AL-JAZARI
And the History of the Water Clock
Al-Jazari’s full name is given at the
start of his book[1]
He was al-Shaykh Ra’is al-A’mal Badi’ al-Zaman Abu al-‘Izz ibn Isma’il
ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari The first three titles indicate that he was a
chief engineer (Ra’is al-A’mal), and was unique and unrivalled, (Badi’
al-Zaman).
The al-shaykh was a title of honour indicating
that he was a learned and a dignified person.
The word ‘Al-Jazari’ indicates that his family came from
Jazirat ibn ‘Umar in Diyar Bakr. We do not know the date of his birth
and our information about his life is obtained from his book.
Al-Jazari was in the service of three Artuqid rulers: Nur
al-Din Muhammad ibn Arslan (570-581/ 1174-1185), Qutb al-Din Sukman ibn
Muhammad (681-697/ 1185-1200) and Nasir al-Din Mahmud ibn Muhammad
(597-619/ 1200-1222.).
It was in response to the request of Nasir al-Din Mahmud
that al-Jazari wrote his book. He says in his introduction that he
started his service at the Artuqid court in the year 570/1174, and that
when he started writing the book he had already spent twenty five years
in the service of Nur al-Din Muhammad, the father, and Qutb al-Din
Sukman, the brother. From this information we conclude that
probably al-Jazari started writing his book in the year 595/1198, two
years before Nasir al-Din became king. From the Oxford manuscript we
learn that al-Jazari finished writing his book on 4 Jumada the Second,
602/ 16 January 1206. The oldest extant copy (Topkapi Sarayi Libray,
Ahmet III, 3472) was completed by Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn ‘Uthman al-Haskafi
at the end of Sha’ban 602/ 10 April 1206. From al-Haskafi’s colophon we
learn that al-Jazarī was not living at this date. We conclude besides,
that he died in the year 602/1206, just few months after he had
completed his work.
Āmid, that is called now Diyar Bakr
[2],
was on the left bank of the Tigris. Travellers who visited the city
during the 11th century admired its buildings, its walls and
its affluence. In 438/1046, Nasir-i Khusraw
visited the city and wrote: ‘ I have seen many cities and
fortresses at the extremities of the world in the lands of the Arabs,
Persians, Indians and Turks, and yet I have never seen anything
comparable to
Āmid
anywhere in the world; nor have I heard anyone claim that he had seen
any place matching this glorious city’
[3]
During this period
Āmid
was prosperous, and it enjoyed a period of peace and stability. Thus al-Jazari
lived in the court of the Artuqid kings under conditions favourable for
the invention and construction of his machines and for writing.
2- Al-Jazari’s book:
The
title of the oldest manuscript of al-Jazari’s book is: al-Jamiʿ bayn
al-ʿilm wa ʿamal, al-nafiʿ fi sinaʿat al-hiyal
الجامع
بين العلم و العمل النافع في صناعة الحيل
(A
Compendium on the Theory and Practice of the Mechanical Arts). The
Arabic edition (of al-Hassan) carries this title. The English
translation of Hill carries the title Book of Knowledge of Mechanical
Devices.[4]
This translation was based mainly on MS Graves 27 of the Bodleian
Library,
Oxford, where the Arabic title is
Kitab fi maʿrifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya.كتاب
في معرفة الحيل الهندسية
Between 1915 and 1921, Wiedemann and Hauser published in German a
series of seven articles in which they covered the six categories using
the Bodleian copy.
[5]
The book describes in detail fifty devices (ashkal),
which are grouped into six categories (anwaʿ, singular nawʿ
). These are: 1) ten water and candle clocks; 2), ten vessels and
figures suited for drinking sessions; 3), ten pitchers and basins for
phlebotomy (faṣd ) and washing before prayers; 4), ten fountains
that change their shape alternately, and machines for the perpetual
flute; 5), five water raising machines; 6), five miscellaneous devices.
