New English Paperback. Roy. 8vo. (24 x 17 cm). Introduction in English and Turkish; [360] p. color facsimiles of the earliest of all copies, dating 1206 (preserved in the Library of Topkapi Serai, Istanbul, No. 3472), color ills. The book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices.= Olaganüstü mekanik araçlarin bilgisi hakkinda kitap. [FACSIMILE]. Al-Jazari was a Muslim polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, artisan, artist and mathematician. He is best known for writing 'The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices'. Kitab fi ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiya, (lit. 'Book in knowledge of engineering tricks') in 1206, where he described 100 mechanical devices, some 80 of which are trick vessels of various kinds, along with instructions on how to construct them. The only biographical information known about him is contained in his famed Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. Like his father before him, he served as chief engineer at the Artuklu Palace, the residence of the Mardin branch of the Artuqids which ruled across eastern Anatolia as vassals of the Zengid dynasty of Mosul and later of Ayyubid general Saladin. Al-Jazari was part of a tradition of artisans and was thus more a practical engineer than an inventor who appears to have been "more interested in the craftsmanship necessary to construct the devices than in the technology which lay behind them" and his machines were usually "assembled by trial and error rather than by theoretical calculation." His Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices appears to have been quite popular as it appears in a large number of manuscript copies, and as he explains repeatedly, he only describes devices he has built himself. According to Mayr, the book's style resembles that of a modern "do-it-yourself" book. Some of his devices were inspired by earlier devices, such as one of his monumental water clocks, which was based on that of a Pseudo-Archimedes. He also cites the influence of the Banu Musa brothers for his fountains, al-Saghani for the design of a candle clock, and Hibatullah ibn al-Husayn (d. 1139) for musical automata. Al-Jazari goes on to describe the improvements he made to the work of his predecessors, and describes a number of devices, techniques and components that are original innovations which do not appear in the works by his precessors. The most significant aspect of al-Jazari's machines are the mechanisms, components, ideas, methods, and design features which they employ. (Source: Wikipedia). There are 50 devices that Al Jazari designed and explained how they function in his book and created technical drawings of them in such detail that allow to reconstruct in its original size, make, model and full functionally. This nice facsimile edition, fully executed in color, is based on a manuscript present in the Library of Topkapi Palace, (ms. no. 3472). It is dated 1206, andaccording to the foreword, is the earliest extant ccopy of al-Jazarî's work.
