al-Biruni

Works

• c. 997Questions and Answers (correspondence with Ibn Sina)

  Exchange of letters around 997: al-Biruni put questions on Aristotle’s On the Heavens and Physics – whether the heavens could have weight, whether other worlds are possible, whether a vacuum is really impossible – and Ibn Sina answered in defence of Aristotle; al-Biruni objected to the answers, and Ibn Sina’s student al-Maʿsumi replied.

• 1030India (Verifying All That the Indians Recount)

  Account of Indian religion, philosophy, astronomy, literature and customs, written after al-Biruni had learned Sanskrit in the lands conquered by Mahmud of Ghazna: he quotes Indian texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali, compares their doctrines with Greek and Sufi ones, and sets out to report rather than refute.

Position

Al-Biruni is on the map as a critical natural philosopher and as the author of the most careful account of Indian thought written from outside before modern times. In his correspondence with the young Ibn Sina around 997 he asked, among other questions, why the heavens should be neither heavy nor light, why other worlds could not exist and why a vacuum should be impossible, and he pressed Aristotle’s claims against observation; Ibn Sina defended Aristotle, at times sharply, al-Biruni objected again, and Ibn Sina’s student al-Maʿsumi took over the reply. His book on India begins with the obstacles to understanding another people – language, religion, customs and mutual contempt – and proposes to report the doctrines of the Hindus as they themselves state them. He quotes the Bhagavad Gita, the Puranas, Patanjali and the Samkhya, compares them with Greek, especially Platonic, and with Sufi ideas, and in each culture distinguishes the beliefs of the learned from those of the common people. He translated Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra with a commentary and a Samkhya text into Arabic and, by his own account, parts of Euclid and Ptolemy into Sanskrit. In astronomy and geography he insisted on measurement and on the uncertainty of what cannot be measured; he discussed whether the earth rotates and left the question undecided, since it makes no difference to astronomical calculation. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1964) placed his conception of nature beside those of the Brethren of Purity and Ibn Sina, and historians of science and of the study of religion count the India among the founding works of their fields.

Life & context

Abu l-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni was born on 4 September 973 in the outer district (bīrūn) of Kath, the capital of Khwarazm south of the Aral Sea in present-day Uzbekistan. He studied astronomy and mathematics with the prince Abu Nasr Mansur ibn ʿIraq and, driven out by political upheavals in Khwarazm, worked for rulers in Rayy and Gorgan – to Qabus of Gorgan he dedicated his Chronology of Ancient Nations around 1000 – and again at the Khwarazmian court in Gurganj. After Mahmud of Ghazna conquered Khwarazm in 1017, al-Biruni was taken to Ghazna and spent the rest of his life in the service of the Ghaznavids. He accompanied Mahmud’s campaigns into northwestern India, learned Sanskrit, measured latitudes and the radius of the earth, and in 1030 completed his book on India. He also wrote on chronology, astronomy, geodesy, mineralogy and pharmacology and dedicated his astronomical summa, the Masʿudic Canon, to Mahmud’s son Masʿud. He died in Ghazna, probably in 1048.

Further main works

• Chronology of Ancient Nations (al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʿan al-qurūn al-khāliya, c. 1000)
• Questions and Answers (al-Asʾila wa-l-ajwiba), correspondence with Ibn Sina (c. 997)
• On the Determination of the Coordinates of Cities (Taḥdīd nihāyāt al-amākin, 1025)
• India (Taḥqīq mā li-l-Hind, 1030)
• Arabic translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra (Kitāb Bātanjal)
• The Masʿudic Canon (al-Qānūn al-Masʿūdī, c. 1037)