Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, known as al-Biruni (c. 973 – c. 1050) was a Khwarazmian Iranic scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of modern geodesy", Founder of Indology and the first anthropologist.
Al-Biruni was well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences; he also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist, and linguist. He studied almost all the sciences of his day and was rewarded abundantly for his research in many fields of knowledge. Royalty and other powerful elements in society funded al-Biruni's research and sought him out with specific projects in mind. Influential in his own right, al-Biruni was himself influenced by the scholars of other nations, such as the Greeks, from whom he took inspiration when he turned to the study of philosophy. A gifted linguist, he was conversant in Khwarezmian, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit, and also knew Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. He spent much of his life in Ghazni, then capital of the Ghaznavids, in modern-day central-eastern Afghanistan.
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