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Abū Rayḥān
al-Bīrūnī
Abū
al-Rayhān Muhammad ibn Ahmad
al-Bīrūnī
(born 5 September 973 in
Kath, Khwarezm, part
of Persia at that
time, died 13 December 1048 in Ghazni) known as
Alberonius in Latin and Al-Biruni in English,
was a Persian
-Chorasmian Muslim scholar and
polymath of the 11th century.
Al-Biruni is
regarded as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic
era and was well versed in physics, mathematics,
astronomy,
and natural
sciences, and also distinguished himself as
a historian, chronologist
and linguist. He was
conversant in Khwarezmian,
Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and also
knew Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Berber. He spent a
large part of his life in Ghazni in
modern-day Afghanistan, capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty
which ruled eastern Iranian lands and
the northwestern Indian
subcontinent. In 1017 he
traveled to the Indian subcontinent and became the most important
interpreter of Indian science
to the Islamic
world. He is given the titles the "founder
of Indology" and the
"first anthropologist". He was an
impartial writer on custom and creeds of various nations, and was
given the title al-Ustadh ("The Master") for his remarkable
description of early 11th-century India. He also made
contributions to Earth
sciences, and is regarded as the "father
of geodesy" for his
important contributions to that field, along with his significant
contributions to geography.
Life
He was born
in the outer district of Kath, the capital of the
Afrighid dynasty
of Khwarezm (or
Chorasmia). The word Biruni means "outer-district" in
Persian, and so
this became his nisba:
"al-Bīrūnī" = "the Birunian".
His first twenty-five years were spent
in Khwarezm where he studied fiqh, theology,
grammar, mathematics,
astronomy, medics and other
sciences. The Iranian Khwarezmian
language, which was the language of Biruni
, survived for several centuries
after Islam until the
Turkification of the region, and so must some at least of the
culture and lore of ancient Khwarezm, for it is
hard to see the commanding figure of Biruni, a repository of so
much knowledge, appearing in a cultural
vacuum.
He was
sympathetic to the Afrighids, who were
overthrown by the rival dynasty of Ma´munids in 995.
Leaving his homeland, he left for Bukhara, then under
the Samanid ruler Mansur
II the son of Nuh. There he also corresponded with
Avicenna and there
are extant exchanges of views between these two
scholars.
In 998, he
went to the court of the Ziyarid amir of
Tabaristan,
Shams al-Mo´ali Abol-hasan
Ghaboos ibn Wushmgir. There he
wrote his first important work, al-Athar al-Baqqiya ´an al-Qorun
al-Khaliyya (literally: "The remaining traces of
past centuries" and translated as "Chronology of ancient nations"
or "Vestiges of the Past") on historical and scientific chronology,
probably around 1000 A.D., though he later made some amendments to
the book. Accepting the definite demise of the Afrighids at the
hands of the Ma´munids, he made peace with the latter who then
ruled Khwarezm. Their
court at Gorganj (also in Khwarezm) was gaining fame for its
gathering of brilliant
scientists.
In
1017, Mahmud of Ghazni
took Rey. Most scholars, including
al-Biruni, were taken to Ghazna, the capital of the Ghaznavid
dynasty. Biruni was made court
astrologer and accompanied Mahmud on his invasions
into India, living there for a few years. Biruni became acquainted
with all things related to India. He may even have learned some
Sanskrit. During this time he wrote the
Kitab ta´rikh
al-Hind,
finishing it around 1030
Mathematics
and Astronomy
An
illustration from al-Biruni´s astronomical works, explains the
different phases of the moon.
Diagram illustrating a method proposed
and used by Al-Biruni to estimate the radius and circumference of
the Earth
Ninety-five
of 146 books known to have been written by Bīrūnī,
about 65 percent, were devoted to astronomy, mathematics, and
related subjects like mathematical
geography.
Biruni´s
major work on astrology is primarily
an astronomical and mathematical text, only the last chapter
concerns astrological prognostication. His endorsement of astrology
is limited, in so far as he condemns horary astrology
as
´sorcery´.
