Abu Rayhan al-Biruni – Birūni means outside (from Khwarzm – Northern Iran)

- Khwarzm – conquered by Mahmud of Ghazna

- Expeditions – went to India to see what Indians believed and knew
- Translated some Sanskrit texts into Arabic – Sāṃkhya and Patañjali
- Probably northern Punjab
- Mahmud of Ghazna made Lahore an Islamic city -
He approaches religion not on the basis of heresiology – to put them down
- al-Biruni – all in all a scientific attempt to document another job ….
- Important to worth thinking in terms of orientalism
- Everything in India is different from what we do…
- Difference that becomes a hierarchy – he seems to have some of orientalist attitude
but his actual account is so much documentary …
- He praises the Greeks – as if in India Greeks have continued to live
- Andalusia – Islam and Judaism in a comparative religious mode – estalisbishing
dogmatism
- al-Birūni – Sufism<Sophia
- [Syncretic and assimilation in Saiyyad Sultān’s Nabībaṁśa ]
-
[Is there an Indian way of thinking?]

He who knows his soul, knows his lord, p.80 Gandhi 

- in Arabic, the word for self and soul is Nafs
- soul can be in different stages of refinement…
- microcosm as reflected in the macrocosm, macrocosm and microcosm …
-

Dāra Shikoh
- perhaps the only Mughal prince to take initiation into Sufis – under Mian Mir (Qadiri)
- Mian Mīr – friendly Guru Arjun – fifth Shik Guru.
- Mir – rule (Miri), Pir – saint (Piri)
- Sirr-i-Akbar – Persian translation of some of the Upanishads…
- Hidden – Book/Scripture – somewhere in the cosmos – the words of God is included
until they get sent down to people ---

- Ibn al-Arābi – Muslim Shakaracharya fromAndalusia – died in Damascus

- He came out with the idea of Insan-e kāmil