Each device or shakl is described in simple
Arabic that is easy to understand, and each is accompanied by a general
drawing. There are fifty of these and are numbered by the letters of the
Arabic alphabet from one to fifty. For the complicated devices al-Jazari
gave detailed drawings for the components of a device or for
subassemblies so that the operation can be understood. There are a total
of 174 drawings. An alphabet letter marks each part in a device. The
text explains the construction of the device with the aid of the letters
so that the reader can understand the device by reading the text and
referring to the illustrations.
The published Arabic text
enumerates fifteen manuscripts of al-Jazari’s book in world libraries
with one only probably in private hands. One is a Persian translation.[6]
The best five manuscripts were used in arriving at the final printed
text. The main one, however, was MS Ahmet III 3472 in the Topkapi Sarayi
Librarary, Istanbul. This is the closest copy to the time when al-Jazari
completed his writing in 602/1206.
3- The history of water clocks and
ingenious devices before and after al-Jazari
The first water clocks in their simplest form were used
by the ancient civilizations of Babylonia
and Egypt.[7]
About the developments that followed we
have two historical reports. The known one in the histories of science
is that of Vitruvious who said that Ctesibius, an Egyptian engineer and
craftsman who worked in Alexandria about 250 BC, improved the design of
the water clock.[8]
The second report came from Ridwan ibn al-Sa’ati in his book and is
not known to historians of science. Ridwan mentioned in his book that a
man called Hormuz invented the mechanisms of the water clock that were
used by his father in the construction of the Damascus clock. He says
further that “the design [of Hormuz]
continued in the land of Fars for a long time, and was transmitted from
there to the land of the Greeks, and its construction spread out in the
land until it was transmitted to Damascus, where it was constructed up
to the days of the Byzantines and after that in the days of Banu Umayya,
according to what is mentioned in the histories. This clock attributed
to Hormuz continued to be reproduced by one man after another on this
pattern, and it was in the shape that we described above”
[9]
The report of Ridwan seems credible, since he links the
development of the water clock with both Iran and the Hellenistic world.
His story is of great historical importance and it deserves the
attention of research workers. We should remark here that the practice
of water clocks was limited to the cities of Syria and Mesopotamia in
the early centuries of Islam which gives support to Ridwan’s account.
The only public water clock known before
Islam was erected in a public square in Gaza in the fifth century AD.[10]
Automata in general were known before Islam. The first
musical automaton is attributed to Ctesibius of Egypt. In Asia Minor,
Philon of Byzantium who was a contemporary of Ctesibius, wrote the first
major treatise on ingenious devices. Philon’s work was continued and
extended by Heron of Alexandria, who flourished in the middle of the
first century AD.
The tradition of water clocks and
ingenious devices of pre-Islamic lands was further developed under
Islam. Monumental water clocks in Islamic cities continued to be
installed. The Abbasid Caliphs were interested in clocks and ingenious
devices. The story of the clock that was presented by Harun al-Rashid
(170-193/786-809) to
Charlemagne
in 807 AD is well known.[11]
It is reported also that the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (d. 247/861)
was so obsessed with moving machines (Ālāt mutaḥarrika),
that he favoured the Banu Musa[12]
who wrote their famous book al-Hiyal during this period.
In Kiitab al-hayawan, al-Jahiẓ
(160-253/776-867 AD) when discussing the measurement of time, says: “Our
kings and scientists use the astrolabe by day and the binkamat
(water clocks) by night”
[13]
Al-Khazini (flourished 515/1121)
reported that Ibn al-Haytham (354/965 - 450/1038) who was a noted
engineer as well as a great scientist, described a water clock.[14]
In the same period historians reported that Nasir al Dawla of Diyar Bakr
(d. 453/1061 AD) constructed a public binkam (water clock) for
the city of Mayyafariqin in the year 414/1012.[15]
This is 200 years before al-Jazari.