In
discussing speculation by other Muslim writers on the possible
motion of the Earth, Biruni acknowledged that he could neither
prove nor disprove it, but commented favourably on the idea that
the Earth rotates. He wrote an
extensive commentary on Indian astronomy
in the Kitab ta´rikh
al-Hind, in
which he claims to have resolved the matter of Earth´s rotation in
a work on astronomy that is no longer extant, his
Miftah-ilm-alhai´a (Key
to Astronomy):
[T]he
rotation of the earth does in no way impair the value of astronomy,
as all appearances of an astronomic character can quite as well be
explained according to this theory as to the other. There are,
however, other reasons which make it impossible. This question is
most difficult to solve. The most prominent of both modem and
ancient astronomers have deeply studied the question of the moving
of the earth, and tried to refute it. We, too, have composed a book
on the subject called Miftah-ilm-alhai´a (Key to
Astronomy), in
which we think we have surpassed our predecessors, if not in the
words, at all events In the
matter.
In his
description of Sijzi´s
astrolabe´s he hints at contemporary debates over
the movement of the earth. He carried on a lengthy correspondence
and sometimes heated debate with Ibn Sina, in which
Biruni repeatedly attacks Aristotle´s celestial
physics: he argues by simple experiment that
vacuum must exist; he is
"amazed" by the weakness of Aristotle´s argument against elliptical
orbits on the basis that they would create vacuum;
he attacks the immutability of the
celestial spheres; and so
on.
In his major
extant astronomical work, the Mas´ud Canon, Biruni utilizes his observational data
to disprove Ptolemy´s immobile solar apogee. More
recently, Biruni´s eclipse data was used by Dunthorne in 1749 to
help determine the acceleration of the
moon and his observational data has entered
the larger astronomical historical record and is still used
today in geophysics and
astronomy.
Physics
Al-Biruni contributed
to the introduction of the experimental scientific method
to mechanics,
unified statics and dynamics into the
science of mechanics, and combined the fields of
hydrostatics
with dynamics to create
hydrodynamics
Geography
Four directions and Political divisions
of Iran by Abū Rayḥān
al-Bīrūnī
Bīrūnī also devised his
own method of determining the radius of the earth by means of the
observation of the height of a mountain and carried it out
at Nandana in Pind
Dadan Khan, Pakistan
Pharmacology and
Mineralogy
Due to an apparatus he
constructed himself, he succeeded in determining the
specific gravity
of a certain number of metals and
minerals with remarkable precision.
History and
Chronology
Biruni´s main essay on political
history, Kitāb al-musāmara fī aḵbār
Ḵᵛārazm (Book of nightly conversation concerning
the affairs of Ḵᵛārazm) is now known only from
quotations in Bayhaqī’s Tārīkh-e
masʿūdī. In addition to this various discussions of
historical events and methodology are found in connection with the
lists of kings in his al-Āthār al-bāqiya and in the
Qānūn as well as elsewhere in the Āthār, in
India, and scattered throughout his other works.
History of
Religions
Bīrūnī is one of the most
important Muslim authorities on the history of
religion. Al-Biruni was a pioneer in the study of
comparative religion. He studied Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Hinduism,
Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and other religions. He treated
religions objectively, striving to understand them on their own
terms rather than trying to prove them wrong. His underlying
concept was that all cultures are at least distant relatives of all
other cultures because they are all human constructs. “What
al-Biruni seems to be arguing is that there is a common human
element in every culture that makes all cultures distant relatives,
however foreign they might seem to one another.” (Rosenthal,
1976, p. 10). Al-Biruni was disgusted by scholars who failed
to engage primary sources in their treatment of Hindu religion. He
found existing sources on Hinduism to be both insufficient and
dishonest. Guided by a sense of ethics and a desire to learn, he
sought to explain the religious behavior of different
groups.
Al-Biruni
divides Hindus into an educated and an uneducated class. He
describes the educated as monotheistic, believing that God is one,
eternal, and omnipotent and eschewing all forms of idol worship. He
recognizes that uneducated Hindus worshipped a multiplicity of
idols yet points out that even some Muslims (such as the Jabiriyya)
have adopted anthropomorphic concepts of God. (Ataman,
2005)
Indology
Bīrūnī’s fame as an
Indologist rests primarily on two texts. Al-Biruni
wrote an encyclopedic work on India called “Tarikh
Al-Hind” (History of India, also known as
“Indica,” or simply “India” but also
appropriately "Bharat") in which he explored nearly every aspect of
Indian life, including religion, history, geography, geology,
science, and mathematics. He explores religion within a rich
cultural context. He expresses his objective with simple eloquence:
I shall not produce the arguments of our antagonists in order to
refute such of them, as I believe to be in the wrong. My book is
nothing but a simple historic record of facts. I shall place before
the reader the theories of the Hindus exactly as they are, and I
shall mention in connection with them similar theories of the
Greeks in order to show the relationship existing between them
(1910, Vol. 1, p. 7; 1958, p. 5) An example of
Al-Biruni’s analysis is his summary of why many Hindus hate
Muslims. He explains that Hinduism and Islam are totally different
from each other. Moreover, Hindus in 11th century India considered
all foreigners, not just Muslims, impure and refused to have any
connection with them. Furthermore, when the Muslims entered India,
the land had already been devastated by two previous invasions by
the Sakas and the Hunas. On top of that, Mahmud of
Ghazni, the Muslim sultan of north-western
India and a contemporary of al-Biruni, plundered the wealth of the
region. (Ataman, 2005). Al-Biruni intended to facilitate dialogue
between Hindus and Muslims. He thought that the two groups had a
great deal they could learn from one another. (Biruni, 1910, Vol.
