BĪRŪNĪ, AL- (ah 362–442/973–1051 ce), more fully known as Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī; Muslim scientist and polymath. Among the most brilliant, eclectic, and fertile minds produced by Islamic civilization in its peak middle period, al-Bīrūnī is a genius to be compared to but two contemporary Muslim literati, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna; d. 1037), the medical philosopher, with whom he maintained an intermittent correspondence, and Firdawsī (d. 1020), author of the heralded and often illustrated Persian epic, the Shāh-nāmah. Firdawsī shared with al-Bīrūnī the unhappy fate of being a scholar-prisoner in the court of the Turkic warrior Maḥmūd of Ghaznah (r. c. 1000–1030).

Life

Al-Bīrūnī's life illustrates the keen interest that Persian-Turkic dynasts of the...