Drinking sessions

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A Goblet which arbitrates during drinking parties

Introduction

It is a tall goblet made of silver. The goblet has a fretted, flat lid with a beautiful dome in the center. On top of the dome, there is a duck with an open beak. The goblet is put in the middle of the party, and wine is poured. The duck rotates and emits a shrill tone until it comes to rest and stops whistling; its beak is pointed towards one of the participants who drink from the spout and empties all the wine and returns it to the steward, If however, any wine remains in it the duck whistles and the steward would not accept the goblet until the chosen one completed the drinking.

A drawing of the Goblet which arbitrates, Topkapi Manuscript, 1206

How does it work?

The technical explanation will be colored in blue as always, so anyone who is not interested in how a pitcher of wine makes sounds and how you know how much wine was drank can skip those bits. The drawing below is by the book translator and annotator, Donald R.Hill. It would help us to follow the mechanism:

The goblet mechanism following the drawing by Donald Hill.

The servant pours the wine on the fretted lid. The wine flows downward through the opening on the water wheel. Please see below the beautiful drawing by al-Jazari, which looks just like a modern turbine of NASA. The flow of wine hits the blades and rotates the wheel and the duck, which is on the axle. The wine goes down into the channel into the goblet, driving the air from through the air pipe and the whistle. When the drinker drinks from the spout, the wine goes back in the opposite direction, but if the drinker did not finish the wine, it will come back and push air in the pipe, and the duck will make a sound indicating that the drinker did not complete his duty.

A comparison of the water Wheel by al-Jazari and a modern turbine, NASA website.

 

Alcohol?

I am not an expert on Islam and its development, but the casual reference to alcohol drinking surprised me very much. I’ve explored the issue a little bit, but I would love to receive your corrections, comments, or other proposals. The prohibition on alcohol in the holy Quran is gradual. Muslims believe that Allah did so in his great wisdom and understanding of human nature and the knowledge of how rooted is alcohol consumption. In the beginning, Muslims were prohibited from participating in prayers when drunk:

Surah An-Nisa [4:43]:

“O you who have attained to faith! Do not attempt to pray while you are in a

state of drunkenness, [but wait] until you know what you are saying”

Further, it is said that alcohol is more damage than good:

Surah al-Baqarah 2:219:

“They will ask thee about intoxicants and games of chance. Say: “In both there is great evil as well as some benefit for man; but the evil which they cause is greater than the benefit which they bring.”

And only, at last, there is a sweeping prohibition:

Surah Al-Maida, 5:90

“O you who have attained to faith! Intoxicants, and games of chance, and idolatrous practices, and the divining of the future are but a loathsome evil of Satan’s doing: shun it, then, so that you might attain to a happy state!

All English translation by Muhammad Asad.

Despite the prohibition on drinking wine and intoxicating beverages in Islam, you can find many testimonies for drinking alcohol in the medieval Islamic world in language, culture, and poetry.  The word “alcohol” itself comes from the Arabic word al-kuhul (الْكُحْل) means the essence. This is because the production process is reminiscent of the production of the Kahal powder used as a dark eye-coloring cosmetic. In poetry, Abu Nuwas, probably the most famous Arab poet of the Abbasid era who also appears in “Thousand Nights and Nights,” wrote wine poems, The Khamriyyāt. You can be read more here:

“Don’t cry for Layla, don’t rave about Hind!

But drink among roses a rose-red wine,

A drought that descends in the drinker’s throat,

bestowing its redness on eyes and cheeks.

The wine is a ruby, the glass is a pearl,

served by the hand of a slim-fingered girl,

Who serves you the wine from her hand, and wine

from her mouth — doubly drunk, for sure, will you be!”

The Story of Bayad and Riyad, 13th-century Manuscript, Vatican library

“The drawing is from the manuscript “The Story of Bayad and Riyad”( حديث بياض ورياض).  This is the only manuscript left; it was probably created in Andalusia very close to 1200 (the years in which al-Jazari wrote “The Book of knowledge of Ingenious mechanical devices”) The scene in the picture is clearly a feast in which a group of women and men drink wine together.

