Mohammad Ibn Ahmad Abu Rayhan Biruni

The book provides an account of the life and scientific achievements of a Muslim medieval scholar who pioneered in many scientific fields. This volume, Abu Rayhan Mohammad Ibn Ahmad Biruni, is the first from a series that, through critical fact-based studies, highlights Muslims contributions to the advancement of science, technology, arts, architecture, and literature. The “Muslim Pioneers in Science, Medicine and Literature” series are written in consideration of the fact that the Muslims past heritage has not been truly introduced to the people, especially young Muslims in the West. The dominant mosque-based narrative that shows only one dimension, the religious thoughts and figures, combined with language barriers, largely prevented other dimensions of Muslim heritage from being highlighted or becoming the subject of discussion and further study. “Muslim Pioneers in Science, Medicine and Literature” intends to help all people who are curious and interested in knowing who built the foundations of today’s civilization and its scientific developments. Those who led humans to reach this level of progress. Biruni’s volume consists of a literature review and eleven chapters. Chapter One gives a geographic and historical background of Khawrazm where Biruni is born and the situation of education and science at the end of the first millennium. Chapter Two talks about Biruni’s thirst in knowledge and that he had one mission in life: to explore and explain facts and realities as much as possible. Chapter Three explains how and why Biruni was so passionate for three citie: Khawrazm, Ghazni and Mecca. Chapter Four describes early inventions by Biruni and the way Biruni’s initial inventions boosted his future explorations. Chapter Five covers Biruni’s studies and breakthroughs in math, astronomy and natural science. Chapter Six to Chapter Ten details Biruni’s works in social science fields and points out that surprisingly, Biruni had more outstanding achievements in the social sciences than in astronomy or mathematics. The book explains that Biruni saw what his predecessors normally could not see, and he entered areas that no other scholars of his time dared enter. Last chapter of the book is allocated to Biruni’s fictional writings including his translation of fiction stories and his poetry.