al-Biruini and Ibn Khaldun: Founders of the Humanities

The Worldly Birth of Humanities in Islamic Civilization

The study of Humanities is wide reaching and all encompassing. Disciplines such as literature, language, history, cultural anthropology, philosophy, and religious studies are all under the umbrella of the humanities. Islamic civilization is known for its advances in science, and even knowledge in general during the time period 600-1525. Chase Robinson in his work Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives goes into the details of thirty Islamic individuals that span this time period. Two individuals will be the focus of this paper, al-Biruni and Ibn Khaldun. Both of these scholars made huge contributions to the development of the Humanities discipline that even today are still being looked at by modern scholars.

Al-Beruni was an eleventh century scholar who studied many different disciplines including astronomy, mathematics, linguistics, culture, and anthropology. “The eleventh century has even been called the age of Biruini’, his genius comparable to that of Archimedes” (Robinson 113). Biruini’s work has had long lasting impacts on more than just Islamic civilization. His work reached the western world, and scholars still look to him for answers. “al-Biruini’s interests and enthusiasms extended not only to fields that were conventionally adjacent to to mathematics and astronomy, such as geography, astrology, medicine, pharmacology and mineralogy, but also to what we would not understand to be the humanities - to history, culture, even a kind of comparative religion,” (Robinson 113). Biruini’s intelligence is unrivaled by any other scholar of his time. He wrote more than any other scholar, in many more subjects of study than anybody else throughout his life.

One skill that made Biruini such a versatile scholar is that he was versed in many different languages. During the eleventh century when Biruini was alive, many books that had crucial information about history or science was not written in Arabic. Being able to speak and write multiple languages, and also having the ability to translate works in different languages into Arabic, was a crucial part of Biruini’s success. “What is clearer is that his travels and training gave him the ability to translate from Sanskrit, and that he could also work with Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac,” (Robinson 114). Because of his vast knowledge of language, he was able to understand much of what was going on in the greater middle east, also giving the people who spoke the other languages a chance to learn from him.

Ahmed mentions in his article “The First Anthropologist” that Biruini “ Al-Beruni's dispassionate commentary measures up to the highest contemporary scientific standards in the social sciences,” (Ahmed 9). Biruini did not just stop at astronomy and mathematics. What he is considered most known for is his contributions to the social sciences. Biruini would study customs and the rituals that he encountered throughout his life which in a way became the earliest form of cultural anthropology. “Several Muslim historians, most notably al-Mas’udi and Rashid al-Din took serious interest in non-islamic South and East Asia; but al-Biruini, living as he did in a grand moment of Ghaznavid imperialism, was singular in his sustained interest in cultural comparison. He laid foundations of a Ghaznavid Orientalism that the dynasty was too short lived to build.” (Robinson 116). Biruini was a very important figure not only to his own time period, but even today in age because of his written work detailing the history and culture that was going on at the time. Without his work, anthropology might not be as clear cut a discipline as it is today.

Another scholar that was similar to Biruini lived almost four hundred years after him. Ibn Khaldun was also a historian and sociologist. It has been noted that Ibn Khaldun has made large contributions to the understanding of human nature. “human nature has innately equal inclinations towards doing good and evil. With this even emphasis on the weight of good and evil elements, the Quranic perspective appears to give human nature a fundamental dialectical characteristic,” (Dhaouadi 576). Ibn Khaldun focused much of his work on the human nature. Basically, what he was working on, was to discover the basic elements of what makes a person human. What do all humans have in common, and what makes them different are the starting points for Khaldun's thought regarding human nature.

Khaldun had an immense interest in human nature because it is what he though was the main contributor to civilizations rise and fall. Khaldun is regarded as the the best scholar studying and recording civilization, and even going so far as to interpret why the civilization fell. One chain of thought that stems from Khaldun is that religion, especially Islam is what contributed to Islamic civilization thriving throughout 850-1525. His thought was that because Islam is the religion of the good human nature, and that because the religion was the uniting factor between the different civilization throughout the middle east that Islam was big contributing factor to the strength Islamic civilization had, (Dhaouadi 582). Making these connections between human nature, the rise and fall of civilization is something that only Biruini had even come close to during this time. Both of these scholars that existed were huge contributors and even founders to a whole discipline that I have dedicated the last four years of my life to, the humanities. These scholars found a way to develop a methodology for understanding the things that might seem most strange to some people.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Akbar. "Al-Beruni: The First Anthropologist." RAIN, 60 (1984): 9-10.

Dhaouadi, Mahmoud. "The Forgotten Concept of Human Nature in Khaldunian Studies." Asian     Journal of Social Science, 36.3/4 (2008): 571-589.

Robinson, Chase F. Islamic Civilization in Thirty lives: The First 1,000 Years. California University of California Press, 2016.