Al-Biruni
He measured the radius of the earth from a mountaintop and studied India without contempt. A scientist's mind in a scholar's century.
Al-Biruni was perhaps the most exact mind of the medieval world. He calculated the earth's circumference with remarkable accuracy, debated Ibn Sina about the nature of the heavens, and wrote on mathematics, astronomy, mineralogy, and the calendars of every people he could find. Carried to India in the wake of conquest, he learned Sanskrit and wrote a study of Hindu thought so patient and fair that it remains a model of how to describe a culture one does not belong to. Compare honestly, he insisted, and report what is, not what you wish were true.
Places
Ideas
Words
“I do not shun the truth from whatever source it may come.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Khwarazm
Born in the oasis land of Khwarazm, south of the Aral Sea.
Measuring the Earth
Calculated the earth's radius from a mountaintop with remarkable accuracy, treating measurement as the philosopher's duty.
The Study of India
Learned Sanskrit and wrote a patient, even-handed account of Indian thought, after calculating the earth's circumference from a mountaintop.
Death in Ghazni
Died after a life of exact measurement across astronomy, mineralogy, and the calendars of many peoples.
Influence
Influenced by
- Aristotle
Al-Biruni pressed Aristotelian physics on exactly the points where it could be checked, questioning the perfect circularity of the heavens and the impossibility of a vacuum, and put those objections to Ibn Sina in writing.
Influenced
- Ibn Sina
Al-Biruni and Ibn Sina exchanged sharp letters debating the nature of the heavens and the limits of Aristotle.
- Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
The tradition of precise observation and calculation that al-Biruni represents is the one al-Tusi institutionalized at Maragheh, where an observatory could do systematically what a single scholar had done alone.
