Al-Biruni
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni 973 – after 1050 ordinarily known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian scholar and polymath during a Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously the "founder of Indology", "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of advanced geodesy", and the first anthropologist.
Al-Biruni was alive versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences, and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist, and linguist. He studied most all the sciences of his day and was rewarded abundantly for his tireless research in numerous fields of knowledge. Royalty and other effective elements in society funded Al-Biruni's research and sought him out with particular projects in mind. Influential in his own right, Al-Biruni was himself influenced by the scholars of other nations, such(a) as the Greeks, from whom he took inspiration when he turned to the study of philosophy. A gifted linguist, he was conversant in Khwarezmian, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and also knew Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. He spent much of his life in Ghazni, then capital of the Ghaznavids, in modern-day central-eastern Afghanistan. In 1017 he travelled to the Indian subcontinent and wrote a treatise on Indian culture entitled Tārīkh al-Hind History of India, after exploring the Hindu faith practiced in India. He was, for his time, an admirably impartial writer on the customs and creeds of various nations, his scholarly objectivity earning him the names al-Ustadh "The Master" in recognition of his remarkable report of early 11th-century India.