal system was originally defined by Indian mathematicians. How did the numbers came to be called "Arabic numbers" in the West? Well, the Indian decimal system was adopted and modified by North African Arab mathematicians, who then introduced to Europe in the 10th Century