Mechanics

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A New Arabic Text of Mechanics: Sinan ibn Thabit on the Theory of Simple Machines

The Arabic manuscript Orient fol. 3306 preserved at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin was in its original form a precious collection of Arabic scientific texts of mechanics and optics. It contains a...

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Al-Jazari's Third Water-Raising Device: Analysis of its Mathematical and Mechanical Principles

Five pumps or water-raising machines are described by al-Jazari in his monumental treatise of mechanics Al-Jami' bayn al-‘ilm wa 'l-‘amal al-nafi' fi sina'at al-hiyal (A Compendium on the Theory and...

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Overview on al-Jazari and his Mechanical Devices

In this article, Professor Yavuz Unat, a known historian of science from Ankara University, draws a general survey on al-Jazari and his treatise. He describes some of his machines and points out the...

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The Mechanics of Banu Musa in the Light of Modern System and Control Engineering

This article is a review of the book published recently by Professor Attila Bir (Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Istanbul) on Banu Musa's book of...

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A Review of Early Muslim Control Engineering

During the period of Islamic-Arabic extraordinary activity in Science and Technology (9th-13th century), there are some recorded contributions to the area of Automatic Control mainly in the...

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Samples of ancient Islamic ceramics in the Museum of Islamic Ceramics in Cairo. Four plates with drawings from Islamic Egypt: (a). Mamluk era, 11th century; (b). Fatimid era, 12th century; (c). Mamluk period, 11th century; (d). Fatimid times, 11th century. (Source).

Filling the Gap in the History of Pre-Modern Industry: 1000 Years of Missing Islamic Industry

Most educational systems, particularly those of Western countries, teach that industry was born in Europe and...

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Figure 1: Diagrams from the original manuscript of Al-Karaji's Inbat al-miyah al-khafiya, from Transformation of Knowledge: Early Manuscripts from the Schoenberg Collection (edited by Crofton Black, Paul Holberton publishing, 2007, p. 115). (Source: section 7 "Technology").

Muhammad Al-Karaji: A Mathematician Engineer from the Early 11th Century

Abu Bakr Muhammed Al-Karaji is a Muslim mathematician and engineer from the late 10th century-early 11th...

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Figure 4: A creative model of a device designed by al-Jazari (chapter 6 of category III) used for measuring blood lost during phlebotomy (bloodletting) sessions, a popular therapy in the medieval world. Taken from a MS of al-Jazari's treatise copied in Egypt in 1354. (Source).