Al-Jazari

Badi al-Zaman Abu al-Izz Isma'il ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari was a Muslim engineer, craftsman, and inventor active in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Almost everything known about his life comes from a single source: the preface to his own treatise, the Kitab fi ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya ("Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices"). No independent chronicle records his biography, so his dates are necessarily uncertain.

By his own account he served as chief engineer ("hiyal" master, a maker of ingenious mechanisms) at the court of the Artuqids, a Turkmen dynasty ruling Upper Mesopotamia as vassals of greater powers. He reports serving the family for some twenty-five years across three successive rulers, completing his book around 1206 at the request of the reigning prince, Nasir al-Din Mahmud, in the city of Amid (modern Diyarbakir, in present-day Turkey).

The book describes water clocks, automata (self-operating mechanical figures), fountains, and water-raising machines, illustrated with detailed diagrams and practical construction notes; it is prized by historians of technology for devices such as crank mechanisms and pumps. His nisba "al-Jazari" points to the al-Jazira region (Upper Mesopotamia) or possibly the town of Jazirat ibn Umar; his birthplace, ethnicity (variously described as Arab, Kurdish, or Persian), and place of death are not securely documented. The widely repeated birth year 1136 is a later estimate, not a contemporary attestation.