Everything about Al-khazini totally explained
Abd al-Rahman al-Khazini (flourished 1115–1130) was a
Muslim scientist,
physicist,
astronomer,
chemist,
biologist,
mathematician and
philosopher of
Byzantine Greek descent from
Merv, then in the
Khorasan province of
Persia but now in
Turkmenistan, who made important contributions to
physics and
astronomy. He is considered the greatest scholar from Merv.
Robert E. Hall wrote the following on al-Khazini:
Early life
Al-Khazini was a
Byzantine Greek slave of the
Seljuq Turks, who was taken to
Merv after the Seljuq victory over the
Byzantine Emperor
Romanus IV. His master, al-Khazin, gave him the best possible education in mathematical and
philosophical subjects. Al-Khazini was also a pupil of the famous
Persian poet, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher
Omar Khayyám (1048-1131), who was living in Merv at the time.
Al-Khazini later became a mathematical practitioner under the patronage of the Seljuk court, under Sultan
Ahmed Sanjar. Little else is known about his life, but it's known that he refused rewards and handed back 1000
dinars sent to him by the wife of an
Emir, and that he usually lived on 3 dinars a year.
Al-Khazini's
Zij as-Sanjarī was later translated into
Greek by
Gregory Choniades in the 13th century and was studied in the
Byzantine Empire.
The Book of the Balance of Wisdom
Al-Khazini is better known for his contributions to
physics in his treatise
The Book of the Balance of Wisdom, completed in 1121, which remained an important part of
Muslim physics. The book contains studies of the
hydrostatic balance, its construction and uses, and the theories of
statics and
hydrostatics that lie behind it, as developed by his predecessors, his contemporaries, and himself. It also contains descriptions on the instruments of his predecessors, including the araeometer of
Pappus and the
pycnometer flask of
al-Biruni, as well as his own hydrostatic balance and specialized
balances and
steelyards.
Al-Biruni and al-Khazini were the first to apply
experimental
scientific methods to the fields of
statics and
dynamics, particularly for determining
specific weights, such as those based on the theory of
balances and
weighing. He and his Muslim predecessors unified statics and dynamics into the science of mechanics, and they combined the fields of
hydrostatics with dynamics to give birth to
hydrodynamics. They applied the mathematical theories of
ratios and
infinitesimal techniques, and introduced
algebraic and fine
calculation techniques into the field of statics. They were also the first to generalize the theory of the
centre of gravity and the first to apply it to
three-dimensional bodies. They also founded the theory of the
lever and created the "science of
gravity" which was later further developed in medieval Europe. The contributions of al-Khazini and his Muslim predecessors to mechanics laid the foundations for the later development of
classical mechanics in Renaissance Europe.
The first of the book's eight chapters deals with his predecessors' theories on the
centre of gravity, including
Al-Razi (
Latinized as
Rhazes),
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, and
Omar Khayyám. He also draws attention to the failure of the
ancient Greeks to clearly differentiate between
force,
mass, and
weight, and he goes on to show awareness of the weight of the air, and of its decrease in
density with
altitude. The strict definition for a specific
weight is given by Al-Khazini in
The Book of the Balance of Wisdom:
Al-Khazini defines heaviness in traditional
Aristotelian terms as an inherent property of heavy bodies:
denser air when nearer to the centre of the
Earth (derived from the
Archimedes principle), and that the
weight of heavy bodies increase as they're farther from the centre of the Earth (derived from
al-Quhi and
Alhacen's theories that weight varies with the distance from the centre of the Earth), al-Khazini postulated that the
gravity of a body
varies with its distance from the centre of the
Earth:
thiql" in Arabic) is both an idea similar to the modern concept of
gravitational potential energy,
and the
moment of a force relative to a point (both meanings were derived from
al-Quhi and
Alhacen). In either case, al-Khazini appears to have been the first to propose that the gravity of a body varies with its distance from the centre of the Earth. In his first sense of the word "gravity", the concept wasn't considered again until
Newton's law of universal gravitation in the 18th century, but in his second sense of the word, the concept was considered again by
Jordanus de Nemore in the 13th century.}}
Treatise on Instruments
His
Risala fi'l-alat (
Treatise on Instruments) has seven parts describing different
scientific instruments: the
triquetrum,
dioptra, a
triangular instrument he invented, the
quadrant and
sextant, the
astrolabe, and original instruments involving
reflection.
Evolution
Al-Khazini wrote the following on
evolution in
chemistry and
biology, and how they were perceived by
natural philosophers and common people in the
Islamic world at the time:
Further Information
Get more info on 'Al-khazini'.
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