Arabic mile

The Arab, Arabic, or Arabian mile (Arabic: الميل‎, al-mīl) was a historical Arabic unit of length. Its precise length is disputed, lying between 1.8 and 2.0 km. It was used by medieval Arab geographers and astronomers. The predecessor of the modern nautical mile, it extended the Roman mile to fit an astronomical approximation of 1 minute of an arc of latitude measured along a north-south meridian. The distance between two pillars whose latitudes differed by 1 degree in a north-south direction was measured using sighting pegs along a flat desert plane.

There were 4000 cubits in an Arabic mile. If al-Farghani used the legal cubit as his unit of measurement, then an Arabic mile was 1995 meters long. If he used al-Ma'mun's surveying cubit, it was 1925 meters long or 1.04 modern nautical miles.

Al-Ma'mun's measurement

Around 830 AD, Caliph Al-Ma'mun commissioned a group of Muslim astronomers and Muslim geographers to measure the distance from Tadmur (Palmyra) to al-Raqqah, in modern Syria. They found the cities to be separated by one degree of latitude and the meridian arc distance between them to be 66²⁄₃ miles and thus calculated the Earth's circumference to be 24,000 miles.

Arabs

Arabs (/ˈærəbz/; Arabic: عرب‎, ‘arab) are a major panethnic group whose native language is Arabic, comprising the majority of the Arab world. They primarily inhabit Western Asia, North Africa, and parts of the Horn of Africa. Before the spread of Islam, Arab referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic tribes inhabiting the northern and central Arabian Peninsula. In modern usage Arab refers to a heterogeneous collection of Arabic-speaking peoples in the Middle East and North Africa. The ties that bind Arabs are linguistic, cultural, and political, and to a lesser extent genetic, with Arabized Arabs displaying genetic admixture from the Arabian peninsula as well as indigenous elements. As such, Arab identity is based on one or more of genealogical, linguistic or cultural grounds, although with competing identities often taking a more prominent role, based on considerations including regional, national, clan, kin, sect, and tribe affiliations and relationships. Not all people who could be considered Arab identify as such. If the Arab panethnicity is regarded as a single population, then it constitutes the world's second largest group of people after the Han Chinese.

Indian numbering system

The Indian numbering system is used in India as well as in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It is based on the Vedic numbering system in which numbers over 9,999 are written in two-digit groups (or a mix of two- and three-digit groups) rather than the three-digit groups used in most other parts of the world. In Pakistan, this system is used in Urdu and other regional language media, but not in English-language media.

The terms lakh (100,000 or 1,00,000 in the Indian system) and crore (10,000,000 or 1,00,00,000 in the Indian system) are used in Indian English to express large numbers. For example, in India 150,000 rupees becomes 1.5 lakh rupees, written as ₹1,50,000 or INR 1,50,000, while 30,000,000 (thirty million) rupees becomes 3 crore rupees, written as ₹3,00,00,000 with commas at the thousand, lakh, and crore levels, and 1,000,000,000 (one billion) rupees (one hundred crore rupees) is written ₹1,00,00,00,000.

Use of separators

The Indian numbering system uses separators differently from the international norm; in such numbers of at least one lakh (one hundred thousand), a comma divides every two rather than every three digits, thus:

Arabs in India

A small but recognizable people with Arab origins have over time settled in the India.Many who arrived in Gujarat were later recruited to the army. Most Gujarati Arabs were traders, and business men who sold or traded silk, diamonds and other valuables resulting in wealthy business men. The city of Surat and villages within the city are notorious for Arab settlements. Variav and Randev are the few villages that Arabs started their lives in. In Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Iraqis arrived in 15th and 16th century from Sindh, Pakistan. These people claim ancestry from Arab tribe of Bani Tamim.In Hyderabad, Chaush are Arab community of Hadhrami descent whose ancestors were recruited as soldier by Nizam of Hyderabad. In Kerala, Syed Thangals of Hadhrami descent settled around 17th century as missionaries to propagate Islam. There are also Shia Sayyids in Northern region of country who claim descent from Wasit, Iraq like Zaidis. Sunni Sayyid of the country also claim Arab descent from Sufi missionaries but it is hard to say that every Sufi really belonged to Arab. Most of the Sufis migrated from Persia. Sunni Sayyid also include converts from higher Hindu castes like Brahmin and Kshatriya. Sunni Sheikhs also claim Arab descent from Sufis or migrants but it remains hoax. They don't know their tribe but trace lineage from Umar, Abu Bakr and Uthman, the Rashidun Caliphate. Many of present Sheikhs converted from Hindu castes such as Kayasth and Rajput.