This is a thing I have wondered about. are arabic numbers little endian when embeded in arabic text? The text is read right to left. But the numbers are the same as we put them in our left to right text where they are big-endian(read big to small). so are numbers in original arabic little-endian? read small to large. with the interesting side effect that numbers are universal.
I think least significant first is the most natural order for written numbers (and it makes addition easier.)
I had always assumed that was what was intended with Arabic numbers, only silly Europeans made a mistake when they borrowed the positional system and forgot Arabic is written the other way. (Or perhaps intentionally avoided mirroring the digits for ease of communication?)
But the author of this article makes it sound like even in Arabic, numbers are read out loud most significant first.