ABU RAYHAN BERUNI’S CONTRIBUTION TO INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING: THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE IN HIS SCHOLARLY HERITAGE

Annotatsiya

This article examines the scholarly heritage of Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973–1048), an eleventh-century polymath from Khwarazm, with a focus on the role that language acquisition and cultural knowledge played in his contribution to intercultural understanding. Special attention is given to his major work, Kitab al-Hind (Researches on India), in which he combined firsthand observation, mastery of Sanskrit, and comparative analysis to present Indian religion, philosophy, and science to the Islamic world without prejudice. The article traces al-Biruni’s multilingual competence in Khwarazmian, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Syriac, and Hebrew, and shows how this competence enabled a methodologically rigorous, empirically grounded approach that anticipated modern comparative religion, anthropology, and translation studies. The study concludes that al-Biruni’s legacy remains a valuable model for contemporary intercultural dialogue.