1) His Biography:
His full name was “Abu Rayhan Muhammad Ibn Ahmed Al-Biruni,” and he was born on September 5th, 973, in Khwarazm, Uzbekistan. Rarely is information available on Al-early Biruni’s years. Since he studied astronomy—the study of stars and planets—for his first twenty-five years of life, he has a background in logic, Islamic law, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. He was intelligent, and the kings of his day would keep him around.
He left his home country and travelled to Bukhara when he was 22 years old, in the year 995. At that time, this city served as the global knowledge hub. For over three years, he stayed there to further his education. He interacted with Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and discussed a range of topics with him. He later relocated to Tabaristan in Iran in 998 AD and published his first book, “The Remaining Traces of Past Centuries,” there.
He researched people, their cultures, and traditions while visiting Central and South Asia. He lived a long life of research before passing away in 1050 at the age of 77 in Gazni, Afghanistan.
2) Main Works:
Book on the Pharmacopoeia of Medicine:
A pharmacopoeia called “Kitab al-saydala fi al-tibb” was written by Biruni. It provides Syriac, Persian, Greek, Baluchi, Afghan, Kurdi, and a few Indian language equivalents for drug names. He assessed the purity and density of metals and precious stones using a hydrostatic balance. In contrast to the prevalent practise of the time, he classified gems by what he believed to be their fundamental physical characteristics, such as specific gravity and hardness.
Book of nightly conversation concerning the affairs of Ḵarazm:
Only citations from Bayhaqi’s Tarikh-e Masudi provide knowledge about Biruni’s primary work on political history. The lists of kings in his al-Āthār al-bāqiya and the Qanun, as well as elsewhere in the athar, in India, and scattered across his other writings, also contain diverse explanations of historical events and methodology.
Chronology of Ancient Nations:
Al-Biruni’s “Chronology of Ancient Nations” made an effort to determine with precision how long distinct historical eras lasted.
Verifying All That the Indians Recount, the Reasonable and the Unreasonable:
In this exhaustive study of India, Al-Biruni covered almost all facets of Indian culture, including religion, history, geography, geology, science, and mathematics. Al-Biruni chose to capture the civilian and academic sides of Hindu society, looking at culture, science, and religion, rather than the military and political history, while travelling around India.
Book of Instructions in the Elements of the Art of Astrology:
For Lady Rayhanah, to whom it is dedicated, the Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology was written. The translator, R. Ramsay Wright, claimed that it could be viewed as a primer on science from the eleventh century. A thorough list of more than 150 Lots, numerous types of aspects and planetary relationships, planetary positions with respect to the sun, a top-notch treatise on rulerships, and extensive annotations on weather and meteorological occurrences are just a few of its attractions.
3) Main Themes:
Refutation of Eternal Universe:
Aristotle, whose reasoning Avicenna relies on, contradicted himself, according to Al Biruni, when he said that the universe and matter have a beginning while clinging to the notion that matter is pre-eternal. He made the Aristotelian claim that the creator has changed in his writings to Avicenna. He continued by saying that asserting a change in the creator would entail a change in the universe’s effects, and that the universe’s coming into existence after not existing would constitute such a change (and so arguing there is no change – no beginning – means Aristotle believes the creator is negated). Al-Biruni took great pride in adhering to the religion’s textual evidence without being swayed by Greek philosophers such as Aristotle.
Geography and Geodesy:
By observing the height of a mountain, Biruni came up with an innovative way to calculate the Earth’s radius. At Nandana in Pind Dadan Khan, he executed it (present-day Pakistan). He measured the height of a hill and the dip in the horizon from the top of that hill, then used trigonometry to determine the radius of the Earth. His estimated radius of 3928.77 miles for the Earth was 2% more than the actual mean radius of 3847.80 miles.
The accuracy of his estimate in relation to the current value relies on the cubit conversion method utilised because his estimate was given as 12,803,337 cubits. The actual length of a cubit is unknown, but according to his calculation, an 18-inch cubit would be 3,600 miles long and a 22-inch cubit would be 4,200 miles long. Al-Biruni was not aware of atmospheric refraction and made no allowance for it, which is a key flaw in this method. His calculations were based on a dip angle of 34 arc minutes, but as refraction can generally change the measured dip angle by around 1/6, his results were only accurate to within 20% of the actual value.
Al-Biruni proposed the idea of the Americas, or a continent along the great ocean between Asia and Europe, in his Codex Masudicus (1037). On the basis of his precise calculations of the Earth’s circumference and the size of Afro-Eurasia, which he discovered covered only two-fifths of the planet, he argued for its existence, reasoning that the geological processes that gave rise to Eurasia must undoubtedly have given rise to lands in the vast ocean between Asia and Europe. He also postulated that humans will live on at least portion of the uncharted landmass as it would be within known latitudes where they could do so.
