Imom Buxoriy xalqaro ilmiy-tadqiqot markazi bukhari.uz
Beruni’s next book titled as “Al-Qanun al-Mas’udi” (The Laws of the Ruler Mas’ud) was written in 1030. It contains detailed description of the basic principles and main rules of the mathematical astronomy, the main coordinates of the heavenly bodies and the ways of counting their directions. Most of the teachings and ideas of this book were compared with the data declared in the Suras of the Holy Qur’an. It proves that Beruni knew the essence of the Holy Qur’an perfectly well. Alongside with these data, this book contains the table of stars compiled by him — “Beruni’s Table of Stars”. Based on the tables compiled by Ptolemy and an Arabian astronomer as-Sufi, Beruni compiled the table of coordinates and sizes of 1029 stars. Supported with supple ments given in the Arabic manuscripts, this book was for the first time published in Haydarabad. In Russian, it was published in 1962 in Moscow. In Uzbekistan it was published in Uzbek and Russian in two volumes in 1973 by the “FAN” publishing house.
In his book “India”,the author describes the movement of the terrestrial Globe. Describing its features, Beruni states that he wrote in detail about the movements of the terrestrial Globe in his book written earlier under the title of “Miftahu ilmi-l-hay’a” (A Key to Astronomy). This monographic research work contained’ detailed description of the astronomic movement of the Earth. However, it is a pity this work did not reach us.
During the last years of his life, i.e. in 1045-1048, Beruni wrote his book about medicinal herbs titled as “Kitab as-saydana fi-t-tib” (A Book about Medicinal {derbs). This book became known as “Saydana” (Pharmacognosy) whose full manuscript was found in Turkey in the 20s-30s of the twentieth century. This book contains detailed information about medicinal peculiarities of herbs which grow in the East, mainly in Turkestan. This book was translated into Russian by a well-known orientalist U. I. Karimov and published in 1974 in the “FAN” publishing house. Besides, Beruni is known to have written a number of other books dealing with literary career, history of religions, teachings about kalam, Hadiths, as well as stories, legends and verses. It is orientalists and historians’s honourable duty to find these books and articles and make them known to the public, especially, to the scientists.
Abu Rayhan Beruni is considered to be one of the leading scholars of the East who, with his world-famous discoveries, made a considerable contribution to the world civilization. Beruni’s discoveries are widely used nearly in all the branches of modern science and culture. He was the first to create the form of the terrestrial Globe. This discovery is widely used not only by the specialists of geography but also by all educated people in their everyday activities. n The scholar Beruni made his greatest contribution to the science of astronomy. Although Beruni had made his discoveries relying on Ptolemy’s principle of geocentric system, he treated the terrestrial Globe as a moving system. It was a courageous scientific attempt at that time to put against the ruling views on the terrestrial Globe which considered it an unmovable unit. In his book “India”, Beruni states that “The movement of the terrestrial Globe does not contradict the accounts of astronomy but smoothly accompanies its movement with the changes taking place on the planet”. This idea contains the elements of inertial systems to which Galileo Galilee (1564-1642) came 600 years later than Beruni did.
In his book “About the types and methods of preparing astrolabe”, Beruni characterized the astrolabe made by Abu Said as-Sijzi stating the following: “I appreciate his ideas as a remarkable discovery because its root was based not on the movements of the sky but on the movements of the Earth”. He declared his persuasion on geocentrism in his book “Geodesy”. His ideas led the specialists to the ideas about heliocentrism. A Polish scientist Nicolay Copernicus (1473-1543) declared his views on this matter after 500 years later than Beruni had made his discoveries.
Beruni also created devices for astronomic observations. The main principles of doing astronomic observations by means of these devices have remained the same even today. Beruni was the first to lind out that the trajectory of movements of stars in the sky was not in the form of a circle but in the form of ellipses and created the methods of counting them. In the new era ,this idea was caught up by I. Kepler in Europe.
During his life in Jurjan, he was impatiently interested in the characteristic features of the Sun and, as a result of his observations, he was the first to correctly describe the peculiarities of the crown of the Sun. As he had stated in his writings, as a result of his persistency in his observations of the Sun, for a short period of time he lost his ability to see to some extent. Beruni promoted the idea about the structure of the light coming from the Sun. He stated that the light coming from the Sun consists not only of waves but also of particles. This idea found its proof only in the 20th century.
Beruni also made a considerable contribution to the science of mathematics. He was the first to define trigonometry as an independent branch of mathematics. In his book “The Laws of Mas’ud” Beruni described the smooth and spherical types of trigonometry and created the linear and square interpolative rules of trigonometric functions.
Beruni made a substantial contribution to the development of such sciences as geography, geodesy and geology. His books “Geodesy” and “Mineralogy” do have much to do with these sciences.
In his book “India”, Beruni describes the structure of the terrestrial Globe stating that the Globe contains dry land and sea and writes: “A quarter of the Globe is dry land and it is surrounded on the West and East by the Muhit Ocean (the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans). This ocean separates our land on both sides (on the West and on the East) (rom the dry land or inhabited islands on the other side of the ocean”. This idea is also supported in his book “The Laws of Mas’ud”. To make the long story short, we can state that by means of mathematical accounts Beruni had predicted that there must be another continent now called America 450 years before Columbus made a discovery about America.
Beruni proved that the southern parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are connected with each other and made a supposition that on the southern part of the Globe there is a piece of dry land covered with ice. The method of counting the geographic latitude used by Beruni 6 centuries ago is falsely considered to have been discovered by Tikho de-Brage in the 16th century.
The theory of geologic origins of rocks and the process of turning dry lands into seas as well as the process of turning seas into dry lands were also created by the scholar Beruni. He was the first to promote the idea of the centripetal force of the centre of the Earth. Beruni made a considerable contribution to the science of mineralogy and climatology. The idea of structural composition of minerals, the process of their crystallization, the process of twinkling of crystals was also promoted by Beruni. He also promoted the philosophical idea that there are different other worlds in the space. After 600 years, this idea was declared by Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and he was put to death in the fire of the inquisition for his antireligious ideas by the supporters of inquisition.
