al-Bīrūnī

Arab scholar and scientist

• Born: 973
• Died: December 13, 1048

One of the greatest scholars of medieval Islam, al-Bīrūnī was both a singular compiler of the knowledge and scientific traditions of ancient cultures and a leading innovator in Islamic science.

Early Life

Al-Bīrūnī (al-bee-REW-nee) was of Iranian descent and spent most of his childhood and young adult years in his homeland of Khwārizm, south of the Aral Sea. His sobriquet derives from bīrūn “suburb” in reference to his birth in an outlying neighborhood of Khiva. Little is known of al-Bīrūnī'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-Bīrūnī's religious background was Shīՙite, although in later years he professed agnostic leanings. A precocious youth, while still a student in Khwārizm, al-Bīrūnī entered into correspondence with Avicenna (Ibn Sīna), 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-Bīrūnī's intellectual powers became apparent only when he left Khwārizm to travel and learn further. In al-Bīrūnī'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 Sāmānid sultan Manṣūr II, after whose demise he took up residence in the important intellectual center of Jurjan, southeast of the Caspian Sea. From here, al-Bīrūnī was able to travel throughout northeastern Iran.

Life's Work

While at Jurjan, al-Bīrūnī produced his first major work, al-Āthār al-bāqīyah ՙan al-qurūn al-khāliyah (tenth century; The Chronology of Ancient Nations, 1879). 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 al-Bīrūnī's later writings, although he was a native speaker of an Iranian dialect. As would have been common among Muslim scholars of his time, al-Bīrūnī also was fluent in Hebrew and Syriac, the major cultural and administrative languages in the Semitic world before the Arab conquest.

Around 1008, al-Bīrūnī returned to his homeland of Khwārizm 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 Khwārizm. Together with many other scholars as part of the booty of war al-Bīrūnī found himself led away to Ghazna, which was to become his home base for the remainder of his life.

Ironically, this deportation afforded al-Bīrūnī his greatest intellectual opportunity. The Ghaznavids appreciated scholarly talent, and the sultan, Maḥmūd of Ghazna (r. 997-1030), attached al-Bīrūnī to his court as official astronomer/astrologer. Maḥmūd 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-Bīrūnī 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-Bīrūnī, essentially a whole new intellectual universe.

In 1030, al-Bīrūnī completed his marvelous Tār՚īkh al-Hind (translated by Edward Sachau as Al-Beruni's India , 1888). This masterpiece remains, in the eyes of many scholars, the most important treatise on Indian history and culture produced by anyone before the twentieth century. The degree of scholarly detachment and objectivity displayed in Al-Beruni's 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-Bīrūnī produced another work dedicated to the sultan Masՙūd ibn Maḥmūd (r. 1031-1041), heir to the Ghaznavid throne. Kitāb al-qanūn al-Masՙūdī (c. 1030; Canon Masudicus, 1954-1956) is the largest and most important of al-Bīrūnī's mathematical and geographical studies.

During his long and productive life, al-Bīrūnī 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.

Significance

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-Bīrūnī was one of these intellects, to 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 that has yet to be fully exploited.

Al-Bīrūnī'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-Bīrūnī reasoned that the continent of Africa must be surrounded by water, thus taking exception to the Ptolemaic cosmography popular in Christendom, which held that Africa extended indefinitely to the south. On examining the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan, al-Bīrūnī correctly guessed that it had once been a shallow sea filled in through the centuries by alluvial deposits from the river. Al-Bīrūnī also explained the operation of artesian springs and wells essentially in terms of modern hydrostatic principles. He devised a system of geographical coordinates that 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, as much otherwise would now be lost). The thirteenth century geographer Yaqut, for example, cited al-Bīrūnī 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-Bīrūnī 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-Bīrūnī 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-Bīrūnī'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-Bīrūnī was simply the “Master.”

Bibliography

Acts of the International Symposium on Ibn Turk, Khwārezmī, Fārābī, Beyrūnī, and Ibn Sīnā. Ankara, Turkey: Atatürk Culture Center, 1990. A collection of essays from an international symposium on al-Bīrūnī and other scholars. Bibliography.

Chelkowski, Peter J., ed. The Scholar and the Saint: Studies in Commemoration of Abu’l-Rayhan al-Biruni and Jalal al-Din al-Rumi. New York: New York University Press, 1975. These essays from a 1974 conference cover such topics as al-Bīrūnī’s concepts of India, his use of Hindu historical material, Sanskrit astronomical texts, Muslim times of prayer and their relation to seasonal changes in daylight, and other topics.

Kazmi, Hasan Askari. The Makers of Medieval Muslim Geography: Alberuni. Delhi, India: Renaissance, 1995. Kazmi looks at al-Bīrūnī’s contributions to the study of the geography of Central Asia.

Kennedy, E. S., ed. and trans. The Exhaustive Treatise on Shadows. Vol. 2. Aleppo, Syria: Institute for the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo, 1976. This volume presents a commentary on al-Bīrūnī’s treatise on shadows; a consideration of his overall influence on the history of science is also included.

Khan, M. A. Saleem. Al-Biruni’s Discovery of India: An Interpretive Study. New Delhi, India: South Asian Publishers, 2001. An examination of al-Bīrūnī’s trip to India. Bibliography and index.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines: Conceptions of Nature and Methods Used for Its Study by the Ikhwān al SŃafā, al-Bīrūnī, and Ibn Sīnā. Rev. ed. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. Part 2 of this work concentrates on al-Bīrūnī and his theories regarding the creation of the world and astrology.

Said, Hakim Mohammad. Al-Bīrūnī Commemorative Volume. Karachi: Hamdard National Foundation, Pakistan, 1979. Proceedings of the international congress in Pakistan on the millenary of al-Bīrūnī. Examines al-Bīrūnī and science in the Islamic Empire.

Said, Hakim Mohammad, and Ansar Zahid Khan. Al-Bīrūnī: His Times, Life, and Works. Karachi, India: Hamdard Academy, 1981. A biography of al-Bīrūnī. Covers his life and works and pays special attention to his astronomy. Bibliography and index.