Before Weber there was Ibn Khaldun, and before him, Biruni

SAMARKAND-BUKHARA.

Walking around in Uzbekistan, one encounters not only magnificent buildings, madrasas and tombs. The names this geography produced also revive in our minds questions about how world history is told. Bukhari, Maturidi, Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina, Biruni... Each of them opens the door to a great intellectual world that today we read by dividing it into separate disciplines. Looking at the sky from the madrasas of Samarkand, it is easy to remember astronomy. But when we think about how the people living under the same sky understood one another, how different beliefs and ways of life were perceived, how they encountered one another and how they defined one another, we need to dwell in particular on Biruni.

Biruni was born in 973 in Kath, the center of Khwarizm. His link to today's Uzbekistan comes from this historical geography. Of course we cannot fit the Khwarizm of that period within today's state borders; but a trip to Uzbekistan is a fitting occasion to remember the world of learning in which he was raised. The approach this great scholar, whom we know as a mathematician, astronomer and geographer, put forward for understanding human communities deserves more space in the history of social thought. Biruni's life and works show that investigating nature and investigating human beings can be nourished by the same scholarly curiosity.

When speaking of the history of sociology, or of social thought in general, especially its non-Western past, we have learned to mention Ibn Khaldun. Indeed, at times we have declared him the founder of sociology and reduced his thought to a few familiar concepts. Even so, talking about Ibn Khaldun's contribution to social thought opened an important window in our minds. Ibn Khaldun alone is in fact enough to change the Western-centered narrative of history and social thought. But when we widen that window a little and look at Biruni, who lived about three centuries before him, we see that Ibn Khaldun, in Cemil Meriç's phrase, was not "the only star in his own sky"; beside him there was a cluster of stars that was the work or the cause of a great Enlightenment. While traveling in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, you can discover the world those stars illuminated.

Of course, calling Biruni a sociologist or anthropologist, as with Ibn Khaldun, would be an anachronism. But these names remind us that even before sociology, society was being thought about, the different ways people live were being investigated, and the relations between beliefs and social order were being questioned. Biruni is one of the names in this long history that must not be neglected.

His famous work Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind (Verification of What Belongs to India) is, beyond being a book that gives information about India, an inquiry that confronts the difficulties of coming to know another world. Instead of entering this world with ready-made judgments, Biruni learned Sanskrit, talked with Indian scholars and read their texts. His comparison of Indian thought with Greek philosophy and the views of the Sufis is likewise built on this labor. To approach another's words without surrendering to the comfort of describing another person's idea in our own words... He took on, about a thousand years ago, this responsibility that even today we do not fulfill sufficiently. The method of the India book, in this respect, is as important as its content.

Learning a language here is not merely a communication skill. It is standing at the threshold of the door that opens onto a society's thought and accepting the limits of one's own knowledge. A concept whose translation we do not know sometimes carries an entire understanding of life. A behavior that looks strange from the outside is part of a meaningful order for the person who performs it. What draws our attention in Biruni's effort is the will not to pass judgment before learning this meaning. He himself is a Muslim; in researching another faith he does not abandon his own. But he tries not to confuse his own faith with the responsibility of accurately conveying what another believes.

When we recall Max Weber's famous interpretive sociology, Biruni's stance becomes even more striking. Weber warned the sociological tradition that before making explanations of social action that fit the theories or the clichéd concepts and typologies in our minds, we must understand the intention and meaning that the person acting attaches to his own action. According to this method, which he called verstehende sociology, understanding requires turning toward the meaning people attach to their behavior. The description of an action seen from the outside is not enough to explain its social meaning. To understand what a person who prays, trades or follows a custom is doing, one must also investigate what meaning he gives to what he does. This basic question of the approach Weber developed in his famous books The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Economy and Society feels familiar to us as we read Biruni's research stance.

It is therefore possible to think of Biruni as an early precursor of the interpretive approach. Here we are speaking not so much of a chain of influence as of an affinity regarding the understanding of society. That he turned to the thought world of the Hindus, instead of explaining one of their behaviors by the name given to it from outside, sets out an important condition of understanding. Whatever we may think about the truth of people's beliefs, we must investigate their meaning in their lives. To understand is not the same as to approve; but a sound critique too needs understanding.

That this stance emerged in a historical setting shaped by conquests is also worth dwelling on. Biruni's encounter with India took place within the political and military mobility of the era of Mahmud of Ghazni. His scholarly research too benefited from the possibilities of that world. But political superiority does not automatically provide knowledge about another society. There is a long distance between opening the gates of a country and entering the world of its people. The labor Biruni gave to Sanskrit shows that he was aware of this distance. Even under conditions of conquest, the researcher must be able to be a student before the person facing him, in order to learn.

Another feature that makes his work interesting is that the boundaries we draw today between the natural sciences and the human sciences are not present there with the same sharpness. Astronomical calculations, geography and calendar knowledge sit within the same research as beliefs, festivals and social customs. From this we can think the following: how people calculate time is not wholly separate from how they live it. The calculation that determines the date of a festival and the social meaning of that festival are parts of the same life. The mind that measures the sky can also turn to the world of meaning of the human being on earth.

Biruni also pays attention to the fact that within a society there are different ways of thinking and believing. The explanations of scholars and the practices of broad segments of the public do not always coincide. We need not adopt as is, in today's language, the distinction he makes between the elite (khawass) and the common people (awamm). But this distinction reminds us of the difficulty of describing a religion or a culture by looking at a single example. This is not only an early sociological point; even within sociology it indicates a very advanced level of sociological awareness against reductionism, generalizations and stereotyping. Just as a philosopher's text does not represent the way of life of the whole people, a ritual we encounter does not explain an entire intellectual tradition. The attention he gave to these differences is one of the important aspects of his research. Biruni's approach to Indian thought can be read from this angle as well.

By comparing Greek thought with Indian thought, and the expressions of the Sufis with ideas in other traditions, Biruni shows that humanity does not and cannot consist of worlds wholly closed to one another. There may be kinships among questions expressed in different languages. For this there is no need to make all beliefs the same, or to assume in advance that behind the differences lies a single unchanging essence. The value of comparison is to be able to see the differences more clearly while discovering shared questions. Encountering in another a thought that feels familiar to us can be an occasion to rethink both that thought and ourselves.

We need such attentiveness when looking at today's rising Asia as well. We talk about countries through their economic size, military power and trade routes. But we often devote less effort to knowing the world of their people. Encountering the historical heritage in Uzbekistan must therefore be able to go beyond taking photographs. On this occasion we should also remember the thought that brought the madrasas into being, and the way that thought came to know the human being, and draw lessons from it.

Looking at the history of social thought from Samarkand, a broad place must be opened for Biruni as well, alongside Ibn Khaldun.