The technology of clock- making was transferred to Muslim Spain and to
Al-Maghrib. About the year 442/1050 AD, al-Zarqali constructed a large
water clock on the banks of the Tagus River at Toledo in Spain. The
clock was still in operation when the Christians occupied the city in
1085 AD. A treatise describing Andalusian monumental clocks was written
in the eleventh century by Ibn Khalaf al-Mururadi. Water clocks were
constructed for public places in al-Maghrib. The remains of two public
water clocks in Fās from the fourteenth century AD can still be seen.[16]
An Arabic treatise of unknown date and authorship describes a monumental
water-clock. It is attributed to a Pseudo-Archimedes but it is not
listed among Archimedes works in any history of science. Hill thinks
that part of it may be of Greek origin, but most of it being written by
Arabic writers.[17]
Both Ridwan and al-Jazari mentioned it.
In Damascus, Muhammad al-Khurasani al-Sa’ati (the clock-maker) built a
monumental clock around 556/1160. Ridwan ibn al-Sa’ati re-built the
clock of his father and gave a detailed description of its construction
in 600/1203. Al-Jazari was writing his book in Āmid at the same time.
The skills in constructing clocks and ingenious devices were
also established in the eastern lands of Islam. We should remember that
Muúammad al-Sa’ati who constructed the monumental clock in Damascus came
from Khurasan in 549/1154 and started constructing the clock shortly
after his arrival. He was considered unrivalled in his skills in clock
making[18].
It is reported that the noted astronomer ʿAlī
Qūshjī (d. 1474) who was in Maragha, wrote a treatise (tadhkira)
on spiritual (or ingenious) machines[19].
The last important writer on the same subject was Taqi al-Din ibn Maʿrūf
who wrote a book on water clocks and ingenious machines in 1552
[20]
and another on mechanical clocks in 1556.
[21]
4- Evaluation of al-Jazari’s work
Al-Jazari’s book deals with a whole range of devices and
machines, with a multiplicity of purposes. What they have in common is
the considerable degree of engineering skill required for their
manufacture, and the use of delicate mechanisms and sensitive control
systems. Many of the ideas employed in the construction of ingenious
devices were useful in the later development of mechanical technology.
About al-Jazari’s book
Sarton says that “this treatise is the most elaborate of its kind and
may be considered the climax of this line of Moslem achievement.”
[22]
Hill concludes also that “until modern times there is no other
document, from any cultural area, that provides a comparable wealth of
instructions for the design, manufacture and assembly of
machines” .[23]
Al-Jazari inherited the
knowledge of his predecessors, but he improved on their designs and
added devices of his own invention. The merit of his book is that it was
the only book to discuss such a large variety of devices and to present
them with text and illustrations and dimensions so that a skilled
craftsman is able to construct any device on the basis of al-Jazari’s
description. In the World of Islam Festival in 1976 it was possible to
construct three of al-Jazari’s machines under Hill’s supervision.
[24].
They worked perfectly well. One was a monumental water clock which is
exhibited now in the
Natuuurmuseum Asten
in the Netherlands.[25]
[The toy machine
shown below, incorporates several principles: the use of
water power and a water raising saqiya at the same time. An
actual machine like this from the thirteenth century, was supplying
water from Nahr Yazid in Damascus to Ibn al-‘Arabi’s mosque until
recently, and can be seen until now. ]
Fig. 1
Many of al-Jazari’s components and techniques were useful
in the development of modern mechanical engineering. These include the
static balancing of large pulley wheels; calibration of orifices; use of
wooden templates; use of paper models in design; lamination of timber to
prevent warping; the grinding of the seats and plugs of valves together
with emery powder to obtain a watertight fit; casting of brass and
copper in closed mold boxes with greensand; use of tipping buckets that
discharge their contents automatically; and the use of segmental gears.
Al-Jazari’s double acting
piston pump is unique (Fig. 2). It is remarkable for three reasons:1) it
incorporates an effective means of converting rotary into reciprocating
motion through the crank-connecting-rod mechanism
[26];
2) it makes use of the double-acting principle and 3) it is the first
pump known to have had true suction pipes.[27].
