Damascus Gallery
Available as Framed Prints, Photos, Wall Art and Gift Items
Choose from 53 pictures in our Damascus collection for your Wall Art or Photo Gift. Popular choices include Framed Prints, Canvas Prints, Posters and Jigsaw Puzzles. All professionally made for quick delivery.

Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso), 1315
Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso), 1315. This leaf from a 1315 Syrian copy of Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari's The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices , written in 1206, depicts a peacock basin automaton for ritual hand washing. There are 15 surviving manuscript copies of al-Jazari's work, ranging from the early 13th to the late 19th century. An engineer from upper Mesopotamia, al-Jazari was in the service of King Nasri al-Din when he completed his masterwork, an anthology of automated devices including clocks, trick vessels for drinking sessions, devices for washing, fountains, water-raising machines, and measuring instruments. His designs clearly illustrate that automata were not innovations from Western Europe, but they stemmed from a tradition known in the ancient, Islamic, and Byzantine worlds. We do not know with certainty that al-Jazari's device was ever actually constructed
© Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device: Illustration from The Book of Knowledge...(recto), 1315
Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device: Illustration from The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Automata) of Inb al-Razza al-Jazari (recto), 1315. The Arabic title of this work is Kitab fi marifat al-hiyal al handasiyya (The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices). According to the description of the device illustrated here, the peacock is filled with water: as it flows into the vessel below, it raises a float that opens a door in the section above, causing the little figure to move forward offering soap; as more water flows, a second door will open and another figure will move forward offering a towel. Finally, the dirty water is drawn off by means of a spigot
© Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Damascus, Syria, late 19th century. Artist: John L Stoddard
Damascus, Syria, late 19th century. Photograph from Portfolio of Photographs, of Famous Scenes, Cities and Paintings by John L Stoddard, published by the Werner Company, (Chicago, c1899)
© The Print Collector / Heritage-Images
19th Century, Architecture, B W, Black And White, Building, Buildings, Century, City, Damascus, Exterior, John L, John L John Lawson, John L Stoddard, John Lawson, Landscape, Location, Middle East, Middle Eastern, Monochrome, Nineteenth Century, Outside, Print Collector4, Stoddard, Syria, Tgn, The Print Collector, Tower, Werner Company