Badi'al-Zaman Abū al-'Izz ibn Ismā'īl ibn al-Razāz al-Jazarī or simply al-Jazari – was an outstanding engineer and inventor, mathematician, astronomer of the Islamic Renaissance who lived (1136–1206) during the reign of the Turkish Artuquid Dynasty. In Arabic Islamic sources he is named literally as a “Kurdish inventor Ismail, the son of Rezzaza from Jazeera” alongside with a name of “Man of Honor”. Al-Jazari gained world fame generations ahead as an inventor of strange mechanisms that advanced far beyond the XII-XIII centuries during which he lived and made great scientific discoveries, but personally he was "more interested in the craftsmanship necessary to construct the devices than in the technology which lay behind them" (Hill 152) and his creations were based on experience and mistakes, rather than on the theoretical calculations.
Much of the information about al-Jazari came to us from his personally-written treatise. Name of the scientist was derived from the area of Al-Jazira, located in Mesopotamia. Because of the constant wars and high taxes, his family was forced to move in 1174 to Diyarbakir, where Ismail continued to improve his skills, polish his knowledge and put his prodigious thoughts into reality by creating masterpieces the world didn`t know before.
Having heard about wonderful machines and mechanisms of Al-Jazeera, emir of Hisn Kaif and Amida (Diyarbakir), Mansur Nasir al-Din Muhammad (1189 – after 1216), invited al-Jazari to serve as a chief engineer in his residence in Diyarbakir, where in 1206 he completed his fundamental work titled “Kitáb fí ma’rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya” (“Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices”), in which al-Jazari himself performed the colorful illustrations for the book, which described the designing, production and assembly of more than 50 devices, including a water clock, which was beating time every half hour, automatically closing doors, toys, fountains, jukeboxes, water-lifting machines, valve pumps, various working mechanisms, combination locks and other different instruments useful for the palace of the emir he was working for.
His “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices” was extremely popular those days, as it has been released in many copies and described the mechanisms that al- Jazari built himself. The copy of the manuscript of al-Jazari contains 174 drawings, 55 interesting descriptions to them, and consists of six sections (“AL-JAZARI And the History of the Water Clock”)At present, in different parts of the world there may be found 16 copies of the manuscript, all of which are available to general public as exhibits items in the world famous museums and art exhibitions.
It was namely al-Jazari who invented such an important mechanical construction, which included a connecting rod and crankshaft, two most important items after mechanical wheel in the history of mechanical inventions. Adding to all above mentioned inventions, al-Jazari in 1206 he revealed to the public four humanoid robots. The scientist, who lived during the period of Dark Ages in Europe, became the creator of the world's first humanoid robots. Those robots were four figures of musicians in a boat that constituted a jukebox. The device was being launched on the pond at the time of major holidays to entertain guests. Robots were playing the drums and cymbals, tapping musical rhythm. Al-Jazari also created a robot maid pouring drinks into cups, also for entertainment of guests of emir`s palace (Nadarajan 10). According to contemporary experts, it was probably the first programmed automaton.
In 1232, the city of Hasankeyf, which is in the province of Batman, on the Tigris River, was taken under control by the rulers of the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, that later has built in it a lot of mosques, educational centers, inns, trade centers and saunas, turning it into an important spiritual and cultural center, granting the city a new impetus to the development. Perhaps it was one of the most important reasons why al-Jazari returned to his hometown Jazira, where he died and was buried in 1233 near the grave of his brother.
And in our, already enlightened age, there is still huge interest to the life and creative legacy of Kurdish scholar al-Jazari.
In January 2010, at the British exhibition “1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World” was shown a copy of a six-meter high water-clock designed by al-Jazari, which has become the main attraction of the event. Moreover, in the Kurdish city of Mardin, Turkey, affected by strong initiative of the Kurdish community in the autumn of 2011 local authorities launched an ambitious project to build a new science museum, where the inventions of the first world's scholar in the field of mechanics, al-Jazari, will be demonstrating. What is more, the museum will be named after the great medieval inventor.
