Clepsydra with musician automata

Al-Jazarī is part of the long tradition of treatises dedicated to the instruments for measuring time, to which he devotes over half his book, through six clepsydras (water clocks) and four candle clocks. Like his contemporaries, he had access to Greek, Persian and Byzantine source texts; the mention of Archimedes by Ridwān al-Sā‘ātī[1] confirms this; we know that Archimedes’ treatise on clockmaking (212 BC) had already been translated into Arabic in the ninth century, with additional Sassanid and Byzantine commentary.

During the Islamic period, clocks were produced continuously in the Near East. The oldest surviving description of a clepsydra is incomplete and comes from the treatise by Ibn Khalaf al-Murādī[2]: the motion generated by concentric siphons was transmitted to the automata by rings and levers.

This folio opens the second part of the first chapter; it depicts a clepsydra that functions in the same way. Musicians in front of a wall are set in motion and play during the passing of the hours. On the ramparts, in front of the twelve merlons painted in silver, blackened with time and topped with the same number of sequins, a figure advances, indicating with his hands the time of day or night. A coat of arms decorates the wall above the orchestra: a heraldic eagle surmounting a cup adorned with a plant-motif medallion. The eagle motif was used in both East and West[3]: a symbol of power, often linked to the Turkish world, it may be found on various supports[4]. The motif of the footed cup with a globular belly and an out-turned rim is reminiscent of the prototypes known in the Iranian sphere where the art of inlaid metal experienced a golden age in the city of Herat[5] in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This type of blazon was also known in the Mamluk world, in connection with Tuquztimur, the cupbearer of Sultan Qalā’ūn[6] – the eagle surmounts a goblet. This illustration perhaps refers to scenes of daily life; we know, for example, that in Cairo, an orchestra played above the Bāb Zuweila gate during official ceremonies.

[2] Al-Muradi, who worked in Spain in the eleventh century, wrote Kitāb al-asrār fī natā’īj al-afkār (The Book of Secrets about the Results of Thoughts).

[3] On Western coats of arms, the eagle was common as the lion. There is one, for example in the Grand armorial équestre de la Toison d’or, which contains depictions of Norman coats of arms of the late thirteenth century (Lille, c. 1435 – Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris, ms. 4790, fol. 108).

[4] Lustreware dish, walls of the Citadel of Saladin in Cairo, etc.

[5] Bobrinsky bucket, Herat 1163, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, CA-12687.