Part Two
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Water-raising machines
The earliest machine used by man for irrigation and water supply is the shaduf. It is illustrated as early as 2500 B.C.E in Akkadian reliefs and about 2000 B.C.E. in Egypt
Fig. 6
The scoop drum or tympanum was probably invented in Egypt
Fig 7
The screw or water-snail was probably invented by Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.E.) when he was living in Egypt
Fig 8
The word saqiya is used here to denote the chain-of-pots driven through a pair of gear-wheels by one or two animals harnessed to a draw-bar and walking around a circular track. This very important machine was invented in Egypt
Fig. 9 – A saqiya at Ma’arrat al-Nu’man near Aleppo , Syria
As the animal walks in a circular path, the lantern-pinion is turned and this rotates the potgarland wheel. The pots dip into the water in continuous succession and discharge at the top of the wheel into a channel connected to a head tank. Although the main function of the saqiya is for irrigation it can also be important for water supply when, for example, buildings are some distance above the source of water. The longer the chain-of-pots, i.e. the lift, the lower the rate of discharge will be. For domestic water supply this may not be a crucial factor, but in fact one of the problems of water-raising engineering is that of raising large quantities of water through a small lift. The problem can be solved by using a spiral scoop-wheel (see Figure 10), which raises water to ground level with a high degree of efficiency. This machine is very popular in Egypt Cairo Baghdad
Fig. 10
The saqiya was widely used in the Muslim world from the earliest days onwards. It was introduced to the Iberian peninsula by the Muslims, where it was massively exploited. Not only was it diffused into many parts of Europe but it was also taken to the New World by Christian Spanish engineers. It has advantages over the diesel-driven pump: it can be constructed and maintained by local craftsmen and does not require the importation of fuel. The long history of the saqiya is by no means ended, and there are welcome indications that its advantages will ensure its survival for the foreseeable future.
The noria is also a very significant machine in the history of engineering. It consists of a large wheel made of timber and provided with paddles. The rim of the wheel, inside the paddles, is divided into compartments or, in another type of noria, earthenware pots similar to those of the saqiya, are lashed to the rim. The wheel is mounted on an axle over a running stream, so positioned that the paddles and the compartments, at the lowest part of their travel, are immersed in the water. The force of the current acting on the paddles causes the wheel to rotate, the compartments fill with water and discharge their contents when they reach the top of the wheel. The water usually collects in a head tank and is then conducted through a feeder channel to the irrigation system or to an urban water supply (see Figure 11). Being driven by water, the noria is self-acting and requires the presence of neither man nor animal for its operation.
Fig. 11 – Noria at Hama , Syria
The earliest description we have of the noria occurs in the writings of Vitruvius in the first century B.C.E., in words that imply that it had already been in use for some time. It was invented around 200 B.C.E. in the Near East . Its use was widespread in the Muslim world, wherever conditions were appropriate; there are attestations for its use in Iraq Iran Mesopotamia , Spain Hama Syria Spain Hama Toledo Europe and to East Asia , and like the saqiya has shown remarkable powers of survival into modern times.
