Tweet “Ahmed Tharwat: Arabs blaze a trail (once again) ‘There is no doubt that mathematics and astronomy owe a great debt to the Arabs,” wrote Harvard’s George Sarton in his history of science. It all started more than 1,000 years ago, while the West was living the Dark Ages. An Arab genius named Musa al-Khawazmi went to India to study its science, and there took a hard look at the Indian sifr (zero), which had been used mainly as an empty ring for calculation convenience. Al-Khawazmi then came back home and introduced what is now known in the West as Arab numerals, including the concept of zero, which led to…