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Category Archives: Geographics Scientists

Geographics Scientists

Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi

04-Jul-09

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi

Al-Khwarizmi was born in the epicentre of an Islamic empire which then stretched from the Mediterranean to India. This was a very fortuitous time for Arabic learning. The rulers of the Abbasid dynasty who were leading this huge empire, founded an academy in Baghdad called the House of Wisdom where the learned men collected and translated all the scientific works that they could get hold of. House of Wisdom had a large library – first famous library established after the library of Alexandria was destroyed.

Al-Khwarizmi was one of the learned men who worked in the House of Wisdom. His interests lied in the fields of algebra, geometry, astronomy and geography. His now most famous work is that from which we got the name for algebra itself – Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala.

Abu Ja’far Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780, Khwarizm – c. 850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, who worked most of his life as a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.

His Algebra was the first book on the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. Consequently he is considered to be the father of algebra, a title he shares with Diophantus. Latin translations of his Arithmetic, on the Indian numerals, introduced the decimal positional number system to the Western world in the twelfth century. He revised and updated Ptolemy’s Geography as well as writing several works on astronomy and astrology.

Ahmad ibn Fadlan – Geographics Scientist

11-Sep-07

Ahmad ibn Fadlan ibn al-Abbas ibn Rašid ibn Hammad (أحمد إبن فضلان إبن ألعباس إبن رشيد إبن حماد) was a 10th century Muslim writer and traveler who wrote an account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars, the Kitab ila Malik al-Saqaliba كتاب إلى ملك الصقالبة.

Manuscript tradition

For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, as transmitted in the geographical dictionary of Yaqut (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghar, Khazar, Khwarizm, Rus), published in 1823 by Fraehn. Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by the Turkish scholar of Bashkir origin Zeki Validi Togan in the library of the Iranian city of Mashhad. The manuscript MS 5229 dates from the 13th century (7th cent. Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan’s text (pp. 390-420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amin Razi called Haft Iqlim “Seven Climes”.

Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni – The Father of Indology

10-Sep-07

al-biruni moslem scientistAbu Rayḥan Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Biruni (September 15, 973 in Kath, Khwarezm – December 13, 1048 in Ghazni) was a Persian Muslim polymath of the 11th century, whose experiments and discoveries were as significant and diverse as those of Leonardo da Vinci or Galileo, five hundred years before the Renaissance; al-Biruni was well-known in the Muslim world, but unlike some of his other Muslim contemporaries (such as Abulcasis, Alhacen, and Avicenna), al-Biruni’s name was little known in the Western world.

He was a scientist and physicist, an anthropologist, an astronomer and astrologer, an encyclopedist and historian, a geographer, a geodesist and geologist, a mathematician, a pharmacist and physician, a philosopher and Ash’ari theologian, a scholar and teacher, and a traveller, who contributed greatly to all of these fields. He was also the first Muslim scholar to study India and the Brahminical tradition, and has been described as the father of Indology, the father of geodesy, and “the first anthropologist”. Along with Geber and Ibn al-Haytham, al-Biruni was also one of the earliest leading exponents of the experimental method, and the first to conduct elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena.

George Sarton, the father of the history of science, described al-Biruni as:

“One of the very greatest scientists of Islam, and, all considered, one of the greatest of all times.”

A. I. Sabra desribed al-Biruni as:

“One of the great scientific minds in all history.”

The Al-Biruni crater, on the Moon, is named after al-Biruni.

Biography

He was born in Khwarazm (formerly north-eastern part of the Persian Samanid dynasty) presently in Khiva, Uzbekistan. He studied mathematics and astronomy under Abu Nasr Mansur.

He was a colleague of the fellow Persian Muslim philosopher and physician Abu Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna),

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