We have no information about Al-Jazari’s life except what he wrote himself in the introduction to his wonderful book (Hill’s translation):

” I am in the service of the king al-Salah Nasir al-Din Abi al-Fath Mahmud bin Muhammad bin Qara Arslan bin Dawud ibn Sukman bin Artuq, the king of Diyar Bakr, may God preserve him with those whom He chooses to preserve. That is following my service to his father and his brother, God sanctify their souls, before the kingship passed to him – a [total] period of twenty-five years, the first of them year 577 [Hijri- 1181 AD]. God, may He be exalted, has singled him out with distinctions of intelligence, high-mindedness, justice, and probity, so that he surpasses in justice and probity the kings of the present age, and excels the lords of near and far in beneficence and graciousness.”

In many places, it is claimed that Al-Jazari was born in 1136 and died in 1206. As for his birth, I have not found any historical source, and I fear that this is a complete fabrication. As for his death, we can use the colophon of manuscript number 3472 in the Topkapi Library, the earliest copy of the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. The colophon is a note by the scribe, usually at the end of the manuscript, in which the scribe records details about its creation, such as the date, place, their name, the book’s title, etc. The colophon consists of two parts.

The first part is the testimony (شهادة):

“Its correctness has been attested to, and this book was collated against the handwriting of its author, Badiʿ al-Zamān Abū al-ʿIzz Ismāʿīl ibn al-Razzāz al-Jazarī — may God have mercy upon him.”

The testimony does not state the year of Al-Jazari’s death, but the reference to Al-Jazari (“May Allah Almighty have mercy on him” (رحمه الله تعالى)) is a typical one for someone who has already passed away.

The second part is a classical colophon:

“Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and blessings and peace be upon our master Muḥammad, his family, and companions all together. The completion of the manuscript occurred on 12 Shaʿbān[The eighth month of the Muslim year] 602 A.H.[ [Hijri- 1206 AD]. It was written by the humble servant in need of God’s mercy, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf b. Uthmān al-Ḥaskafī—may God forgive him and all Muslims.”

The book was written in 1206 AD. This is based on the book’s introduction quoted above. Al-Jazari began his work in the palace in 1181 CE and worked there for 25 years. If so, he probably died a few months after completing the book.

When I discovered the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, I looked for additional historical sources on Al-Jazari and his machines, such as a Muslim traveler who passed through Diyarbakir and testified to the machines he saw with his own eyes. Or perhaps a historian or biographer of Muslim scholars who would expand on the limited information from the book’s introduction. I wanted to learn more about the engineer who wrote the book I loved. This is probably naive, although there are still many Arabic manuscripts that have not been translated, or even cataloged, and no one knows what is written there.

During my research, I found famous travelers like Ibn Jubayr (ابن جبير), who left Mosul in June 1184, on his way to Damascus. He passed through the southern outskirts of the Artuqid principality. Ibn Battuta (ابن بطوطة) visited Mardin (ماردين) in 1326 and other places. Also, less well-known travelers such as Abu al-Hasan al-Harawi (أبو الحسان الهروي), who visited the area in 1215, a few years after the death of al-Jazari, and Ibn Shaddad (عز الدين بن شدداد), who wrote extensively about Diyar Bakr. I have written here about Ibn Jubayr’s Travels and Ibn Battuta’s [in Hebrew] Travels. In neither book is there a word about al-Jazari or his machines.

The travelers focused on geography, particularly holy places such as Mecca and Jerusalem. They also dealt extensively with Muslim issues, such as prayer times, mosques, Waqf (وَقْف), and covered political order, including rulers, justice, and security for the inhabitants. They described social customs such as clothing, markets, and food, and sometimes gender norms as well. There are a few reports of wonders (عجائب), but these are mainly natural wonders, such as the tar springs near the Tigris. To the best of my knowledge, there is no one description of clocks or other mechanisms. This is also true of Christian travelers in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. Al-Jazari’s absence from the travel books has more to do with the genre than with him and his machines.

I am more surprised by the complete silence of medieval historical sources. Ali ibn al-Athir al-Jazri (علي بن الاثیر الجزری) was a historian, hadith scholar, and biographer of great importance. His name ends in al-Jazri (الجزری), like the author of our book. The suffix of the name (نسبة in Arabic) indicates the place of origin of the person, his ancestral tribe, or his ancestral origin. In this case, it is the city of Cizre in Turkish Kurdistan, near the Turkey-Iraq-Syria border triangle. Its ancient name is Jazira Ibn Umar (جَزِيْرَة ٱبْن عُمَر). We have a wealth of information about Al-Jazari the biographer, unlike Al-Jazari the engineer, and we know that he was born in Cizre on May 12, 1160 AD. Was Al-Jazari, the engineer, also a Cizre native, or is it just his family’s origin, even though he was born in Diyarbakir? We will probably never know. Either way, al-Athir was a major historian in the Middle Ages, and his book “The Complete History” (الكامل في التارخ) is a seminal historical source to this day. There is no mention of Al-Jazari the Engineer. One could argue that this is due to the book’s organization, which presents a comprehensive, chronological world history, extending from the creation to the time of the Prophet to the time of Ibn al-Athir, with scholars appearing only in the context of a significant contribution to a noteworthy event. But al-Jazari does not appear in the writings of Yaqut al-Hamawi (ياقوت الحَمَوي) or Ahmad ibn Khalkan (أحمد ابن خلكان). The latter was a renowned historian who wrote the famous biographical encyclopedia of Muslim scholars and is considered the most prominent biographer in Islamic history. This silence is especially striking, since Ibn Khalkan lived in Erbil and Damascus, not far from Diyarbakir, in the very same century.

How can this be explained? Humanity needed engineers in ancient times; the Pyramid of Giza or the Aemilius Bridge in Rome were not built without the involvement of someone who is today called an engineer. But unlike philosophers, doctors, or religious scholars, an engineer was not considered a scholar but a skilled craftsman, however talented, and Al-Jazari, although highly respected among his Artuqid patrons, was also seen as an artisan, a craftsman. His legacy survived through his book, not through mentions in chronicles or biographies. It was only in the modern period (19th-20th century), with scholars such as Wiedemann, Hauser, and later Donald Hill, that he was “rediscovered” as a central figure in the history of technology.

All that remains is to turn to the book of Ingenious Mechanical Devices to learn about Al-Jazari, the man, and you can learn quite a bit. Some insights about Al-Jazari are scattered across the blog’s posts. In Part B, I have compiled them into a portrait of the man that emerges from his book.