About al-Biruni

1.1.    Introduction

Abu Rayhan Muhammad Ibn  al-Biruni was a pesian in born. He is considered as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic era and was well versed in mathematics, astronomy, physical and natural sciences, and also distinguished himself as a geographer, historian, chronologist and linguist. According to Francis Robinson, Al-Biruni earned the "founder of Indology" and "first anthropologist" titles for his remarkable description of early 11th-century India,

 

Acquaintance

 

Name:  Abu Rayhan Muhammad Ibn  al-Biruni

 

Title: Abu Rayhan Biruni (known as Alberonius in Latin)

 

Birth: 15th September, 973 CE (361 Hijri 3rd Jilhajj, Thursday)

 

Death: 13th December, 1048 CE (2nd Rajb, 440 Hijri, Friday at 75 years old)

 

1.2.      Main Interests:

Anthropology, Astronomy ,Cartography, Chronology, Geodesy and Geography, Geology, History, Mathematics, Physics, Translatory literature etc

 

1.3.    Works:

Tarikh al Hindi, The Mas’di Canon, Understanding Astrlogy and many other books.

 

1.4.    Biography

◾Ø He was born in Khwarazm, presently in Khiva, Uzbekistan. He started his study from his early life and he studied mathematics and astronomy under Abu Nasr Mansur.

◾Ø Certainly by the age of seventeen al-Biruni was engaged in serious scientific work for it was in 990 that he computed the latitude of Kath by observing the maximum altitude of the sun.

◾Ø He also learnt Greek and Arabic science and philosophy.

◾Ø He was patronage by Mahmud of Ghazni and his son Masud and grandson Maudud.

◾Ø He was the colleague of Ibn Sina,Ibn Miskawayah and he travelled to South Asia with Mahmud of Ghazni and Mahmud of Ghazni accompanied him on is campaigns in India (in 1030.)

◾Ø He was so much interested in his study. He did not miss a single day to read and research anything about science like astronomy and mathematics. He did not marry anyone and he had no children because of pressures of work.

◾Ø He knew no less than four languages: Greek, Sanskrit, Syriac and possibly Berber

◾Ø Al-Biruni was having knowledge of Sanskrit literature on topics. He wrote his books in Arabic and his native language Persian.  Al-Biruni studied Indian literature in the original, translating several Sanskrit texts into Arabic. He also wrote several treatises devoted to certain aspects of Indian astronomy and mathematics which were of particular interest to him. Al-Biruni was amazingly well read, having knowledge of Sanskrit literature on topics such as astrology, astronomy, chronology, geography, grammar, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, religion, and weights and measures.

1.5.    The First in many aspects:-

        He was the first Muslim scholar to study India and the Brahminical tradition and he was “The First anthropologist” and “the father of Geodesy”.

 

The Biruni crater on the Moon is named after him.

 

He was the first astronomer to suggest the Earths rotation about its own axis.

 

1.6.    Other works

    estimates that he wrote around 146 works with a total of about 13,000 folios (a folio contains about the same amount as a printed page from a modern book). We have mentioned some of the works above, but the range of al-Biruni's works cover essentially the whole of science at his time. Kennedy writes :

 

... his bent was strongly towards the study of observable phenomena, in nature and in man. Within the sciences themselves he was attracted by those fields then susceptible of mathematical analysis.

 

Biruni works number more than 120 in total. These include:

 

ü Critical study of what India says, whether accepted by the reason or refused (Arabic-) a compendium of India’s religion and philosophy

 

ü The remaining signs of Past Centuries (Arabic-) a comparative study of calenders of different cultures and civilizations, interlaced with mathematical, astronomical and historical information.

 

ü The Mas’udi Canon  (Persian-) an extensive encyclopedia on astronomy, geography and engeneering named after Mas’ud, son of Mahmud of Ghazni, to whom he deicated. This book had been divided into 11 volumes. The First and Second Volumes of this book had prescribed basic theory of Astronomy. The 3rd Volume of this book had been based upon Trigonometry. The 4th Volume of this book discussed about Spherical Astronomy. The 5th part of this book was related to planets, longitude, measures of sun-moon. The 6th Volume of this book had dealt  with the topics of Sun’s motion. Moon has been prior in the 7th Volume.   Lunar eclipse and solar eclipse  are the main topics of 8th Volume. He informed us details about stars in his 9th Volume of this book. In the 10th Volume he discussed about 5 planets. The final volume had been authorized about astronomy.    

