A035 - Al-Biruni

 

Biruni
Biruni (Abu Raihan Muhammad al-Biruni) (Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni) (Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad Biruni) (Alberuni) (September 5, 973 - December 13, 1048).  One of the most original and profound scholars of medieval Islam.  Of Iranian origin, he was equally versed in the mathematical, astronomic, physical and natural sciences and also distinguished himself as a geographer and historian, chronologist and linguist and as an impartial observer of customs and creeds.

Al-Biruni  is considered to be one of the most prominent (if not "the" most prominent) of figures in the phalanx of those universally learned Muslim scholars who characterize the Golden Age of Islamic Science.   His great contributions in so many diverse fields earned him the title al-Ustadh -- “the Master” -- the Professor par excellence.    Indeed, some historians have called the period of his activity as “The Age of al-Biruni.”

Abu Raihan Muhammad al-Biruni was born in Khwarizm (now Kara-kalpakskaya in present day Uzbekistan) in 973.  He studied Arabic, Islamic law, and several other fields of knowledge.  Later, he learned Greek, Syriac, and Sanskrit.  His knowledge of several languages helped him in understanding the available disparate scholarship and to bring a fresh and original approach to his work.  Al-Biruni was of the view that whatever the subject one should use every available source in its original form, investigate the available work with objective scrutiny, and carry out research through direct observation and experimentation.

Al-Biruni was a contemporary of the famous physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and is known to have corresponded with him.  Al-Biruni’s contributions are so extensive that an index of his written works covers more than sixty pages.  His scientific work combined with the contributions of al-Haitham (Al-Hazen) and other Muslim scientists laid down the early foundation of modern science. 

Al-Biruni made original and important contributions to science.  He discovered seven different ways of finding the direction of the north and south, and discovered mathematical techniques to determine exactly the beginnings of the season.  He also wrote about the sun and its movements and the eclipse.  In addition, he invented a number of astronomical instruments.  Many centuries before the rest of the world, Al-Biruni theorized that the earth rotated on its axis and made accurate calculations of latitude and longitude.  These observations are contained in his book Al-Athar al-Baqia.  He wrote a treatise on timekeeping in the year 1000 of the Christian calendar.

Al-Biruni was the first to conduct elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena.  He stated that the speed of light is immense as compared with the speed of sound.  He described the Milky Way as a collection of countless fragments of the nature of nebulous stars.  Al-Biruni described his observation of the solar eclipse of April 8, 1019, and the lunar eclipse of September 17, 1019.  He observed the lunar eclipse at Ghazna and gave precise details of the exact altitude of various well-known stars at the moment of first contact.  Al-Biruni’s book Al-Tafhim-li-Awail Sina’at al-Tanjim summarizes work on mathematics and astronomy. 

Al-Biruni’s contributions in physics include an accurate determination of the specific weight of eighteen elements and compounds including many metals and precious stones.  His book Kitab-al-Jamahir discusses the properties of various precious stones.  He was a pioneer in the study of angles and trigonometry.  He worked on shadows and chords of circles and developed a method for the trisection of an angle.  He elaborated on the principle of position and discussed Indian numerals.

In the fields of geology and geography, al-Biruni contributed on geological eruptions and metallurgy, to the measurement of the longitudes and latitudes and methods of determining the relative position of one place to another.  He explained the working of natural springs and artesian wells by the hydrostatic principle of communicating vessels.  His book Al-Athar al-Baqiyah fi Qanun al-Khaliyah (The Chronology of Ancient Nations) deals with ancient history and geography.  Al-Biruni observed that flowers have 3, 4, 5, 6, or 18 petals, but never seven or nine. 

Al-Biruni is most commonly known by his association with Mahmud of Ghazna, a famous Muslim king who also ruled India, and his son Sultan Masud.  Impressed by his scholarship and fame, Mahmud took al-Biruni along with him on his journeys to India several times.   Al-Biruni traveled many places in India for about 20 years and studied Hindu philosophy, mathematics, geography and religion from various learned men.  In return, he taught them Greek and Muslim sciences and philosophy.

Al-Biruni’s book Kitab al-Hind (Ta’rikh al-Hind -- History of India), completed in 1030, provides a detailed account of Indian life, religions, languages, and cultures and includes many observations on geography.  He stated that the Indus Valley must be considered as an ancient sea basin filled with alluvials.  In this book, al-Biruni mentions two books Patanjal and Sakaya.  He translated these two Sanskrit books into Arabic.  The former book deals with after death accounts, and the latter with the creation of things and their types.  Abu-al-Fadal’s book Aein-i-Akbari, written six centuries later during the reign of Akbar, was influenced by al-Biruni’s book.

