Fibonacci encounters Arabic numerals

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A merchant's son from Pisa, Leonardo of Pisa, accompanied his father to the trading post at Bejaia in North Africa and encountered the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Arab account books. The experience would shape his Liber Abaci, published fifteen years later, and transform European mathematics. His introduction of zero and positional notation to Latin merchants would eventually displace the clumsy Roman numeral system across the continent.