1, p. 17). Al-Biruni collected books and studied with Hindu
scholars to become fluent in Sanskrit. He translated books both
from Sanskrit to Arabic and vice versa. (Ataman, 2005). While
others were killing each other over religious differences,
Al-Biruni had a remarkable ability to engage Hindus in peaceful
dialogue. Mohammad Yasin puts this dramatically when he says,
“The Indica is like a magic island of quiet, impartial
research in the midst of a world of clashing swords, burning towns,
and burned temples.” (Indica is another name for
Al-Biruni’s history of India). (Yasin, 1975,
p. 212).
Works
Most of the
works of Al-Biruni are in Arabic although he wrote one of his
masterpieces, the Kitab al-Tafhim apparently in both Persian and Arabic,
showing his mastery over both languages. Bīrūnī’s catalogue
of his own literary production up to his 65th lunar/63rd solar year
(the end of 427/1036) lists 103 titles divided into 12 categories:
astronomy, mathematical geography, mathematics, astrological
aspects and transits, astronomical instruments, chronology, comets,
an untitled category, astrology, anecdotes, religion, and books of
which he no longer possesses copies. His extant
works include:
- Critical study of what India says,
whether accepted by reason or refused (Arabic
تحقيق ما
للهند من
مقولة
معقولة في
العقل أم
مرذولة), also known as
the Indica - a compendium of India´s religion and
philosophy
- The Book of Instruction in the Elements
of the Art of Astrology (Kitab al-tafhim li-awa’il
sina‘at al-tanjim).
- The
Remaining Signs of Past Centuries
(Arabic
الآثار
الباقية عن
القرون
الخالية) - a comparative
study of calendars of different cultures and civilizations,
interlaced with mathematical, astronomical, and historical
information.
- The
Mas´udi Canon (Persian
قانون
مسعودي) - an
extensive encyclopedia
on astronomy, geography, and
engineering, named after Mas´ud, son of Mahmud of
Ghazni, to whom he
dedicated.
- Understanding Astrology
(Arabic
التفهيم
لصناعة
التنجيم) - a question and
answer style book about mathematics and astronomy, in Arabic and
Persian.
- Pharmacy - about drugs and
medicines.
- Gems (Arabic
الجماهر في
معرفة
الجواهر) about geology,
minerals, and gems, dedicated to Mawdud son of
Mas´ud.
- Astrolabe.
- A
historical summary book.
- History of Mahmud of Ghazni and his
father.
- History of
Khawarazm.
Persian
work
Although he preferred Arabic to Persian
in scientific writing, his Persian version of the
Al-Tafhimis one of the most important of the
early works of science in the Persian
language, and is a rich source for Persian prose
and lexicography. The book
covers the Quadrivium
in a detailed and skilled
fashion
AL
BIRUNI Al-Bīrūnī,
Bērūnī
(بیرونی)
An imaginary
rendition of Al Biruni on a 1973 sovietic post
stamp |
| Full
name |
Abū Rayḥān
Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad
Al-Birunī |
| Born |
September
15, 973
Khwarazm, Samanid Persia (modern-day Uzbekistan) |
| Died |
December 13,
1048 (aged 75)
Ghazni, Ghaznavid Empire
(modern-day Afghanistan) |
| Era |
Islamic Golden
Age |
| Region |
Khwarazm, Central
Asia
Ziyarid dynasty
(Rey)
Ghaznavid dynasty
(Ghazni) |
| Main
interests |
Physics, anthropology,
comparative
sociology, astronomy, astrology, chemistry, history, geography, mathematics,
medicine, psychology, philosophy, theology |
| Notable
ideas |
Founder
of Indology |
| Major
works |
Ta´rikh al-Hind, The Mas´udi
Canon,
Understanding
Astrology |
from
wikipedia