The goblet which arbitrates is evidence that the court of Diyarbakir has lived with this contradiction in peace. There are plenty of references to Islam and its customs in the book, and there are playful fun drinking parties without any apology or concealment. We only have to guess the explanation. The Arctic rulers lived among a diverse local population, including Armenians, Syrians, and Greeks, most of them oriental Christians. In Christianity, not only wine is not forbidden, but it is a part of the ritual. At the Last Supper of Jesus, Jesus blesses the wine, states that the wine is his blood, and instructs the disciples to drink from it. Then he passed unleavened bread around the table and explained to his Apostles that the bread represents his body. These are the roots of the Holy Communion ceremony. It is possible that living together led to a softer approach to drinking wine. However, the evidence for alcohol use comes from all over the Muslim world from Persia to Andalusia and also spans for hundreds of years. I may be dumping the strict current prohibition on periods where the perception of early and late in the holy Quran was different and religious concepts were more moderate.

Truth or Dare?

My beloved M., the first reader of my posts, commented on the resemblance between the rotating duck and the bottle in the game “Truth or Dare”. This is a party game I last played as a teenager and was particularly popular among adolescents. The Internet offers application (few!), which make me feel that what was daring at my time is quite innocent today. On the other hand, it seems as though the game is still popular and therefore needs have not really changed?

Seemingly, this is a different game. The participants sit in a circle and spin a bottle. The participant to whom the bottle was pointed was asked: “Truth or Dare?” If you choose “truth”, you are asked a question that you must answer. At the time, all the questions were opened in: “Is it true that…” And most of them, if not all, dealt with things that are between him and her. If you choose “Dare”, you are given a task that opens with words “I dare you..” and most of those were the first kisses or something ridiculous. The question I think is why we need a bottle? Or in the context of the goblet which arbitrate why in duck?  Adolescents, at least in my time, were embarrassed about discovering their sexuality and the relationship with the opposite sex. The use of a game frame and temporary loss of control for the benefit of the “bottle” allowed expanding the boundaries and experimenting with what was difficult to ask or say without the protection of the game and could bring about embarrassment or reprimand. Does this mean that the partners at the banquet needed a duck that arbitrates because they felt discomfort with drinking alcohol? is this a question mark on my assumption that the goblet is clear evidence that the court of Diyarbakir lived with this contradiction in peace?

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The Musical Boat for a Drinking Party

Introduction

The Musical Boat is the fourth of ten automata (mechanical dolls) and vessels that were designed to amuse guests at drinking parties at the King Court in Diyarbakir. On the boat deck seat the king, his and weapon-bearer, a slave holding a jug and goblet, as if serving drinks. Below there is a group of boon-companions and four slave girls, a flute-player, a harpist and two tambourine-players. The King and his court are static, papier-mâché sculptures. The musicians are made from jointed copper, and their arm can move. Professor Noel Sharkey sees in the unique mechanism al-Jazari designed for the drummer the world’s first programmable robot. More on this topic, below.

The musical boat, Topkapi manuscript, 1206

How does the boat work?

The boat moves gently on the surface of the pool at the Palace. Once every half hour, without any external intervention, a performance begins; The flutist would play the flute, the drummer would beat the tambourine, and the harpist plucks the copper strings. Here is a short mute (unfortunately) video of a model of the musical boat. After approx. Fifty seconds you can see the mechanism in action.

 

The technical explanation, as always, will be colored in blue, so anyone who is not interested in tipping buckets or early camshafts can skip those bits. The diagram below is the original drawing of al-Jazari with my captions:

The slave girls (musicians) are sitting above a water reservoir. The tank empties slowly into the tipping bucket. When the tipping-bucket has filled, after about half an hour, it discharges its water onto the scoops wheel, turning the wheel on its axle. The pegs on the axle rotate as well moving the rods which are connected to the slave-girls’ hands, moving them up and down. This creates the motion of the harpist plucking or the drum beating. The harpist has a three peg system for one hand, and the other hand is operated by one peg only. The rods are an early version of a camshaft and convert the circular motion of the axle to the linear movement of the musicians’ hands. The spacing between them generates different patterns of drumming or harp music. The water flows down into the pipe which is connected to the air vessel, forcing air through the whistle. This is the source of the “flute” sound.