Five water-raising machines are described in al-Jazari’s great book on machines, composed in Diyar Bakr in 602/1206. One of these is a water-driven saqiya, a type of machine that is known to have been in everyday use in medieval Islam. Three of the others are modifications to the shaduf, obviously intended to raise the output of the traditional machine. These are important for the ideas they embody, ideas which are of importance in the development of mechanical engineering. In one of them, for example, the concept of minimising intermittent working is implied and another incorporates a crank, the first known example of a crank used as an integral part of a machine. The fifth machine is the most significant. This is a water-driven twin-cylinder pump (Figure 12). A paddle wheel is mounted on a horizontal axle over a running stream, with a gear-wheel mounted on the other end of the axle. This meshes with a horizontal gear-wheel installed in a large triangular wooden box which is mounted over a pond supplied from the stream. On the face of the second gear-wheel, near the outside, is a peg which enters a slot-rod pivoted at one corner of the box. The connecting rods were fixed to the sides of the slot-rod by staple-and-ring fittings. On the end of each connecting rod was a piston, consisting of two copper discs with a space of about 6 cm between them, the space filled by coiling hempen cord until the gap was filled. The cylinders, made of copper, were provided with suction and delivery pipes, all provided with non-return clack-valves. The two delivery pipes were joined together above the machine to form a single delivery pipe, which discharged the water at a height of about 14 m above the level of the stream. The action was as follows: when the paddle wheel turned it caused the gear-wheel on its axle to turn, and this rotated the gear-wheel in the box and the peg made the slot-rod oscillate from side to side. When one piston was on its delivery stroke the other was on its suction stroke. The important features embodied in this pump are the double-acting principle, the conversion of rotary into reciprocating motion, and the use of true suction pipes. The hand-driven pumps of classical and Hellenistic times had vertical cylinders which stood directly in the water which entered them through plate-valves in the bottoms of the cylinders on the suction strokes. The pumps could not, therefore, be positioned above the water level. A quarter-scale working model of this pump was made for the 1976 World of Islam Festival in the Science Museum London
Fig 12 -Al-Jazari’s two cylinder suction pump
Evidence for the continuation of a tradition of mechanical engineering is provided by a book on machines written by Taqi al-Din about the year 959/1552. A number of machines are described, including a pump similar to al-Jazari’s, but the most interesting device is a six-cylinder ‘Monobloc’ pump. The cylinders are bored in line in a block of wood which stands in the water – one-way valves admit water into each cylinder on the suction stroke. The delivery pipes, each of which is also provided with a one-way clack-valve, are led out from the side of each cylinder and brought together into a single delivery outlet. On the end of each piston rod is a lead weight, and a trip lever is connected by a pin joint to the piston rod just below the weight. Cams on the axle of a water-driven scoop-wheel bear down on the trip levers in succession raising the pistons for the suction stroke. When the trip lever is released the weight forces the piston down for the delivery stroke (see Figure 13). It is worthy of note that Taqi al-Din’s book antedates the famous book on machines written by Agostino Ramelli in 1588. It is therefore quite possible that there was some Islamic influence on European machine technology even as late as the tenth/sixteenth century.
Fig. 13 – Taqi al-Din’s six cylinder pump
Power from water and wind
There are three basic types of water-wheel, all of which had been in use for centuries before the advent of Islam and the question of their origin, and diffusion, which is still unresolved and controversial, need not concern us here. The first – the undershot wheel – is a paddle wheel mounted on a horizontal axle over a running stream (Figure 14a). Its power derives almost entirely from the velocity of the water, and it is therefore affected by seasonal changes in the rate of flow of the stream over which it is erected. Furthermore, the water level may fall, leaving the paddles partly or totally out of the water. The efficiency of the undershot wheel is not high perhaps as low as 22 per cent – because so much of the energy is dissipated by turbulence and drag. The fact that it retained its popularity over many centuries is due to the simplicity of its construction and to special measures that can be taken to increase its performance. These will be discussed later.
The overshot wheel is also vertical on a horizontal axle. Its rim is divided into bucket-like compartments into which the water discharges from above, usually from an artificial channel or ‘leat’ (see Figure 14b). Its efficiency can be as high as 66 per cent, provided all the water from the leat falls into the buckets and there is no spillage.
Fig 14 a and b
When used for corn milling, both types of vertical wheels require a pair of gears to transmit the power to the millstones. A vertical toothed wheel is mounted on the end of the water-wheel’s axle inside the mill house. This engages a lantern-pinion, whose vertical axle goes up through the floor to the milling room; it passes through the lower, fixed millstone and is fixed to the upper, rotating stone. The corn is fed into the concavity of the upper stone from a hopper (see Figure 15).
