Micro-Numerals: Unit Fractions, Carats, and the Arabic Culture of Accountancy, 900s–1900s

Speaker: Adam Mestyan (NELC, Harvard)

Please contact the author for the pre-circulated paper: mestyan at fas.harvard.edu

Adam Mestyan

 

"Micro-Numerals - Unit Fractions, Carats, and the Arabic Culture of Accountancy, 900s-1900s”

 

Scholars of Middle Eastern economic history have rarely examined systems of numerical notation. In this seminar, I present a draft article which analyzes a set of glyphs used by accountant-scribes to represent unit fractions in Arabic fiscal documents from Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Sudan between the fifth/eleventh and fourteenth/twentieth centuries. Through documentary analysis, I trace the emergence of an Arabic culture of accountancy. I argue that these “micro-numeral” glyphs originated as ligatures of Arabic words for fractional numerals in Egypt, employed to denote coin fractions (or their weight) from the fourth/tenth century onward. Over time, they also came to represent the carat (qīrāṭ) 24-part division scheme. In pre-Ottoman contexts, numerical notation was often “situational,” denoting not only numbers but also the kinds of items counted. After the Ottoman conquest, micro-numerals remained central to accountancy in the Nile Valley and Yemen up to the twentieth century. Three appendices address terminology, the carat scheme, and nineteenth-century Egyptian fiscal usage.