Al-Biruni

The essentials

Al-Biruni was born in 973 in Khwarizm, in present-day Uzbekistan. When Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni invaded Khwarizm in 1017, he took several scholars, including Al-Biruni, to Ghazni. Al-Biruni came to India and learnt Sanskrit, studying religious and philosophical texts.

His book, Kitab-ul-Hind, written in Arabic, is simple and lucid. It is divided into 80 chapters on subjects such as religion and philosophy, festivals, astronomy, alchemy, manners and customs, social life, weights and measures, iconography, laws and metrology. He usually began with a question, followed with a description based on Sanskritic traditions, and concluded with a comparison with other cultures.

Key points

• Barriers to understanding he identified: differences in language (Sanskrit was very different from Arabic and Persian), differences in religious beliefs and practices, and the self-absorption and insularity of the local population.
• He depended largely on Brahmanical Sanskrit texts, so his account of Indian society reflected their viewpoint.
• He tried to explain the caste system by looking for parallels in other societies: in ancient Persia four social categories were recognised.
• He suggested that social divisions were not unique to India and that within Islam all men were equal, differing only in observance of piety.
• He accepted the Brahmanical description of caste but disapproved of the notion of pollution, arguing that everything that becomes impure strives to regain purity (as the sun cleanses the air).
• In practice, the system was less rigid than his textual sources suggested.

Common mistakes

• Writing that Kitab-ul-Hind was in Persian; it was in Arabic.