al-Jazari's "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices": Device for Raising Water

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al-Jazari's "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices": Device for Raising Water

Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Izmiri (Scribe)

February 1354 (Safar 755 A.H.)

Object PlaceProbably Cairo, Egypt

Medium/TechniqueOpaque watercolor and ink on paper

DimensionsHeight x width: 39.4 × 27.6 cm (15 1/2 × 10 7/8 in.)

Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds from the Francis Bartlett Donation of 1912 and by contribution

Accession number14.534

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsBooks and manuscripts

Collections

Description

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 1912, Victor Goloubew (b. 1879 - d. 1945), Paris [see note 1]; 1914, sold by Goloubew through M. Meyer-Riefstahl to the MFA for $76,999.81 (total price for 14.532-700). (Accession Date: June 4, 1914)

NOTES:
[1] Victor Goloubew was born in Russia but lived in Paris by the time of this acquisition. He formed this collection of Persian and Indian miniature paintings and exhibited it at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1912 to 1914 (Paull, Florence Virginia. "The Goloubew Collection of Persian and Indian Paintings." Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin. Vol. XIII. No. 74. (February 1915) 1-16).