The Genius of their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment

A vibrant portrait of an age when Arabic enlightenment anticipated and inspired the European Renaissance, illuminated by its guiding figures and rivals, Ibn Sina and Biruni. In The Genius of their Age, S. Frederick Starr follows up his acclaimed Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age with a portrait of the Arab enlightenment and its key figures—Abu-Ali al-Husayn ibn-’Abdallah Ibn-Sina and Abu al-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni. A thousand years ago, these two intellectual giants—known as Ibn Sina and Biruni for short—achieved stunning breakthroughs in fields as diverse as medicine, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, geography, and physics. Biruni measured the earth more precisely than anyone else down to the sixteenth century, pondered a heliocentric universe, and hypothesized the existence of North and South America as inhabited continents. Ibn Sina’s writing on philosophy and metaphysics enriched the writings of countless European thinkers, including St. Thomas Aquinas, while