Al-Jazari's Book of Ingenious Mechanical Devices

Timeline

1. c. 1180–1195Court of Amid · AnatoliaAl-Jazari served as chief engineer at the Artuqid court, actually building water clocks, automated attendants, and water-lifting machines, accumulating verifiable craft experience for his later book.
2. c. 1190–1200Amid · AnatoliaHe classified devices by use into clocks, banquet automata, ablution devices, fountains, water-lifting machines, and miscellany, and used drawings to indicate gears, cams, and float valves, turning oral craft into reproducible text.
3. 1200–1206Amid · AnatoliaAl-Jazari compiled years of drawings and explanations into a six-part work, dedicating it in 1206 to Nasir al-Din Mahmud, making it the most complete illustrated manual of mechanics in the Islamic world.
4. 1206–1350Manuscript circles of Upper Mesopotamia and Syria · Upper MesopotamiaIlluminated manuscripts were copied between courts and workshops after the book's completion, bringing designs for crank linkages, intermittent mechanisms, and hydraulic automata into a broader tradition of Islamic engineering knowledge.