Al-Jazarī, Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices

It was at the request of the Artuqid sultan of Diyarbakir, Nasīr al-Dīn Mahmūd (reigned 1200–22), that Abū al-Izz ibn Ismā‘īl al-Razzāz al-Jazarī, also known as Badī’ al-Zamān, engineer to the sultan, wrote his Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices[1]. A work in six parts, it covers the production of water clocks, entertaining automata used during banquets and for washing or bloodletting, various fountains, machines allowing water to be pumped from wells or rivers, locks and other mechanical devices.

His treatise should be seen in the light of the scientific discoveries of ancient Greece, which were disseminated in the Muslim world through compilations translated into Arabic, like those of Philo of Byzantium, who wrote the first treatise on ingenious mechanical devices (third century BC), and Hero of Alexandria (first century BC). These treatises were usually accompanied by illustrations of machines: that of al-Jazarī was considered one of the most comprehensive, contain information about the production and functioning of the complex mechanical devices that he described.

According to Vitruvius, it is to Ctesibius of Alexandria, a third-century BC Egyptian engineer, that we owe the first clepsydra and the first musical automaton. In the ninth century, Arab automata began to reach the Christian West. Admired diplomatic gifts, they were described by scholars and considered mirabilia (marvels, ‘ajā’ib). The clepsydra given by Hārūn al-Rashīd to Charlemagne was described by Einhard (770–840) in his Vita Karoli Magni and is known to us though a painting from a treatise by al-Jazarī kept in Istanbul and now dispersed[2]. There are also reports from European embassies describing in great detail the automata that they had admired on their missions. The embassy of Otto I to Constantine VII of Byzantium mentions the automata guarding the throne: large gold lions with articulated tails that roared[3]. An Arab chronicler, who reported on the visit by Byzantine ambassadors to Caliph al-Muktadir in Baghdad in 917, described an automaton springing out of the ground in the form of a tree with branches full of singing birds, which filled the dome of the room with jets of rosewater and musk.

The treatise of al-Jazarī was widely disseminated – its many copies are evidence of medieval interest in what might be described as entertainment technology. The copy produced by Farrukh ibn ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Kātib al-Yaqutī al-Mawlawī in 1315, now dispersed, is the best version of it because of the quality of its paintings, masterpieces of Mamluk art, and the great deal of information they supply. It also bears witness to the complex set of influences and contacts with Asia and the Iranian, Christian and Indian worlds that existed in the Syro-Egyptian sphere.

Several pages of the 1315 copy were kept in Istanbul before being dispersed to several collections. Its illustrations include the depiction of an automaton that distributed drinks wearing a tunic whose folds are reminiscent of contemporary Byzantine productions[4]. The illustration of an elephant clock[5], whose various parts are numbered using the alphanumeric system in the Greek alphabet, is evidence of ties to both the Indian world – the elephant and its mahout – and the Western medieval world – the automata of medieval belfries that also announced the passage of time in an entertaining way.

[2] Library of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, cod. 3606.

[3] Jannic Durand, Liutprand of Cremona on behalf of Otto I (912–974).

[4] David Collection, Copenhagen, inv. 20/1988.

[5] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 55.51.23.