History of Religions:
One of the most significant Muslim scholars of religious history is commonly regarded as Biruni. In his research on a variety of religions, including Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, he is regarded as a pioneer in the field of comparative religion. He believed in Islam’s superiority.
He was content to occasionally express his respect for other cultures and to draw his conclusions directly from the holy books of other religions. Instead of attempting to disprove them, he made an effort to comprehend them on their own terms. His fundamental idea was that because all cultures are products of human invention, they are all at least distantly related to one another. Instead, Al-Biruni appears to be suggesting that all cultures are distant relatives since they have a human essence, despite how disparate they may appear to one another.
Al-Biruni categorises Hindus into two groups: educated and illiterate. He characterises the educated as monotheistic, rejecting all forms of idolatry, and holding to the idea that there is only one, eternal, and all-powerful God. He acknowledges that uneducated Hindus worshipped a variety of idols, but he also makes the point that some Muslims, like the Jabriyah, have anthropomorphized ideas of God.
Anthropology:
About the peoples, traditions, and faiths of the Indian subcontinent, Al-Biruni wrote extensively on. Like contemporary anthropologists, he studied their primary texts, learned their language, and conducted extensive participant observation with a particular group of people, according to Akbar S. Ahmed. He then used cross-cultural comparisons to present his findings in a neutral and objective manner. Others, however, have contended that Al-Biruni can hardly be regarded an anthropologist in the normal sense. Akhbar S. Ahmed came to the conclusion that Al-Biruni can be considered the first anthropological.
Indology:
His fame in Indology follows as Al-Biruni chose to capture the civilian and academic sides of Hindu society, looking at culture, science, and religion, rather than the military and political history, while travelling around India. He examines religion in a vibrant cultural setting. Biruni observes that the Muslims found it challenging to understand Hindu knowledge and culture. He highlights the fundamental differences between Hinduism and Islam. Al-Biruni asserted that the fact that Hindus in 11th-century India had seen waves of damaging raids on many of their cities as well as the Islamic troops’ capturing of numerous Hindu slaves to Persia had contributed to Hindus’ developing a suspicion of all outsiders, not just Muslims. Hindus did not want to interact with Muslims because they believed them to be violent and filthy.
Al-Biruni gained the respect of Hindu intellectuals over time. Al-Biruni amassed a library, studied under these Hindu academics, and translated into Arabic the mathematics, physics, medicine, astronomy, and other branches of the arts as they were practised in 11th-century India. He also learned Sanskrit fluently. He was motivated by the justifications put out by Indian intellectuals who insisted that the earth must be spherical in shape in order to completely account for the variations in daylight hours by latitude, the seasons, and Earth’s relative positions with the Moon and stars.
Al-Biruni was critical of Indian scribes at the same time because he thought they recklessly tampered with Indian writings when making copies of older texts. He also chastised Hindus for their actions and inactions, saying that they lacked historical and religious curiosity. Al-Biruni’s impartial presentation of Hinduism was exceptional for the period. He said that he maintained complete objectivity in his publications, just as a good historian should. Everything about India was accurately recorded by Biruni as it happened. He did, however, acknowledge that some of the informational accounts that he was provided by locals could not have been completely accurate, but he did strive to be as truthful as he could in his writing.
4) His Contributions to Science:
With the aid of outdated astrolabes, Al-Biruni found the mathematical formulas for determining the distance between the Sun and Earth or the Moon and the Earth. He thereby created the groundwork for understanding planetary distances. He invented a method for calculating the size of the Earth’s surface. Al-Biruni focused on human and medical research.
He compiled a list of medicines with similar names in a book he authored about medicine. Al-Biruni made a contribution to the development of mediaeval mechanics using the scientific method. Utilizing a specific kind of hydrostatic balance, he created experimental techniques to assess density. When Avicenna (Ibn-Sina), another well-known figure of his day, was alive and well during the Golden Age of Islam, Al-Biruni rose to prominence as a mathematician and an authority in astronomy.
5) His Legacy:
Unusually, Al-Biruni’s work was neither expanded upon nor even mentioned after his death during the remaining Ghaznavid era and the centuries that followed. His publications weren’t read or cited again until centuries later (and even then, primarily in the West), most notably in the case of his book on India, which was important because of the British Empire’s involvement in India starting in the 17th century. In the Soviet Union, Abu Raykhan Beruni, a movie based on his life, was released in 1974. In his honour, the asteroid 9936 Al-Biruni and the lunar crater Al-Biruni both bear his name.
Al-Biruni is honoured with the name Biruni Island in Antarctica. The birthdate of Biruni is commemorated as the day of the surveying engineer in Iran. Iran gave the United Nations Office in Vienna a pavilion in June 2009, and it was installed in the Vienna International Center’s main Memorial Plaza. Avicenna, Abu Rayhan Biruni, Zakariya Razi (Rhazes), and Omar Khayyam are among the four well-known Iranian intellectuals commemorated in the pavilion, which is known as the Scholars Pavilion.