Ismail al-Jazari

Ismail al-Jazari was born in 1136 in Upper Mesopotamia, in the region the Arabs called the Jazira, from which he took his name. Almost everything known about him comes from his own book. Like his father before him, he served the Artuqid dynasty at Diyarbakir, in what is now south-east Turkey, and he tells us he did so for 25 years, building things at the request of his kings.

His masters wanted clocks, fountains and clever machines to impress guests. His elephant clock, in which a mahout struck a cymbal and a bird sang every half hour, was driven by a bowl slowly sinking in a tank of water inside the elephant. He built a hand-washing automaton in the form of a servant who poured water and offered a towel, and a boat of musicians that played to guests at drinking parties. Beneath the entertainment was serious engineering. His water-raising machines used the crank and connecting rod to turn rotary motion into a pumping stroke, and his pumps used cams and one-way valves. Several of these mechanisms appear in his book centuries before they are recorded in Europe.

He was a craftsman rather than a theorist and said his machines were arrived at by trial. What made him different was the writing. His Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, completed in 1206 at his king\'s command, gave drawings, dimensions and materials for each device so that others could build it. He died the same year.