 

ü Understanding astrology (Arabic-) a question and answer style book about mathematics and astronomy in Arabic and Persian.

 

ü Pharmacy about Drugs and medicines

 

ü Gems (Arabic-) about geology, minerals and gems, dedicated to Mawdud son of Mas’ud.

 

ü Astroable

 

ü A historical summery

 

ü History of Mahmud of Ghazni and his father

 

ü History of Khawarazm

 

ü   Kitab al tafhim li awa'il sina'at al tanjim. It was one of the famous books of him. The translator of this book Ramse Right says, “Though it was a book of astronaut it was recognized as the first book of science in the 11th Century. Geometry, Astronaut, Astrolabe and the then geography and lunar calendar had been prescribed on that book”.  This book contains 530 chapters. Geometry, mathematics, Astrolabe, plants, division of astrolabe etc are the main topics of this book. On the other hand it has mentioned the lunar calendar of pre-Islamic period, Hinduism lunar calendar, Judaism lunar calendar, Syrian solar calendar, Greek, Egyptian, Persian calendar.    

 

ü  Asharul Bakia, this book is divided into several lessons.

 

ü  One of the most important of al-Biruni's many texts is Shadows which he is thought to have written around 1021. Rosenfel'd has written extensively on this work of al-Biruni (The contents of the work include the Arabic nomenclature of shade and shadows, strange phenomena involving shadows, gnomonics, the history of the tangent and secant functions, applications of the shadow functions to the astrolabe and to other instruments, shadow observations for the solution of various astronomical problems, and the shadow-determined times of Muslim prayers. Shadows is an extremely important source for our knowledge of the history of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. It also contains important ideas such as the idea that acceleration is connected with non-uniform motion, using three rectangular coordinates to define a point in 3-space, and ideas that some see as anticipating the introduction of polar coordinates.

 

1.7.    Achievements

His contribution to sciences:

 

Al-biruni was contributed greatly on the fields of Anthropology, Astronomy, Cartography, Chronology, Geodesy and Geography, Geology, History, Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy and various science.

 

1.i.                   Anthropology

Biruni has been described as “The fist anthropologist.” He wrote detailed comparative studies on the anthropology of people, religion s and cultures in the Middle East, Mediterranean and South Asia. Biruni has also been praised by several scholars for this Islamic anthropology.

 

1.ii.                Astronomy

Al Biruni invented and wrote the earliest treatises on the planishpere and the orthographical astrolabe, and was able to mathematically determine the direction of the Qibla from any place in the world. Brahmagupta and Varahamihira in his India. Biruni noted the question of heliocentricity was a philosophical rather than a mathematical problem. In 1031, al Biruni completed his extensive astronomical encyclopedia Kitab al-Quran al Masu’di (Lantinized as Canon Mas’udicus) in which he recorded his astronomical findings and formulated astronomical tables. The book introduces the mathematical technique of analysisng the acceleration of the planets and first states that the motions of the solar apogee and the precession are not identical. Al-bIruni also discovered that the distance between the Earth and the Sub is larger than Ptolemy’s estimate, on the basis that Ptolemy disregarded the annual solar eclipses.

 

ü   AL-BIruni also described the Earth’s gravitation as “The attraction of all things towards the center of the earth. ”

 

ü He remarked that if the Earth rotates on its axis and moves around the Sun, it would remain consistent with his astronomical pareameters. But now-a-days many people know it that this thing was discovered by koparnicuss. But Al-biruni discovered it before 450 years of Koparnicuss.

 

ü He always calculated the age of person according both of Solar and Lunar calendar. Once he calculated that his was age 63 according to solar when he was 65 years old according to lunar calendar.   

 

1.iii.              Cartography

By the age of twenty two, he had written several short works including

 

ü A study of map projections

 

ü Cartography which included a methodology for projecting a hemisphere on a place

 

1.iv.              Chronology

By the age of twenty seven, he had written a book called Chronology which referred to other works he had completed(now lost). This book included

 

ü One book about astrolabe

 

ü One about the decimal system

 

ü Four about astrology

 

ü And two about history

 

1.v.                Geodesy and Geography

Biruni made a number of contributions to the earth East sciences.

