Algebra was an early development amongst the Babylonians, Chinese, Greeks, and Egyptians but it was a rhetorical exercise, not a mathematical one. With the adoption of the Hindu use of the zero and place notation by Islamic nations during the Middle Ages, Algebra was finally able to become a useful discipline; the modern term derives from the corrupted title of the Arabic text Hisab Al-Jabr W'al Muqabala. The Muslims used, and improved upon, the Classical Greek knowledge, eventually passing it on to Europe. With the innovation of negative numbers, essentially modern Algebra was born.