Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso), 1315
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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-Jazaris 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-Jazaris 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-Jazaris device was ever actually constructed
Media ID 19640724
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Damascus Mamluk Period Opaque Watercolour And Gold On Paper Syria
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