BBC audio 45 minutes above: Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his eleventh-century book the India.Born in around 973 in the central Asian region of Chorasmia, al-Biruni became an itinerant scholar of immense learning, a master of mathematics, medicine, astronomy and many languages. He corresponded with the age’s greatest scientist, Avicenna, and made significant contributions to many fields of knowledge.In 1017 al-Biruni became a member of the court of the ruler Mahmud of Ghazna. Over the course of the next thirteen years he wrote the India, a comprehensive account of Hindu culture which was the first book about India by a Muslim scholar. It contains detailed information about Hindu religion, science and everyday life which have caused some to call it the first work of anthropology.With:James MontgomeryProfessor of Classical Arabic at the University of CambridgeHugh KennedyProfessor of Arabic in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of LondonAmira BennisonSenior Lecturer in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of CambridgeProducer: Thomas Morris.

Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Bīrūnī (Persian: ابوریحان محمد بن احمد بیرونی), often known as Alberuni, Al Beruni or variants, (born 5 September 973 in Kath, Khwarezm (now in Uzbekistan), died 13 December 1048 in Ghazni, today’s Afghanistan) was a Persian scholar and polymath of the 11th century.[1][2]
The early Muslims duplicated the technique of Eratosthenes, to measure the circumference of the earth, 200 years before Al Biruni. But, that technique had a basic flaw. Al Biruni came up with a better idea, to measure the circumference of the earth, based on trigonometry. It is beautifully demonstrated by James Al Khalili in his BBC documentary, the Empire of Reason. He quotes Al Biruni’s book and then applies the technique himself:
To contrast the scientific achievements of Al Biruni, with the dark ages in Europe, worth special mention is a remarkable two-volume treatise by Andrew Dickson White, founding President of Cornell University, titled A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, published in 1896. The whole text of the two volumes of the book can be read on http://www.archive.org. Here is one example, pertaining to the earth:
The doctrine of the spherical shape of the earth, and therefore the existence of the antipodes, was bitterly attacked by theologians who asked: ‘Is there anyone so senseless as to believe that crops and trees grow downwards? . . . that the rains and snow fall upwards?’ The great authority of St Augustine held the Church firmly against the idea of the antipodes and for a thousand years it was believed that there could not be human beings on the opposite side of the earth – even if the earth had opposite sides. In the sixth century, Procopius of Gaza brought powerful theological guns to bear on the issue: there could not be an opposite side, he declared, because for that Christ would have had to go there and suffer a second time. Also, there would have had to exist a duplicate Eden, Adam, Serpent, and Deluge. But that being clearly wrong, there could not be any antipodes. QED!