Al-Biruni wrote his famous book Al-Qanun al-Masudi Fi al-Hai‘a Wa al-Nujum (1030) after he returned from India.  The book was dedicated to Sultan Masud and it discusses several theorems of trigonometry, astronomy, solar, lunar and planetary motions, and contains a collection of twenty-three observations of equinoxes.  Another well-known books is Kitab al-Saidana.  This book is an extensive materia medicia that synthesizes Arab medicine with Indian medicine.  His investigations included a description of Siamese twins.  He also wrote on the astrolabe and a mechanical calendar.

Al-Biruni was a scientist who was always mindful of his faith, and who believed himself to be blessed in his scientific endeavors.  He said:  "My experience in the study of astronomy and geometry and experiments in physics revealed to me that there must be a Planning Mind of Unlimited Power.  My discoveries in astronomy showed that there are fantastic intricacies in the universe which prove that there is a creative system and a meticulous control that cannot be explained through sheer physical and material causes."

When Sultan Masud sent al-Biruni three camel loads of silver coins in appreciation of his encyclopedic work Al-Qanun al-Masudi (The Mas’udi Canon), al-Biruni politely returned the royal gift saying, "I serve knowledge for the sake of knowledge and not for money."

Some of al-Biruni's works which were well known in Medieval Europe were: The Chronology of Ancient Nations (Al-Athar al-Baqiya), in which al-Birunu treats the eras, traditions, and histories of the various religious and ethnic groups, known in medieval Islam; The Determination of Coordinates of Cities, the most extensive treatise on mathematical geography written in medieval times; and his Pharmacology, a detailed compilation of sources on drugs known in antiquity and medieval times. 

Without a doubt, al-Biruni was one of the greatest scientists of all times.  However, in spite of his prolific and diverse output, medieval biographers devoted only a few lines to him and the European Latin translators of Arabic manuscripts showed little interest in his works.  In comparison to the honored treatment rendered his contemporaries Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Haitham, al-Biruni was relatively ignored.  The reason for this disregard may lie in the fact that while obviously gifted in scientific and historical matters, al-Biruni was not particularly adept in the more esteemed philosophical matters and, as such, was not well regarded amongst his contemporaries.  Nevertheless, when al-Biruni died in 1048 in Ghazna (Afghanistan), his death brought to an end an illustrious and productive forty-year career.

Al-Biruni was one of the greatest scholars of medieval Islam.  He was both a singular compiler of the knowledge and scientific traditions of ancient cultures and a leading innovator in Islamic science.

Abu al-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni was born in 973 in Khiva, Khwarizm (in modern day Uzbekistan).  He was of Iranian descent and spent most of his childhood and young adult years in his homeland of Khwarizm, south of the Aral Sea.  (His sobriquet derives from birun – “suburb” -- in reference to his birth in an outlying neighborhood of Khiva.)  Little is known of al-Biruni’s childhood except for the important matter of his education, which was directed by the best local mathematicians and other scholars.  His exceptional intellectual powers must have become apparent very early.  Al-Biruni’s religious background was Shi‘a, although in later years he professed agnostic leanings.  A precocious youth, while still a student in Khwarizm, al-Biruni entered into correspondence with Avicenna (Ibn Sina), one of the leading lights of Islamic medicine.  Some of Avicenna’s replies are preserved in the British Museum.

Although he published some material as a young student, the scope of al-Biruni’s intellectual powers only became apparent when he left Khwarizm to travel and learn abroad.  In al-Biruni’s age, the key to scholarly success lay in attaching oneself to a powerful and influential court society and obtaining noble patronage.  He found the first of many such benefactors in the Samanid sultan Mansur II, after whose demise he took up residence in the important intellectual center of Jurjan, southeast of the Caspian Sea.  From here, al-Biruni was able to travel throughout northeastern Iran.

While at Jurjan, al-Biruni produced his first major work, al-Athar al-baqiyah ‘an al-qurun al-khaliyah (The Chronology of Ancient Nations).  This work is an imposing compilation of calendars and eras from many cultures.  It also deals with numerous issues in mathematics, astronomy, geography, and meteorology.  The work is in Arabic -- the major scientific and cultural language of the time -- as are nearly all of al-Biruni’s later writings, although al-Biruni himself was a native speaker of an Iranian dialect.  As would have been common among Muslim scholars of his time, al-Biruni was also fluent in Hebrew and Syriac, the major cultural and administrative languages in the Semitic world prior to the Arab conquest. 
 
Around 1008, al-Biruni returned to his homeland of Khwarizm at the invitation of the local shah, who subsequently entrusted him with several important diplomatic missions.  In 1017, however, his tranquil life as a scholar-diplomat took a rude turn.  The shah lost his life in a military uprising, and shortly thereafter forces of the powerful Ghaznavid dynasty of neighboring Afghanistan invaded Khwarizm.  Together with many other scholars -- as part of the booty of war -- al-Biruni found himself led away to Ghazna, which was to become his home base for the remainder of his life.

