blacks and Africans in the Middle Ages 111Further reading:Julia Bolton Holloway, trans., Saint
Bride and Her Book: Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations(New-
buryport, Mass.: Focus Information Group, 1992); Mar-
guerite Tjader Harris, ed., Life and Selected Revelations
(New York: Paulist Press, 1990); Bridget Morris, St. Bir-
gitta of Sweden (Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press,
1999).
birth and infancy SeeCHILDHOOD.
birth control SeeCONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION.
al-Biruni, Abu Rayhan Muhammad (Beruni, Abu
l-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad)(973–ca. 1050)scholar,
scientist
Al-Biruni was born about 973 in Khwarizm in Persia in
- After its conquest by the Ghaznawids, he moved to
their capital, Ghazna in Afghanistan, where he gained the
patronage and protection of the ruling family. Little infor-
mation on his life has survived, but he is known to have
met IBNSINAor Avicenna when he was a young man.
They engaged in a bitter but short discussion about the
nature and transmission of heat and light.
His many works were written in Arabic, not his
native Persian, which he disparaged. The most impor-
tant were The Chronology of the Ancient Peoples,devising
a calendar, and treatises on the weather, and astronomy.
He also wrote a Description of India, in which he
described the philosophical and cosmological theories
of Hinduism, and his great encyclopedia of astronomy,
Al-Kanun al-Masudi.He composed many other works,
138 according to his own list and perhaps as many as - These included treatises on mineralogy, pharmacol-
ogy, and trigonometry. In all this material, he was cos-
mopolitan in his interest in the heritage of India, even
learning Sanskrit. He studied and wrote with great sci-
entific rigor, resisted theories based on mere supersti-
tion, and even posited a heliocentric cosmology. His
work was not translated into Latin during the Middle
Ages, and his originality was not appreciated by many
Muslim and Christian scientists, who had little access to
his ideas. According to tradition, he died on December
13 around 1050 in Ghazna.
Further reading: Muhammad ibn Ahmad Biruni,
The Exhaustive Treatise on Shadows: Translation and Com-
mentary,trans. E. S. Kennedy (Aleppo, Syria: Institute for
the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo,
1976); E. S. Kennedy, A Commentary upon Biruni’s Kitab
Tahdid al-Amakin: An Eleventh Century Treatise on Mathe-
matical Geography (Beirut: American University of
Beirut, 1973); D. J. Boilot, “Al-Bı ̄ru ̄nı ̄,” Encyclopedia of
Islam,1. 1236–1238; Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Introduc-
tion to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines: Conceptions of
Nature and Methods Used for Its Study by the Ikhwan
al-Safa’, al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina,rev. ed. (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1993).bishops SeeCLERGY AND CLERICAL ORDERS.Bisticci, Vespasiano da (1421–1498)Florentine book-
seller
Vespasiano da Bisticci was born in 1421; he set up a sta-
tionery shop near the center of Florence and soon
became a bookseller of deluxe manuscripts to the leading
princes and humanists of his time. He specialized in
manuscripts, written in new clear humanist script, of
classical, patristic, and scholarly texts.
His shop supplied the leading collectors of his day
with books. These included Cosimo de’ MEDICI. For
Cosimo’s library the shop’s 45 scribes produced 200 vol-
umes in 22 months, according to Bisticci’s publicity. He
was the book supplier of choice to several popes and
famous collectors such as FEDERICO da Montefeltro,
duke of Urbino; Matthias CORVINUS; and ALFONSOV the
Magnanimous of Aragon. He attended meetings of
princes and prelates outside Florence to sell manuscripts
to order. On occasion his very fast transcriptions were
not very accurate, but even exacting humanist scholars
continued to buy his products. He was unsympathetic to
the reproductions of texts by the new printing and
retired in 1482. He then produced biographies and lively
sketches of many of his clients, who were among the
most famous scholars and prince-collectors of his day.
He died in 1498.
See alsoBOOKS OR CODICES, HISTORY OF; PRINTING,
ORIGINS OF.
Further reading: Vespasiano da Bisticci, The Ves-
pasiano Memoirs, Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Cen-
tury,trans. William George and Emily Waters (London:
G. Routledge, 1926).Black Death SeePLAGUES.blacks and Africans in the Middle Ages In the
Middle Ages, the Muslim world was in direct contact
with black Africa. Europeans had contact with blacks
almost exclusively as imported slaves, whom they
acquired solely through Muslim merchants, who had
greater access and facility of contact with Africa, until the
15th century.
As part of an annual tribute paid by NUBIAor cara-
vans returning from the south, the slave trade extended
over all of North AFRICA. From there, black slaves were
sold in SPAIN. In both Christendom and Islam, these
black slaves were kept primarily as domestics in private
homes. However, there were armies of black slaves in
EGYPT, IRAQ, and North Africa. They were used for mili-
tary campaigns and for public works. Black eunuchs were