Al-Jazari invented five different water-lifting machines. Two of them were improvements of shadoofs, and one of them was replacing animal traction with energy of water. One such machine was located on the River Yazid in Damascus and is thought to have supplied the water needs of a nearby hospital (Ceccarelli 15). Truly radical breakthrough happened with the introduction of the crankshaft as the central mechanism of water pumps.
A water pump consisted of gears, copper pistons, suction and discharge pipes, as well as one-way flap valves. The pump, that was used for irrigation and domestic water supply, was able to raise water to a height of 12 meters. It is an example of one of the earliest examples of double-acting pistons – one of them sucked the water, and other distributed.
Here afterwards a principle of action of oscillation displacement pump will be reviewed. As in the case of a water mill, it was constructed near the flowing river, and ladle boards were submerged in a strong current on a half. Water wheel triggered gears that set in motion the pistons moving together with the lever. Paddle valve helped to pull and circulate water through the pipes. Inlet pipe was immersed in water and when the piston was drawn at the length of a cylinder, the water was sucked in through the inlet pipe. Intake valve due to the force of gravity and the position of the point of rotation at this point remained closed.
When the piston was shifted into a forward movement, the water poured out of the cylinder through the outflow valve and entered into the outlet pipe, which was narrower than the inlet pipe. At this time the intake valve remained closed by the force of gravity and the position of the point of rotation.
This motion alternated between the two cylinders of the device and when on one side the piston was inside, on the other it was outside and vice versa. Thus, during one complete rotation of the water wheel, water elevation was undergoing through the two lifting cylinders. This process continued as long as the flowing water kept turning the wheel.
Today we cannot imagine our life without the use of devices measuring time, neither could Muslims in the Medieval ages. Al-Jazari, knowing a secret of counting time in minutes and hours went far forward in manufacturing clocks by uniting clock with a true masterpiece of engineering. He created a “Peerless devise” – the Elephant Clock. In addition to ability of this device to shows time accurately, it was a symbol of status, grandeur and wealth, and also included elements of the first robotics – namely, the moving figures showing the time.
About eight hundred years ago, al-Jazari constructed this complex in design clock to emphasize the diversity of the human race, as well as the universality and globality of the essence of Islam. By that time, the territory of the Muslim world stretched from Spain to Central Asia, and in order to reflect the scale of this greatness, al-Jazari, using Archimedes' principle together with the Indian unit of reckoning time, Indian elephant, an Egyptian phoenix, Arab statures, a Persian rug and a Chinese Dragon, crafted this magnum opus. Each of the items symbolized something, such as countries and crafts, and every animal was associated with a certain myth: the elephant was a symbol of power and majesty, the phoenix – of rebirth and of life, a dragon – of might and invincibility.
The modern model of the Elephant clock, though increased in size, is standing in the Ibn Battuta mall of Dubai (UAE) - the world's biggest themed shopping mall.
Works Cited
Adams, Stephen. Elephant Clock is centrepiece of Science Museum's Islamic exhibition. The Telegraph. 22 Jan. 2010. Web. 24 Sep. 2013.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7045228/Elephant-Clock-is-centrepiece-of-Science-Museums-Islamic-exhibition.html
“Al-Jazari. And the History of the Water Clock”. History of Science and Technology in Islam. n.d. Web. 24 Sep. 2013.
http://www.history-science-technology.com/Articles/articles%206.htm
“Al Jazari, Banu Musa and the Islamic Golden Age”. All On Robots. n.d. Web. 24 Sep. 2013.
http://www.allonrobots.com/al-jazari.html
Ceccarelli, Marco. Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science. Part 2. New York: Springer. 2010. Print.
Hill, Donald. Review of “The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices”. Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co.1974. Print.
Nadarajan, Gunalan. Islamic Automation: A Reading of al-Jazari`s The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (1206). Manchester, UK: FSTC Limited, 2007. Print.