Qiyan – Musician slave girls

The drawings in the facsimile edition were not done by al-Jazari. Donald Hill, The book translator, and annotator, detailed eleven manuscripts all over the world. The earliest copy, now in Topkapi Library (MS 3472) was completed by Muhammad Ibn Yusuf Ibn Uthman alHisenkafi in April 1206 and is the source of a facsimile. When a scribe finished copying a manuscript, a task that lasted weeks or even months, he would add a colophon, brief statement containing information about the publication such as information about the scribe and the manuscript. This is how we know that this copy was completed in 1206, the year al-Jazari died. We can assume that this copy was prepared from the original book, and the drawings are quite similar to the original. This is interesting because of the affinity between the Clothing of the boon- companions and the slave girls. The boon companions and the girls are all wearing qaba, a robe with sleeves, at mid-calf –between the knee and ankle that has a diagonal fastening of one side over the other. The color scheme is also identical. This made me think of them as “male musicians” Although the text is very clear about slave girls

Qiyān (Arabic: قِيان‎, ) was a social class of slave women, trained as entertainers, which existed in the pre-modern Islamic world. Qiyān is often rendered in English as ‘singing slave girls,’ but this translation does not reflect the fact that qiyān were skilled entertainers whose training extended well beyond singing, including composing music and verse, reciting historical or literary anecdotes, calligraphy, or shadow-puppetry and more. Qiyān were important in performing and distributing the works of the composers of the period in the Palaces of Islam from the eighth to the thirteenth century. They received broad education from an early age, including science, philosophy, and art. Beyond being gifted poets, dancers, or musicians, they were supposed to be courtesan with high conversational skills. There’s quite a bit of information about Qiyan in Baghdad, the Abbasid capital. In these years Bagdad was a cosmopolitan city and the center of science, culture, and philosophy. The musical slaves came from different cultural backgrounds. We know of Qiyān from all over the world, from Rome to India. They were bought in for outrageous sums of money, but the slavery is somewhat confusing, and those released remained in palaces in the same role? You can’t compare the tiny principality of the Artuqid with the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, but the presence of the Qiyan in Diyarbakir is another indication of the cultural flourishing in line with the original architecture  [Hebrew] and the initiative to write the ” Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.”

Musical robot

The word ‘robot’ was first used by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his 1921 play R.U.R -Rossum’s Universal Robots. The word ‘robot’ itself was not new, and come from Slavic language robota, meaning servitude. Oxford dictionary definition, “a machine capable of complex operations automatically, especially with programmable computer” is problematic, if only because my car is capable of a complex series of actions automatically, it has a large number of programmable electronics, and it is not a robot by any definition. In literature and science fiction movies, we use “robot” for an android, a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and functions.

Čapek’s book was written in 1921, long before Ted Hoff invented the microprocessor. When we talk about ancient robots and the automata al-Jazari built and ask ourselves if they should be considered as the predecessors of robotics, the questions should be two:

  1. Was it possible to program? Or in other words, do they have the ability to do different actions by design?
  2. Do they have autonomy? The ability to decide what to do and how to do it?

The question of “what was the first device that could be programmed?” is more theoretical than practical, but the musical boat is a leading candidate. Professor Noel Sharkey of Sheffield University built a model of a single drummer from the musical boat to illustrate how it can be “programmed.”  Beneath the ‘drummer’ was a rotating shaft with pegs on it. As these pegs rotated they pull on a lever that raised the drummer’s arm and then it dropped to hit the drum. The placement of the pegs entirely controlled the rhythm and timing of the drum beats. The purpose of the model was to demonstrate that one can play different beats using different peg patterns by changing the peg locations and spacing.

Did al-Jazari actually “program” the musical boat? We will never know. He probably used this method during the design to get the rhythm he liked. Whether it was used or not, the musical boat shows the possibility of “programming.” The question of autonomy will have to wait eight centuries until engineers would have sensors and computerized systems.  For those who want to expand, I attach a short (about ten minutes) film from the history channel. It introduces the subject of Robotics and the contribution of al-Jazari and other ancient robots. For some reason, they turned al-Jazari into a Persian?

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Two Automatons and Iconoclasm

Introduction

Two automatons, an automaton of a man holding a goblet and a bottle and an automaton of two shaykhs upon a dais, are very similar in their mechanism but also, unfortunately, similar because all the faces of the characters were damaged (thanks to Galia Levy-Grad who brought this to my attention) more on this topic below:

An automaton of a man holding a goblet and a bottle on the right, and an automaton of are two shaykhs upon a dais, on the left. Topkapi manuscript, 1206

How does it work?

The technical explanation, as always, will be colored in blue, so anyone who is not interested in a tipping bucket or a siphon can skip those bits.