Fig. 2
Al-Jazari occupies an important place in the history of
automata, automatic control, robotics and automated musical theaters.
His pioneering work is duly acknowledged in most histories.
The inventions of al-Jazari are a source
of inspiration to modern designers such as the use of rolling balls to
sound the hours on cymbals and operate automata. This concept is
currently used in toys and other devices and their makers had registered
patents in their names.[28]
Al-Jazari described a combination lock.[29]
There are now in world museums three combination locks that were made in
the same period of al-Jazari
[30].
Although they are simpler than the lock of al-Jazari yet they follow
the same principle. Two were made around 597/1200 AD by Muhammad b.
Hamid al-Asturlabi al-Isfahani and are located in
Copenhagen and Boston. The third is in Maastricht. The
first combination lock in Europe
was described by Buttersworth in 1846 and the wheels of this lock are
strikingly similar to the discs of al-Jazari.[31]
All illustrations in al-Jazari’s book are in colour, and
among the fifty main drawings are miniatures that are of great artistic
merit. This resulted in the disappearance of some of these paintings
from the manuscripts and they found their way to the international
museums of art or to private collections.
Historians of art are of the opinion
that there existed at the court of the Artuqids in Āmid a school of
painting that produced narrative paintings of great value
[32]Three
of the existing al-Jazari’s manuscripts were illustrated by members of
this school.
The illustrations of the book enable historians to study
the clothing styles of men and women in Diyar Bakr in the thirteenth
century, and some of their living habits. See the illustration below
(Fig. 3) of the automated girl serving drinks.
Fig.
3
References
|
Einhard and Notker
|
Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of
Charlemagne, Trans. With intr. By Lewis Thorpe, Penguin,
1969.
|
|
Al-Hassan 1976
|
al-Hassan, Ahmad Y., Taqi al-Din and Arabic
Mechnical Engineering; with Kitab al-Turuq al-saniyya fi
al-Alat al-ruhaniyya, Institute for the History of
Arabic Science, Aleppo, 1976.
|
|
Hill 1981
|
Hill, D. R., Arabic Water Clocks,
Institute for the History of Arabic Science, Aleppo, 1981
.
|
|
Hill 1998
|
Hill, D. R., Studies in Medieval Islamic
Technology, edited by David King, Ashgate, 1998.
|
|
Ibn Abi Usaybi’a
|
‘Uyun al- anba’ fi tabaqat al-atibba’
,عيون
الانباء في طبقات الاطباء
ed. Nizar Rida, Beirut, n.d.
|
|
|
|
|
Ibn Shaddad
|
Al-A’laq al-kha‹tira,
الاعلاق الحطيرةvol.
III, part one, edited by Yahya Abbara,
Damascus,1978
|
|
Al-Jaḥiẓ
|
Kitab al-Hayawan,
كتاب
الحيوانVol
II, Beirut, 1992
|
|
Al-Jazari 1979
|
al-Hassan, Ahmad Y. ed.,
الجامع بين العلم و العمل النافع في صناعة الحيل
(A
Compendium on the Theory and Practice of the Mechanical Arts)
Institute for the History of Arabic Science, Aleppo, 1979.
Fuat Sezgin had produced in 2003 an offset copy with colours of
MS Ahmet III 3472 of the Topkapi Sarayi Librarary.
|
|
Al-Jazari 1974
|
Hill, D. R., translator and editor, The Book
of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, (كتاب
في معرفة الحيل الهندسية
),
Dodrecht, 1974.
|
|
Al-Khazini
|
Kitab mizan al-hikma,
كتاب ميزان الحكمةed.