Fig. 15
The third type of wheel is horizontal, and can be subdivided into two main types. In the first of these a wheel with curved or scooped vanes is mounted at the bottom of the vertical shaft and water from an orifice fitted to the bottom of a water tower is directed on to the vanes, the flow being therefore tangential and radial (Figure 16). The second type is a vaned wheel, also fixed to the lower end of a vertical axle, and installed inside a cylinder into which the water cascades from above, turning the wheel mainly by axial flow. Axial-flow wheels can also be driven by vertical jets of water directed on to them from below. The first sub-type was known in Europe and western Asia by the sixth century C.E. at the latest. The second appears in an Arabic treatise of the third/ninth century, but is not known to have been used in Europe before the tenth/sixteenth century.
Fig. 16
The Muslim geographers and travellers leave us in no doubt as to the importance of corn-milling in the Muslim world. This importance is reflected not only in the widespread occurrence of mills, from the Iberian peninsula to Iran Baghdad Cordoba Europe .
The ship-mill was one of the methods used to increase the output of mills, taking advantage of the faster current in midstream and avoiding the problems caused by the lowering of the water level in the dry season. Another method was to fix the water-wheels to the piers of bridges in order to utilize the increased flow caused by the partial damming of the river. Dams were also constructed to provide additional power for mills (and water-raising machines) such as the dam built by ‘Adud al-Dawla over the River Kur in Water power was also used in Islam for other industrial purposes.. It seems that the use of water power in industrial applications was already established at an early date. Jabir Ibn Hayyan (b.721- d.815 C.E.) in Kitab al-Sab’in (Book of the Seventy) describes in treatise XVIII a spherical vessel for melting metals. This sphere was erected on a river and it was rotated by a water wheel. The sphere rotated continuously while it was heated by fire from underneath it. Jabir describes a similar continuous rotating motion on a river in treatise XXXIV of the same book.
In the year 134/751, after the battle of Atlakh or Talas, Chinese prisoners of war introduced the industry of paper-making in the city of Samarkand Samarkand Baghdad Yemen Egypt Syria Iran North Africa and Spain Samarkand China Europe was influenced by Muslim practices. A likely area of transfer is the Iberian Peninsula , where the Christians took over, in working order, many Muslim installations, including the paper mills at Jativa.
Windmills were probably known in Seistan (the western part of modern 
Fig. 17 – Wind mill in Seistan as described by al-Dimashqi
FINE TECHNOLOGY
The expression ‘fine technology’, applied to earlier times, embraces a whole range of devices and machines, with a multiplicity of purposes: water clocks, fountains, toys and automata and astronomical instruments. Some were designed to tell the time, as aids to scientific investigation and some to delight and amuse. What they have in common is the considerable degree of engineering skill required for their manufacture, and the use of delicate mechanisms and sensitive control systems. Many of the ideas employed in the construction of ingenious devices were useful in the later development of mechanical technology.
When we look into the origins of fine technology, we inevitably find our attention directed to the Hellenistic world and, in particular, Alexandria Alexandria school of Alexandria
The tradition of fine technology continued uninterrupted and was further developed under Islam. Monumental water clocks in The technology of clock-making was transferred to Muslim Spain and to Al-Maghrib. About the year 1050 C.E. al-Zarqali constructed a large water clock on the banks of the
In
In addition to water clocks and ingenious devices, the making of astrolabes and of geared astronomical mechanisms in Islam continued throughout the centuries as will be shown later. Our knowledge of Islamic fine technology will continue to improve with the publication of more research results.
It is not easy in the space available to demonstrate the achievements of Muslim engineers in the field of fine technology. This can probably best be done by considering a few of the more important Islamic works, placing emphasis upon their innovative features. The Banu Musa were three brothers – Muhammad, Ahmad and al-Hasan – who were members of the courtly circles of the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun (198/813-218/833) and his successors. This was the period that witnessed the first flowering of Arabic science, both in the translation of Greek and Syriac works into Arabic and in original scientific and technological works, and much of this activity was carried out under the direction and patronage of the Banu Musa. They were also scientists and engineers in their own right and wrote about twenty treatises, only two of which are known to have survived. One of these, The Book of Ingenious Devices (Kitab al-hiyal), written in
Model 26. A jar with an outlet pipe: during inpouring of a liquid the pourer can, according to choice, allow the liquid to discharge, or prevent its discharging.