Both automatons have very partial drawings. Donald Hill, the book translator, did not add a modern schematics as he did with most machines in the book. The reason is Al-Jazari own words: “construction of the figure was described in the previous chapter [here] so there is no need to explain it.” This is my drawing, based on the text and previous drawings:

The mechanism of a man holding a goblet and a bottle

This is a mechanical slave made of copper; the head and neck are a wine reservoir slowly dripping into a tipping bucket. The tipping bucket is partially hidden by his hand. You can see a tipping bucket more clearly in drawing below of the two shaykhs or here (in Hebrew). After seven and a half minutes the tipping bucket would be full of wine and would tilt on its axis and pour twenty dirhams, sixty cubic centimeters of wine which would flow through the pipe to the silver bottle. The top of the goblet is covered; wine would flow directly through the hollow arm to the arm tank. The latter becomes heavy, and the arm would move upward about the axle in the elbow, imitating the motion of drinking. When the tank is full, the siphon ­­­will empty the arm tank, and the hand would descend to its original position.

The automaton of two shaykhs sitting cross-legged on a dais, each holding a bottle and a silver goblet is a duplication of the mechanism just explained. The reservoir is full of water which slowly dripped through an onyx to a tilting pipe. At the bottom of the pipe, a ring was welded, so the pipe is like a “children teeter.” The right side is slightly heavier, and therefore the pipe tilts to the right and water come out on the right. It would take about seven and a half minutes to the tilting bucket to fill (the drawing is just before it overturns) and then water would flow into the pipe inside the column. The rod at the side of the tilting bucket would push the tilting pipe to the left, and the water would flow to the tilting bucket B. After seven and a half minutes it would tilt, and water would flow to other Sheikh’s goblet. This is a drawing of the mechanism with my captions:

Mechanism of the automaton of the two shaykhs

Iconoclasm

In both illustrations, the faces were erased. This is not accidental damage; there are numerous illustrations in the Topkapi manuscript with damage to the face, without comparison to the number of illustrations which have a different kind of damage. I think this is a case of iconoclasm (from Greek: εἰκών image, κλάστειν break) – the destruction of icons or images for religious or political reasons. Although the contemporary contexts (Taliban, or ISIS) Iconoclasm is an ancient phenomenon starting with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people but also important to Christians and Muslims. In Genesis Rabba (Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית רַבָּה) a religious text from Judaism’s classical period, probably written between 300 and 500 CE it is told:

“So he [Abraham] took a stick and broke all the idols, and put the stick in the hand of the largest.

When his father returned he demanded: What have you done to them?

Abraham said to him: I cannot conceal it from you, a woman came with a plateful of fine meal and requested me to offer it to them, and I did. One [idol] claimed: I must eat first, while another claimed: I must eat first. Thereupon, the largest arose, took the stick and broke them.

His father said: Why are you fooling with me? Have they any knowledge?

Abraham replied: Should your ears hear what your mouth has said?!”

Genesis Raba 38, my translation

I will expand about Iconoclasm and Islam below, but Christianity also had its part. In the 8th century, there were heated arguments, sometimes violent, about iconography. The issue was the interpretation of the second commandment: “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” What appears to some Christians as proper worship, perceived by other Christians as idolatry. These arguments led to the smashing of icons. It is interesting to note that this is an example of government-led iconoclasm with the banning the use of icons by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III in 730 AD.

Those who think Iconoclasm characterizes fanatic religions will be disappointed to learn that enlighten ideologies, at least in the eyes of their believers, supported massive iconoclasm. For example, the French Revolution, the origin of the declaration of the rights of man, is one of the darkest periods of iconoclasm. For three years France was destroying art, It began with the smashing of statues of the Kings of France, and continued in methodical destruction of religious icons, engravings, paintings and burning artifacts from the feudal past. The following quote is from a law from 1792:

“Whereas the sacred principles of liberty and equality will not permit the existence of monuments raised to ostentation, prejudice, and tyranny to continue to offend the eyes of the French people, whereas the bronze in these monuments can be converted to cannons for the defense of the homeland …

All monuments containing traces of feudalism, of whatever nature that remains in churches, or other public places, or even those in private homes, shall, without the slightest delay, be destroyed by the communities. “

The opposition to figural representation in Islam is not based on the Qur’an, but on traditions contained within the Hadith ( الحديث). This is a collection of stories about Muhammad and his words and advice regarding various topics. Within Islam, the authority of Hadith ranks second only to that of the Quran. The two principal objections to figuration are a concern with not taking over the divine creative power and a fear of shirk (شرك), a term that came to mean polytheism and idolatry but originally meant believing in other gods. This duality is similar in my mind to what I learned during my studies at the Mandel School for educational leadership: “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” does not ban on idolatry because it was already said “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and the ten commandments are “the essence” of faith and contain no repetitions. Hence the second part forbids the use of material representation of God and demand spirituality. Either way, there’s consensus Hadith forbidding all representations that have shadows, whose defacement is obligatory. Some schools of Islamic thought go so far as to see all artists that depict living being (animals and humans) as polytheists.