Ironically, this deportation afforded al-Biruni his greatest intellectual opportunity.  The Ghaznavids appreciated scholarly talent, and the sultan, Mahmud, attached al-Biruni to his court as official astronomer/astrologer.  Mahmud was in the process of expanding his frontiers in every direction.   The most coveted lands were in India, and during the sultan’s campaigns there al-Biruni was able to steep himself in the world of Hindu learning.  In India, he taught eager scholars his store of Greek, Persian, and Islamic knowledge.  In return, he acquired fluency in Sanskrit, the doorway to what was, for al-Biruni, essentially a whole new intellectual universe. 

In 1030, al-Biruni completed his marvelous Tar’ikh al-Hind. This masterpiece remains, in the eyes of many scholars, the most important treatise on Indian history and culture produced by anyone prior to the twentieth century.  The degree of scholarly detachment and objectivity displayed in al-Biruni's history of India is almost without parallel for the time, and the work consequently is still of enormous value to contemporary scholars. 

Almost at the same time, al-Biruni produced another work dedicated to the sultan Mas‘ud ibn Mahmud, heir to the Ghaznavid throne.  Kitab al-qanun al-Mas‘udi fi ‘l-hay’a wa ‘l-nujum (Canon Masudicus -- c. 1030) is the largest and most important of al-Biruni’s mathematical and geographical studies.

During his long and productive life, al-Biruni authored many other treatises of varying length -- he himself claimed to have produced more than one hundred -- in addition to those mentioned above.  They include essays on arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and astrology, a pioneering effort in mineralogical classification, and, toward the end of his career, material on the medical sciences.  His compendia of Indian and Chinese minerals, drugs, potions, and other concoctions, still not systematically studied, may be of immense value to pharmacology.  Some of these works have been lost.  They are known only through references by other scholars.  Many survive but await translation into European languages.

In the golden age of medieval Islam, a small number of incredibly versatile and creative intellects stood at the interface of Semitic, Hellenistic, Persian, and Hindu culture and learning.  Their syntheses and insights often brought about quantum leaps in scientific and historical thought in Islam -- so vast, in fact, that in some cases their achievements were fully appreciated only by later ages better prepared to comprehend them.  Al-Biruni was one of these intellects and, for some historians, the most important of all.  The Chronology of Ancient Nations, for example, constitutes an unprecedented attempt to periodize the history of the known world by comparing and cross-referencing large numbers of chronologies and calendrical systems.  His work provides a basis for chronological studies which has yet to be fully exploited.

Al-Biruni’s immense store of astronomical and geographical knowledge led him to the verge of modern scientific ideas about the earth and the universe.  He was familiar with the concept that Earth rotates on its axis to produce the apparent movement of celestial bodies, rather than those bodies revolving around Earth (although he did not necessarily endorse the idea).  His insights with respect to geography were profound.  On the basis of reports of various flotsam found in the seas, al-Biruni reasoned that the continent of Africa must be surrounded by water, thus taking exception with the Ptolemaic cosmography popular in Christendom, which held that Africa extended indefinitely to the south.  Upon examining the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan, al-Biruni correctly guessed that it had once been a shallow sea filled in through the centuries by alluvial deposits from the river.  Al-Biruni also explained the operation of artesian springs and wells essentially in terms of modern hydrostatic principles.  He devised a system of geographical coordinates which is still a marvel to cartographers.

In medieval Islam, the significance of scholarship may often be determined by how frequently a scholar’s materials were copied by later generations of researchers (a practice for which modern scholars are grateful, since much otherwise would now be lost.  The thirteenth century geographer Yaqut, for example, cited al-Biruni extensively in his own work.  Yaqut’s material on oceanography and general cosmography is drawn almost verbatim from his illustrious predecessor. 

Like many scholars in Islam’s golden age, al-Biruni was a polymath, a Renaissance man before there was a Renaissance.  Some modern scholars have criticized him for writing extensively on astrology, usually at the behest of his noble patrons.  Astrology, however, was in a certain sense a means of popularizing the science of the time, and al-Biruni most likely used it to reach a lay audience, just as contemporary popular science writers often simplify and make use of analogy.  He seems to have regarded astrology as a gesture to simple people who wanted immediate, practical results from science.

Al-Biruni’s astounding versatility has prompted some to place him in a league with Leonardo da Vinci as one of the greatest geniuses of all time.  The most appropriate description, however, comes from his students, patrons, and other contemporaries.  To them, al-Biruni was simply “The Master.” 



al-Ustadh see Biruni
Abu Raihan Muhammad al-Biruni see Biruni
Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni see Biruni
“The Master” see Biruni
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad Biruni see Biruni