Model 43. A jar with a tap, into which three different liquids can be poured without mixing. When the tap is opened the liquids discharge in the sequence in which they were poured in.
Model 77. A basin beside a closed reservoir. When moderate quantities of water are taken from the basin, like quantities run into it from a pipe at the bottom of the reservoir; if, however, a large quantity is taken no replenishment occurs.
These effects, and many others, were produced by the ingenious combination of a number of hydraulic and mechanical components, two of which are shown in Figure 18. Figure 18(a) shows a double concentric siphon: pipe bd passes through plate f which divides the upper chamber from the lower, the joint being airtight. Pipe a-cc is placed over end b of pipe bd and held to it by soldering pieces of copper wire between the two pipes. End a of this pipe is closed. Another wide piece of pipe e-gg, its end e closed, is fixed over end d of pipe bd. The effect of introducing this device into a flow system is to create an airlock once the flow of liquid is interrupted, so that the flow cannot be restarted except under certain conditions. Onlookers could therefore be startled by unexpected events. The double concentric siphon does not occur in any of the Greek writings nor, as far as we know, in any Arabic work except the Banu Musas book. The fluid mechanics of its operation are surprisingly complex.
Fig. 18 a and b
The second mechanism is shown in Figure 18 (b). Seat b of a conical valve is soldered to the end of pipe a, and plug c of the valve is soldered to the end of a vertical rod, the other end of which is soldered to the top of float f. Above the float and integral with it is the small tank d which has a small hole e in the bottom of one of its sides. The float rests on the surface of the water in the slightly larger tank g. It works like this: water is poured in at a and runs through the valve into tank d; the weight of the liquid in tank d stops the valve-rod from rising and so the valve remains open. When pouring is stopped tank d empties into tank g through hole e, float f rises and the valve closes. No further inpouring can then take place. Conical valves do not appear in the works of Philon and Heron. They were made by casting the plug and seat together in a single mould, the material nearly always being bronze. Plug and seat were then ground together with emery powder to a watertight fit.
A distinguishing feature of the Banu Musa’s work is therefore their confident use of conical valves as integral parts of flow systems. More generally, they show an astonishing empirical mastery of the use of small variations in hydrostatic and aerostatic pressures to produce a variety of effects. Although their work was well-known in the Muslim world for centuries after their time, none of their successors ever attempted to emulate them. They had, in fact, taken the subject to its limits with the materials and techniques then available, and nothing similar was done until the introduction of pneumatic instrumentation in modern times.
A most important treatise was written in Muslim Spain in the fifth/eleventh century by al-Muradi. Unfortunately, the only known manuscript of the work is so badly defaced that it is impossible to deduce from it precisely how any of the machines was constructed. Most of the devices were water clocks, but the first five were large automata machines that incorporated several significant features. Each of them, for example, was driven by a full-size water wheel, a method that was employed in China Europe in the astronomical clock completed by Giovanni de’ Dondi about 1365.C.E.
