gems, arabic mineralogy, history of science, al-Biruni

Abu Raihan Biruni (973-1053 CE) was an Iranian scholar whose extraordinary achievements include predicting the existence of landmasses (North and South America) on the opposite side of the Earth and calculating the radius of the Earth five centuries before the European Renaissance. In Brilliant Biruni, Mohammad S. Kamiar presents the life of one of the greatest scholars in the history of the world: the story of a boy who became Biruni.