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In the early thirteenth century, a scholar and engineer named Isma‘il Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari wrote a famous treatise called Kitab fi ma‛rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya, or The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. The text offered detailed descriptions of a series of elaborate machines designed to delight and impress the elites at the court where he served, in eastern Anatolia. Al-Jazari’s text and its illustrations belong to a long tradition of studies about these kinds of devices, including Greek compendia on mechanics and mathematics. This page belongs to a copy of the text that was produced in Mamluk Egypt in 1354, and was copied by Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Izmiri for a Mamluk ruler.
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al-Jazari's "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices": The Reckoner's Bloodletting Basin
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Izmiri (Scribe)
Islamic
Mamluk period
February 1354 A.D./Safar 755 A.H.
Object Place: Probably Cairo, Egypt
Medium/Technique
Ink, watercolor, and gold on paper
Dimensions
Height x width: 40.2 × 27.9 cm (15 13/16 × 11 in.)
Credit Line
Denman Waldo Ross Collection
Accession Number15.113
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsAsia, Islamic Art
ClassificationsBooks and manuscripts
In the early thirteenth century, a scholar and engineer named Isma‘il Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari wrote a famous treatise called Kitab fi ma‛rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya, or The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. The text offered detailed descriptions of a series of elaborate machines designed to delight and impress the elites at the court where he served, in eastern Anatolia. Al-Jazari’s text and its illustrations belong to a long tradition of studies about these kinds of devices, including Greek compendia on mechanics and mathematics. This page belongs to a copy of the text that was produced in Mamluk Egypt in 1354, and was copied by Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Izmiri for a Mamluk ruler.
ProvenanceBy 1915, Denman Waldo Ross (b. 1853 - d. 1935), Cambridge, MA; 1915, gift of Ross to the MFA. (Accession date: January 7, 1915)