History of mathematics is a very fascinating topic on its own.
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/mathhist/chronology.html

It is definitely a collection that is the result of all nations and goes back in time as far as human race itself.
For example:
Quote:
There is evidence that women devised counting to keep track of their menstrual cycles; 28 to 30 scratches on bone or stone, followed by a distinctive marker. Moreover, hunters and herders employed the concepts of one, two, and many, as well as the idea of none or zero, when considering herds of animals
...
In the 7th century, Brahmagupta identified the Brahmagupta theorem, Brahmagupta's identity and Brahmagupta's formula, and for the first time, in Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta, he lucidly explained the use of zero as both a placeholder and decimal digit and explained the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. It was from a translation of this Indian text on mathematics (around 770) that Islamic mathematicians were introduced to this numeral system, which they adapted as Arabic numerals.
...
In the 9th century, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Ḵwārizmī wrote several important books on the Hindu-Arabic numerals and on methods for solving equations. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, along with the work of Al-Kindi, were instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī hīsāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). Al-Khwarizmi is often called the "father of algebra", for his fundamental contributions to the field.
...


Interestingly enough Islamic mathematicians of the time were not driven by religion of Islam as were medieval Europeans:
Quote:
Medieval European interest in mathematics was driven by concerns quite different from those of modern mathematicians. One driving element was the belief that mathematics provided the key to understanding the created order of nature, frequently justified by Plato's Timaeus and the biblical passage that God had "ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight"...


Actually European mathematics were "jump started" in beginning of 13th century after "European scholars travelled to Spain and Sicily seeking scientific Arabic texts, including al-Khwarizmi's al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, translated into Latin by Robert of Chester, and the complete text of Euclid's Elements, translated in various versions by Adelard of Bath, Herman of Carinthia, and Gerard of Cremona."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics#cite_note-5


As for "zero" or "0":
Quote:
The oldest known text to use a decimal place-value system, including a zero, is the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhâga, dated 458 AD. This text uses Sanskrit numeral words for the digits, with words such as the Sanskrit word for void for zero (see also the section Etymology above).[19] The first known use of special glyphs for the decimal digits that includes the indubitable appearance of a symbol for the digit zero, a small circle, appears on a stone inscription found at the Chaturbhuja Temple at Gwalior in India, dated 876 CE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)#History