Machine summary:
KIT ABUT - T AHDID (An unpublished masterpiece pf Al Biruni on Astronomical Geography) SAYYID HASAN BARANIY* THE UNIQUE MANUSCRIPT DESCRIBED ANUSCRIPTS written at Ghaznah in the reign of Sultan Mahmud are extremely rare.
But the destruction of Ghaznah, 'the bride of the East', on the embellishment of which its great rulers of the Sub· ktigin dynasty had so lavishly expanded their treasures, was so complete at the hands of'Alauddin of Gbur, nicknamed as_'Jahan Soz",-the world burner, in the middle of the sixth Hijrah century, and other subsequent invaders, including Chingiz Khan's Mongols, that the traces of the great monuments, dressed in marble in imitation of India's models, and deco• rated by the Iranian artists with their best motifs, have all been obliter• ated.
' But the book deserves a more exhaustive analysis of its contents and a very early publication of the text, preferably in photographs, which would serve as a palaeographical souvenir of Mahmud's times, and even more as a genuine memento, quite probably in Al Biruni's own hand.
(View the image of this page) The title of the book by an amanuensis of a somewhat later date than that of the original manuscript, shows that he believed it to be in the author's own handwriting, the last word to that effect, o1.
(View the image of this page) Similarly, it is the astronomer's province to determine the longitudes and the latitudes which indicate the exact situations of all the places on the Earth's globe.