Al-Jazari completed his magnificent book on machines in Diyar Bakr in the year 602/1206. This is the most remarkable engineering document to have come down to us, from any cultural area, until the Renaissance. In one respect it is unique: it was written at the wish of al-Jazari’s master, the Artuqid Sultan Nasir al-Din Mahmud ibn Muhammad, so that a record of the fragile devices could be available for succeeding generations of craftsmen, long after the devices themselves had perished. Each of the fifty chapters – text and illustrations – was therefore composed with detailed instructions for manufacture, so that the machines could be reconstructed by later craftsmen; Al-Jazari was successful in this aim because several of his devices including a monumental water clock, have been constructed by modern craftsmen working from al-Jazari’s instructions. The works of other writers, while they often describe the operation of the machines quite adequately, give only the sketchiest details of construction. Al-Jazari’s willingness and ability to communicate the knowledge gained by training, experience and informed experiment therefore endow his work with immense value. AI-Jazari was an engineer who took pride in continuing a long tradition of mechanical technology, and his work may in many respects be regarded as the epitome and the summit of the Islamic achievement in this field. With one or two notable exceptions, such as the complex gear-trains of al-Muradi, it is safe to assume that he dealt with most of the machines that had been known to his predecessors, while introducing innovations and improvements of his own. Indeed, he often acknowledges the work of earlier engineers, such as Archimedes or the Banu Musa in connection with a particular technique or type of machine, describes the earlier construction accurately and then tells us how he improved upon it. For instance, a certain type of flow regulator was used in water clocks by both Hellenistic and Muslim engineers. Al-Jazari found by experiment that it was inaccurate, and describes how he made an accurate instrument by carefully calibrating a small orifice to produce correct rates of flow under various heads of water.
One example will have to suffice to give some idea of al-Jazari’s methods and the type of devices he constructed. This is the water machinery and some of the associated mechanisms from his third and fourth water clocks. These were driven by the submersible bowl or tahrajar a device that was normally used for timing the period of allocation of irrigation water to farmers. These two clocks are the only examples we have of the adaptation of the tahrajar for timekeeping, and it seems likely that this system was al-Jazari’s own invention. Figure 19 shows the basic principles; it would be impossible to describe either of the clocks fully, since they had a number of automata together with the mechanisms for activating them, some of them very ingenious.
Fig. 19
The bowl A with a calibrated orifice in its underside rests on the surface of the water in tank N, to which it is connected by the three flat pin-jointed links H. A rod is soldered across a diameter of the bowl, with hole K in its centre. At the top of the clock, supported on four columns, is the ‘castle’, a square brass box with a detachable dome. Inside the castle is a ball-release mechanism (not shown) from which a channel leads to the head F of a bird. The tail of the serpent, in effect a pulley, rotates on an axle that rests in bearings in transoms fixed between each pair of columns. The open mouth of the serpent is just below the head of the bird. A light chain D runs from the underside of the bowl to a staple in the tail of the serpent. A wire H is tied to hole K and to the ball-release. At the beginning of a time period – an hour or half an hour – the empty bowl is on the surface of the water. It sinks slowly until at the end of the period it suddenly submerges. Wire H operates the ball-release, and a ball runs into the bird’s mouth and out of its hinged beak into the mouth of the serpent. The serpent’s head sinks, and chain D lifts the bowl, which tilts due to the combined action of the chain and links B and discharges all its contents. The ball drops from the serpent’s mouth on to a cymbal, and the serpent’s head rises to its previous position. The empty bowl is again horizontal on the surface of the water, and the cycle re-starts. This is therefore a closed-loop system, since the clock will continue working as long as there are balls in the magazine. The concept of continuous operation occurs elsewhere in al-Jazari’s work; in his first clock, for example, the head of water over the orifice is kept constant by a hydraulic feed-back control system.
