A history teacher in Lucknow shows her class a page from a long eleventh-century work on India, written in Arabic by a scholar who had come from Khwarizm. The work covers religion, festivals, astronomy and customs, and many of its chapters open with a question. The scholar had read Arabic versions of Sanskrit fables and of works on astronomy and medicine, but he felt they were poorly written and wanted to do better. One student asks the teacher for which readers the scholar most probably wrote this work.
For which readers was this work most probably meant?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Peoples living along the frontiers of the subcontinent
Option (1) Scholars at the Abbasid court in Baghdad — Incorrect. Baghdad was a great centre of Arabic learning, so the guess is natural. Yet the readers he had in mind lived on the edges of the subcontinent, far from Baghdad.
Option (2) Peoples living along the frontiers of the subcontinent — Correct. The work is Al-Biruni's Kitab-ul-Hind. He wrote it in Arabic and probably meant it for peoples living along the frontiers of the subcontinent.
Option (3) Turkish nobles at the court of Ghazni — Incorrect. Ghazni was where Sultan Mahmud took Al-Biruni as a hostage. He spent years there, but his work was meant for readers on the frontiers of the subcontinent.
Option (4) Persian-speaking officials in Khwarizm — Incorrect. Khwarizm was Al-Biruni's homeland. It tells us where the author came from; his readers lived along the frontiers of the subcontinent.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.2 The Kitab-ul-Hind … |