Image: Syria, Damascus, Mamluk Period, 14th Century - Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso) - 1945.383 - Cleveland Museum of Art

Description: This leaf from a 1315 Syrian copy of Ibn al-Razzāz al-Jazarī's The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, written in 1206, depicts a peacock basin automaton for ritual hand washing. There are 15 surviving manuscript copies of al-Jazarī's work, ranging from the early 13th to the late 19th century. An engineer from upper Mesopotamia, al-Jazarī was in the service of King Nasrī al-Dīn when he completed his masterwork, an anthology of automated devices including clocks, trick vessels for drinking sessions, devices for washing, fountains, water-raising machines, and measuring instruments. His designs clearly illustrate that automata were not innovations from Western Europe, but they stemmed from a tradition known in the ancient, Islamic, and Byzantine worlds. We do not know with certainty that al-Jazarī's device was ever actually constructed.
Title: Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso)
Credit: https://clevelandart.org/art/1945.383
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication
License: CC0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
Attribution Required?: No