A number of ideas and techniques appear for the first time in al-Jazari’s work. These include the double-acting pump with suction pipes and the use of a crank in a machine (both already mentioned); accurate calibration of orifices; lamination of timber to minimize warping; static balancing of wheels; use of paper models to establish a design; and casting of metals in closed mould-boxes with green sand. There is also an indication that he knew of a method for controlling the speed of rotation of a wheel by an escapement of some kind. This is very significant when we consider a clock described in a Spanish work compiled in 1277 C.E. in which all the chapters are translations or paraphrases of earlier Arabic works. The clock consisted of a large drum made of walnut or jujube wood tightly assembled and sealed with wax or resin. The interior of the drum was divided into twelve compartments, with small holes between the compartments through which mercury flowed. Enough mercury was enclosed to fill just half the compartments. The drum was mounted on the same axle as a large wheel powered by a weight-drive wound around the wheel. Also on the axle was a pinion with six teeth that meshed with thirty-six oaken teeth on the rim of an astrolabic dial. The mercury drum and the pinion made a complete revolution in 4 hours and the astrolabic dial made a complete revolution in 24 hours. Clocks incorporating this principle are known to work satisfactorily, since many of them were made in The astrolabe was the astronomical instrument par excellence of the Middle Ages; from its Hellenistic origins it was brought to perfection by Muslim scientists and craftsmen. Essentially it consists of a circular plate inside a raised annulus that is divided into degrees, the annulus being soldered to the rim of a base-plate. The first plate is engraved with the lines of azimuth and altitude for the latitude of the observer. Turning on a central pin above the plate is the rete or spider, made of open metalwork. This is essentially a star map, the principal fixed stars appearing as holes or gemstones; there is also a circle for the sun’s ecliptic. Rotating above the rete was an alidade. Both plate and rete were marked out by stereographic projection. The instrument was usually made of brass (see Figure 5). A number of astronomical problems, which otherwise have to be solved by tedious computation, can be solved very quickly by using the astrolabe. It has been established that the first European treatises on the astrolabe were of Arabic inspiration and were written in Latin at the beginning of the fifth/eleventh century in the abbey of Ripoll in Catalonia Europe .
Other computing instruments were devised in the Muslim world in the later Middle Ages, perhaps the most important of these being equatoria, which were invented in Muslim Spain early in the fifth/eleventh century. The objective of the equatorium was the determination of the longitude of any one of the planets at a given time. This was done by constructing to scale and by mechanical and graphical means the Ptolemaic configuration for that particular planet at the given instant. As with the astrolabe, knowledge of equatoria was diffused into Europe from the Muslim world.
An important aspect of Islamic fine technology is the tradition of geared astronomical instruments which were described in Arabic literature. The most notable example is the astronomical geared mechanism that was described by al-Biruni (Fig 20) and called by him huqq al-Qamar (Box of the Moon). From al Biruni’s text we understand that these mechanisms were known in Islamic astronomy. A surviving example is the geared calendar made by Muhammad b. Abi Bakr al-Ibari al-Isfahani dated 1221/2 C.E. which is found on the back of an astrolabe. This instrument is in the collection of the Museum of the History of Science at 
Fig. 20 – Al-Biruni’s huqq al-qamar
Derek J. de Solla Price when describing the Antikythera mechanism (90 C.E.) remarked that " It seems likely that the Antikythera tradition was part of a corpus of knowledge that has since been lost but was known to the Arabs. It was developed and transmitted by them to medieval The astronomical gearing mechanisms just mentioned were manually driven. But as mentioned above, al-Muradi’s machine, (Model 5), shows a system of gears for transmitting torque that is much more complex than any other power-driven gears known to have existed so early.
Many of the ideas that were to be embodied in the mechanical clock had been introduced centuries before its invention: complex gear trains, segmental gears in al‑Muradi and al‑Jazari, epicycle gears in al‑Muradi, celestial and biological simulations in the automata‑machines and water clocks of Hellenistic and Islamic engineers; weight‑drives in Islamic mercury clocks and. pumps, escapements in mercury docks, and other methods of controlling the speeds of water wheels. The heavy floats in water clocks may also be regarded as weights, with the constant‑head system as the escapement.
We know that the Christians in Spain Toledo Europe and there was a substantial advance in the fifth/eleventh century in the techniques of hydraulic time-keeping. In a treatise written by Robertus Anglicus in 1271, it is mentioned that the clockmakers – i.e. the makers of water clocks – were trying to solve the problem of the mechanical escapement and had almost reached their objective. The first effective escapement appeared a few years later. This evidence, circumstantial though it is, points strongly to an Islamic influence upon the invention of the mechanical clock.
In the middle of the sixteenth century, mechanical clocks from Select Bibliography
(see also the references in the footnotes)
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