Dates

• Existence: 1814 - 1891

Biography

Robert Blair Munro Binning was the third son of David Monro of Softlaw (who by deed of entail assumed the surname and arms of Binning), by his second wife Isabella Blair. Binning had a career as an administrator in the East India Company Service in Madras. He was an enthusiastic linguist in Arabic, Persian and Hindi, in the pursuance of which he collected many manuscripts and other examples of the use of these languages, and published A grammar, with a selection of dialogues and familiar phrases, and a short vocabulary in modern Arabic, edited by Fletcher Hayes, in 1849. He travelled in the Cape of Good Hope, the Levant, Arabian peninsula and Egypt in 1845-1847, but had to quit his post for health reasons in 1850. For the next two years he travelled again, in Ceylon [Sri Lanka] and Persia [Iran], which he described in his published Journal of two years' travel in Persia, Ceylon, etc., (2 volumes, London: 1857). Binning bequethed his substantial book and manuscript collection to New College, Edinburgh, and Edinburgh University Library.

Found in 1 Collection or Record:

Or Ms 161: الآثار الباقيه عن القرون الخاليه al-Āthār al-bāqiyah ‘an al-qurūn al-khāliyah, 707 A.H., 1307 C.E.

 Item

Identifier: Or Ms 161

Scope and Contents This important work by the Persian polymath Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, who is better known as Abū Rayḥān "al-Bīrūnī" al-Khwārazmī (d. 440 A.H., 1048 C.E.) was written originally in circa 390 A.H. (1000 A.D.). The manuscript has a distinct multi-ethnic and multi-confessional flavour. Al-Bīrūnī, who calculated on the basis of measurements he took in the Punjab plain that the world was round, describes the systems of calculating time used by the known races of the world, and their associated...

Dates: 707 A.H.; 1307 C.E.

Found in: University of Edinburgh Library Heritage Collections / Manuscripts of the Islamicate World and South Asia