Abu al-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruri Essay - 2360 Words

Introduction Al-Biruni or in full AbÃ… « al-RayhÄ n Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-BÄ «rÃ… «nÄ « was a Persian-Khwarezmian Muslim scholar and polymath. He was born in 973 and his contributions to science made him one of the greatest Muslim scientists and astronomers. He was well versed in physics, mathematics, geography, history, ethnography, anthropology and astronomy. During his time of becoming a great polymath, he survived some unusual political changes such as change of six princes. There is not enough information about his early life available but from what it is known; khwarezm was located beyond â€Å"Amu Darya† river, a river that was called Oxus River at those times. Al-Biruni’s educator, Khwarezm-Shah was a member of the parliament or in better words†¦show more content†¦Abu Nasr Mansur was a famous mathematician and astronomer of the time who was a prince of the Banu Iraq, the ruling family of khwarezm. In the far bygone, when Achaemenids were the great empires of Ir an, Khwarezm or Chorasmia was a province of Iran. This province then became an empire in 1077 when the Turkic commander named Anushtigin Gharchai dominated the province and became the first Khwarezm Shah. It took generations of Khawrezm Shahs or kings of Khwarezm to conquer much of Iran and Central Asia until the year of 1231 when the last Khwarezm Shah was killed and the kingdom was taken over by the Mongols. Al-Biruni joined Abu Nasr’s teaching classes at a very early age. The great work of Abu Nasr Mansur and his enthusiasm made him to be seriously involved in science as early as the age of seventeen in which he computed the latitude of Kath by observing the maximum altitude of the sun in the year of 990. As a young man, al-Biruni was engaged into more theoretical subjects in which he could use the help of mathematics and physics to apply his ideas to astronomy. These theories he was coming up with, made him to write numerous short articles of his works when he was only 22 years old in the year of 995. His surviving work of Cartography from those ages is a work on map projections as well as a description of his own projection of a hemisphere onto a planet. It is very interesting to see how this young scientists