By Bnedine Bnedine
28 December 2024
Al-Biruni was so far ahead of his time that his most brilliant discoveries seemed incomprehensible to most of the scholars of his days...
George Sarton, the founder of the History of Science discipline, defined al-Biruni as “one of the very greatest scientists of Islam, and, all considered, one of the greatest of all times”. A universal genius that lived in the Central Asia a thousand of years ago, al-Biruni “was so far ahead of his time that his most brilliant discoveries seemed incomprehensible to most of the scholars of his days”, so wrote Bobojan Gafurov in his article on the Unesco Courier.
Abū al-Rayhān Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Bīrūnī (973–1048), was born in Kath, Khwarezm[4]. Khwarezm, also known as Chorasmia, is a large oasis region in western Central Asia, bordered by Aral Sea and deserts. It was the country of the Khwarezmian civilization and of several kingdoms. Today, it is fractioned and belongs to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Leaving his homeland, al-Biruni wandered in Persia and Uzbekistan. Then, after Mahmud of Ghazni conquered the emirate of Bukhara, Al-Biruni moved in Ghazni. This town, which is in modern Afghanistan, was at that time the capital of Ghaznavid dynasty. In 1017, al-Biruni travelled to the Indian subcontinent, studying the Indian science and conveying it to the Islamic world .
Αl-Biruni was an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, studying physics and natural sciences too. He was the first able to obtain a simple formula for measuring the Earth’s radius. Moreover, he thought possible the Earth to revolve around the Sun and developed the idea the geological eras succeed one another.
In fact, in his scientific body of work he addresses almost all the sciences . He had excellent knowledge of ancient Greek and studied several works by ancient Greek scientists in their original forms; among them there were the Aristotle’s Physics, Metaphysics, De Caelo, and Meteorology, the works of Euclid and Archimedes, the Almagest of the mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy .. “When religious fanaticism swept medieval Europe… al-Biruni, as a forerunner of the Renaissance, was far in advance of the scientific thought then obtaining in Europe” [ After a short discussion on his life, let us review some experimental methods and instruments this outstanding man proposed and used.
Life and Works
As previously told, al-Biruni was born in Kath, a district of Khwarezm. In fact, the word “Biruni” means “from an outer district”, in Persian, and so he was known as “the Birunian”, with the Latinised name “Alberonius” . In his early youth, fortune brought al-Biruni in contact with an educated Greek who was his first teacher . His foster father, Mansur, was a member of the royal family and a distinguished mathematician and astronomer. He introduced al-Biruni to Euclidean Geometry and Ptolemaic astronomy . Then, al-Biruni spent his first twenty-five years in Khwarezm where he studied the body of Islamic law, theology, grammar, mathematics, astronomy and other sciences. In the time, Khwarezm had long been famed for its advance culture. Its cities had magnificent palaces and religious colleges, and the sciences were esteemed and highly developed.
Earth, Heaven and Astronomy
Al-Biruni dealt with Earth in many of his works . He proposed a method to measure its radius, using trigonometric calculations. Let us see how he did. First of all, he measured the high of a hill by measuring the angles subtended by the hill at two points a known distance apart. Then he climbed the hill and measured the angle of the dip of the horizon .. In the Figure 1, it is shown the method as discussed in Using an Arabic mile equal to 1.225947 English miles, al-Biruni value of the radius was equal to 3928.77 English miles, which compares favourably, being different of 2%, with the mean radius of curvature of the reference ellipsoid at the latitude of measurement; this mean radius is of 3847.80 miles . He did this when he was at the Fort of Nandana in Punjab . Since the al-Biruni’s self-constructed instrument could have measure angles up to 10’ of the arc, the key to the precision of the measurement is a precise sine value, which he seems to have obtained from various Indian sources .
Figure (b). A 1973 USSR stamp depicting Al-Biruni
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