al-Jazari's "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices": The Reckoner's Bloodletting Basin

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.