PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF AL-KHWARIZMI'S GEOGRAPHICAL VIEWS

Аннотация

This scientific article is devoted to the philosophical analysis of Al-Khwarizmi's geographical views. Keywords:Science and culture, Arab Caliphate, deterministic geographical imagination, Caliphs. The era in which Al-Khwarizmi lived was the 8th-9th centuries, a period of the Arab Caliphate's rise, the development of science and culture. Development, along with all branches of science of that time, also affected geography. Because during the time of the first Abbasid caliphs, the Arab Caliphate was still a single state, covering a vast territory from the Principian Peninsula to Western India and from the Aral Sea to the Arabian Sea. As a result, with the growth of economic needs in the Caliphate, the demand for geographical knowledge and discoveries also increased. As Academician I.Yu. Krachkovsky said, in search of knowledgethey went "from Andalusia toBukhara, from Baghdad to Qurtaba."1 In the Caliphate, trade caravans would travel from cities such as Egypt, Damascus, Merv, and Kot to China and India. Such trips to near and far countries, trade, and financial needs, required geographical knowledge to know not only the Caliphate countries, but also the distant unknown countries, and to know their large and small rivers, springs, wells, lakes, deserts, and mountains. There would even be people in the caravanserais in the cities who would write down the stories of travelers. The information collected from these stories and travel writers later became the basis for writing geographical works. It should be noted that no complete geographical work was written in the Caliphate until the time of Al-Khwarizmi. The first geographical works began to be written during the reign of Caliph al-Ma'mun (813- 833). Before analyzing the geographical and ontological views of Al-Khwarizmi, we think itis necessary todwell onthehistory ofgeographical ideas inantiquity before Khorezmi. The geographical knowledge of many ancient peoples spread mainly to their own country, which was considered the center of the Earth inhabited by people, and to their immediate neighbors. In particular, the Phoenicians are one of the ancient peoples with extensive geographical knowledge. Their ships sailed along the Mediterranean Sea and even totheAtlanticOcean. The geographical information of the ancient Greeks and many countries of Europe, Asia and Africa is given in Aristotle's work "Meteorology"2. In the work, the thinker puts forward his deterministic views, including his own unique considerations about atmospheric 1КрачковскийИ.Ю.,Арабскаягеографическаялитература,Избр.Произведения.Т.IV,М.-Л.,1957,с.18. 2БулгаковП.Г.,РозенфельдБ.А.,АхмедовА.,Мухаммадал-Хорезми.Москва«Наука»,1983,с.162. page1174 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ISSN:2692-5206,ImpactFactor:12,23 AmericanAcademicpublishers,volume05,issue04,2025 Journal: https://www.academicpublishers.org/journals/index.php/ijai precipitation, theformation of rivers, the seas andcurrents in them, winds andtheir formation, earthquakes, and volcanoes. The geography of the ancient era can be considered, without exaggeration, the geography of the Greeks. The Greeks were naturally diligent and meticulous, and they began to be interested in the structure of the world, natural phenomena, and geography very early. Geographical information in the epics and epics of Homer (9th century BC) and Hesiod (9th century BC), which are the oldest monuments of the Greeks, shows that ontological problems were also reflected inthe works ofthese thinkers. Homer believed that the arable part of the Earth was surrounded by the Ocean on all sides andthat theSun rises from theOcean and sets init. In theIliad, he says: Чиқибмавжли тинчоқар Океан сувидан, Янгинурларилааста водийларниёритди Қуёш. (Iliad,VII, 421)3. However, at this time, Homer's empirical research had not yet been formalized into a systematic theory. One of the most prominent representatives of such geographers was Herodotus (5th century BC). His most famous work that has come down to us is the "History",4 which, although on a historical subject, skillfully describes the world structure and geographical views of the Greeks of the 5th century BC. Herodotus tries to describe the world known to himas accurately as possible. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (275-195 BC) played an important role in the formation of the deterministic geographical concept of antiquity. Eratosthenes, in addition to being a geographer, was also an astronomer and mathematician. He was the first in the history of science to prove the connection between geography and geodesy, thereby laying the foundation for mathematical geography. He was the first to mathematically prove the spherical shapeoftheEarth and measure thelength ofone degree oftheEarth's meridian. After Eratosthenes, the great geographer of antiquity, Strabo, continued the tradition he began. He considered geography as a theory with a deep scientific basis and tried to show its place in social life. According to him, he s