Hashim al-Nadwa, Hyderabad, 1940. Quoted by Hill 1981.
|
|
Nasir-i Khusraw
|
Safar Nama,
Arabic translation by Yahya al-Khashshab, Cairo, 1945.
|
|
Price
|
Price, Derek de Solla, ‘Mechanical Water Clocks
of the 14th Century in Fez, Morocco’, Proceedings
of the Xth International Congress of the History of Science,
Ithaca, N.Y. and Philadelphia, 1962.
|
|
Raby
|
Raby, Julian, ed., The
Art of
Syria and the Jazira,
Oxford University Press, 1985.
|
|
Ridwan
|
Ibn al-Sa’ati, Ridwan, ‘Ilm
al-sa’at wa al-‘amal biha
كتاب علم الساعات والعمل بها,
Gotha MS 1348, quoted by Hill 1981; edited and published by
Muhammad Ahmad Dahman, Damascus, 1981.
|
|
Sarton 1959
|
Sarton, George, A History of Science:
Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries,
Harvard University Press, 1959.
|
|
Sarton 1975
|
Sarton, George, Introduction to the History of
Science, vol.II, Krieger, New York, 1975.
|
|
Tekeli
|
Tekeli, Sevim, The Clocks in Ottoman Empire in
16th Century, And Taqi al-Din’s ‘The Brightest
Stars for the Construction of the Mechanical Clocks’, Ankara
University, 1966. This book contains the Arabic text.
|
|
Wiedemann and Hauser
|
Wiedemann, E and Hauser, F., ‚Uber die Uhren im
Bereich die Islamischen Kultur’, in
Nova Acta Abh. der Kaiserl.
Leop. Carol. Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher,
100, Halle, 1915, pp. 1-272.
For other articles covering the remaining
categories of al-Jazari’s book in German, see al-Jazari 1979, p.
60.
|
[1]
Al-Jazari 1979, p.3
[2]
Called also Diyar Bakir .
[3]
Nasir-i Khusraw p.9-10
[4]
al-Jazari 1979
[5]
Wiedemann and Hauser, 1915
[6]
al-Jazari 1979, pp. 11-16.
[7]
Hill 1981, p. 6.
[8]
Sarton 1959, p.343-344
[9]
Ridwan, folios 3v-4v, quoted by Hill 1981, pp. 12-13
[10]
Hill 1981, p.13.
[11]
Einhard and Norken the Stammerer, p.184, note 39. See also
Hill 1998, article V, p. 179.
[12]
Ibn Abi Usaybi’a, p. 286
[14]
Al-Khazini quoted by Hill 1981, p.49.
[15]
Ibn Shaddad, vol.3, p. 359
[16]
Price, pp.599-602.
[17]
Hill 1981, p. 1.
[18]
Ibn Abi Usaybi’a, p.661
[19]
Tekeli, See the English text p.144, and the Arabic text p. 221.
[20]
Al-Hassan 1976
[21]
Tekeli
[22]
Sarton 1975, Vol. II, p.510
[23]
Hill 1998, II , p. 231.
[24]
Hill 1981, p.103
[25]
Other working models are exhibited also in the museum
established by Fuat Sezgin at his institute in Frankfurt; other
models were established by the UNESCO at the exhibition of
Islamic science and technology that is housed at the Institute
of la Monde Arabe in Paris. Other models ere exhibited at the
Institute of the History of Arabic Science in Aleppo, Syria.
[26]
See the article: The Crank-Connecting Rod System in a
continuously Rotating Machine, in the Brief Notes on this web
site
[27]
See the article: The Origin of the Suction Pump, in the Brief
Notes on this web site.
[28]
US Patent No. 4,037,355, "Marble Track Toy," issued to Bonnie A.
Street on July 26, 1977
[29]
Al-Jazari 1979, pp. 486-501.
[30]
Raby, article by Francis Maddison ‘ Al-Jazari’s
Combination Lock: Two Contemporary Examples’, pp.141-157.
[31]
al-Jazari 1974, p. 274.
[32]
Raby, article by Rachel Ward ‘ Evidence for a School of Painting
at the Artuqid Court’, pp. 69-83.
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