 

1)    Biruni calculated the latitude of Kath, Khwarazm, using the maximum altitude of the Sun.

 

2)    He also solved a complex geodesic equation in order to accurately compute the earths circumstances.

 

3)    He introduced techniques to measure the earth and distances on it using triangulation.

 

4)    He found the radius of the earth to be 63339.6 k.m. 

 

5)    He first explained it that the upward motion of the climate is the cause of hot weather and downward motion of the climate is the cause of cold weather.

 

many important contributions to geodesy and geography were also made by al-Biruni. He introduced techniques to measure the earth and distances on it using triangulation. He found the radius of the earth to be 6339.6 km, a value not obtained in the West until the 16th century .His Masudic canon contains a table giving the coordinates of six hundred places, almost all of which he had direct knowledge. Not all, however, were measured by al-Biruni himself, some being taken from a similar table given by al-Khwarizmi. The author of remarks that al-Biruni seemed to realise that for places given by both al-Khwarizmi andPtolemy, the value obtained by al-Khwarizmi is the more accurate.

 

1.vi.              Geology

Among his writings on geology, Biruni wrote the following on the geology of India:

 

ü The soil of India and its nature

 

ü The rounded stones found in earth

 

ü Stones that are huge near the mountains and the rivers have a violent current.

 

ü Stones that are of smaller size at a greater distance from the mountains and where the streams flow more slowly.

 

ü Stones that appear pulverized in the shape of sand where the streams begin to stagnate near their mouths and near the sea.

 

He considered that once India was a sea.

 

1.vii.           Mathematics

            He made significant contributions to mathematics especially in the fields of

 

ü Theoretical and practical arithmetic

 

ü Summation of series

 

ü Combinatorial analysis

 

ü The rule of three

 

ü Irrational numbers

 

ü Ratio theory

 

ü Algebraic definitions

 

ü Method of solving algebraic equations

 

ü Geometry

 

ü And the development of Archimedes theorems.

 

We have mentioned al-Biruni's astronomical observations many time above. It is worth noting that he had a better feel for errors than did Ptolemy and Yakub. In  the author comments that Ptolemy's attitude was to select the observations which he thought most reliable (often that meant fitting in with his theory), and not to tell the reader about observations that he was discarding. Al-Biruni, on the other hand, treats errors more scientifically and when he does chose some to be more reliable than others, he also gives the discarded observations. He was also very conscious of rounding errors in calculations, and always attempted to observe quantities which required the minimum manipulation to produce answers

 

1.viii.         Physics

ü Al BirunI measured the specific gravities of eighteen gemstones.

 

ü And discovered a correlation between the specific gravity of an object and the volume of water it displaces.

 

ü He invented the conical measure which are very close to modern measurements.

 

ü He also introduced the method of checking tests during experiments.

 

ü He invented the differences in weight between fresh water and salt water, and between hot water and cold water,

 

Topics in physics that were studied by al-Biruni included hydrostatics and made very accurate measurements of specific weights. He described the ratios between the densities of gold, mercury, lead, silver, bronze, copper, brass, iron, and tin. Al-Biruni displayed the results as combinations of integers and numbers of the form 1/n, n= 2, 3, 4, ... , 10.

 

1.ix.              Translatory literature

He has translated two Sanskrit books into Arabic, one is called Sakaya, which deals with the creation of things and their types, and the second, Patanjal dealing with what happens after the spirit leaves the body. He has also developed and enriched the Arabic language by translating several books of mathematics, astronomy, physical and natural sciences and many others subject from Greek, Latin, Hindi, Brahma to Arabic.

 

1.x.                Founder of Modern Science

His translated method, taken together with that of other Muslim scientists, such as Ibn Al- Haitham,laid down the early foundation of moeden science.

 

1.8.    Conclusion

Al-Biruni was a versatile scholar and scientist. He spent 40 years in gathering knowledge and making his own original contributions to it. He has been considered as one of the very greatest scientists of Islam.

 

He explained the working of natural springs and artesian wells by the hydrostatic principle of communicating vessels. His investigations included description of various monstrosities, including that known as “Siamese” twins. He observed that flowers have 3,4,5,6 or 18 petals , but never 7 or 9.