I love these old mystery schematics where the idiosyncratic drawing style and lack of a readily identifiable energy input system often leave me fairly puzzled as to the true context or viability of the machines. I'm not necessarily sure that a knowledge of Arabic would enlighten us to any great extent.
Although there are a few astrological images, this anonymous manuscript is almost totally devoted to fluid dynamics and mechanics. I can't find any background to the work and suppose it was produced somewhere between the 16th to 19th centuries.
- All the images here are cropped details from the source pages at Max Planck Digital Library where the ~300 page manuscript is listed simply as 'Anonym., Ms. or. fol. 3306
,o. J.' ('or.' being Oriental) - The above images (fairly large in size) have also been uploaded to Wikimedia.
- I presume this manuscript copies from earlier scholars, most notably Al-Jazari.
I'm looking forward to someone revealing what these are actually about. Apart from the astrological images I'm utterly baffled.
ReplyDeleteVery good images... Thanks to show them...
ReplyDeleteBest wishes from Buenos Aires...
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The Al-Jazari wikipedia link is a good place to get a vague understanding about at least a couple of these devices. The 2-D diagrams here are very deceptive: pumps operated by fluid chambers/buoyancy for the mostpart I think.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this photos,
ReplyDeleteprobably this machine is a fluid clock ,that gives hours and the month
that the reason behind the astrological schematic. and in many photos there is multi-cut presentation multiple view port of the machine "top view-and side view"
amazing images!!!! thanks alot
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