Over the years, some people who interpret this as permission and possibly an imperative to destroy artworks, in many cases as their initiative. A good example is described by the Ottoman writer Evliya Celebi. In an auction in Eastern Anatolia in 1655 potential bidders were allowed to inspect the goods in their quarters at night, and one of them took the manuscript of Shah-Nama, the Persian Book of Kings, and when he saw it contains miniatures, painting being forbidden according to his belief, he took his Turkish knife and poked their and rubbed the color in their faces with his saliva(?).

The offender was eventually lashed and stoned(?) by the orders of Pasha of Bitlis as a punishment for defacing the manuscript. Clearly, his faith was not accepted by the authorities, or maybe the Pasha was annoyed because of the damage value of the goods.

I couldn’t find any material on iconoclasm in the Topkapi manuscript, and I don’t know if the name of the vandal and the time are known. This  is a partial collection of defacing in the manuscript:

I’d like to close this post with something more optimistic, so I wish the world would be less violent or fanatic, and we will not experience any more iconoclasm because of the Christian, Islamic or Jewish faiths nor by any other ideology.

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The Arbiter for a drinking session

Introduction

This is a drinking game for the effervescent parties in Diyarbakır Palace as we met in The automaton who drinks the king’s leaving and A boat placed on a pool during a drinking party (in Hebrew).

The Arbiter is a complicated automaton (a self-operating machine) which includes: A slave (جارِية) pouring wine to a goblet in the lower level. Above her, on a balcony, there are four slave girls who play music on a flute, tambourine and a lute. Above them, there is a half-naked male dancer in a niche, and on top of the dome, there is a horse rider carrying a lance. During the party, the musicians play their instruments, the dancer dances (I swear!) and the horse and the rider rotate slowly. When commotion stops the slave girl tilt the bottle and pours wine to the goblet. A servant (a living person) takes the goblet and serve it to the participant the spear points to his direction. The process repeats itself twenty times, almost seven hours in total. At that time the black doors behind the dancer open and a man emerges out of the door, his hands are in the air, signaling that celebration is over and there is no more wine. Al-Jazari calms the worried reader, saying that the head of the assembly can choose to refill the reservoir. The wild parties in Diyarbakir can raise a lot of questions about the crazy amounts of wine, the half-naked dancer, and more. Maybe I will write about all this in the future. I want to focus on clothes, did observer of the automaton in the 12th century knew she was a slave by her dress?  What can we learn from the text and the illustrations about clothing in the Artuqid palace?

The Arbiter for a drinking session. Topkapi manuscript, 1206.

How does it work?

The technical explanation, as always, will be colored in blue, so anyone who is not interested in floats, Tipping buckets or camshaft can skip those bits. The illustration below is my modification of the drawing from the book; it will help us to follow the mechanism:

Drawing of the mechanism

In the beginning, a servant lifts the dome (1) and fill the reservoir (2) with filtered wine.  At the bottom of the reservoir, there is a thin pipe, so wine is dripping to the tipping bucket(3). I wrote about tipping buckets before, for example in the fountain of the two tipping buckets (in Hebrew). In the front view, you can see the tipping bucket in action. After twenty minutes the bucket is full of wine, and it becomes overbalanced, and tips down, emptying itself on the scoop wheel (4) which turns the adjacent teeth wheel (5) which turns the 900 teeth wheel(6) which is connected to the rider axle(more clearly seen from the side). This makes the rider rotates, and the “lucky” participant that the spear is pointing in his direction will get to drink the goblet. I used quotation for “lucky” because the goblet contains a liter of wine, more than an entire bottle! I don’t know what the alcohol content in the 12th century was, but it seems like a sure way to get drunk with a severe hangover. I do not want to think about someone who was lucky enough to win two goblets during the seven hours of the party.  The wine from the scoop wheel is collected and falls on the second scoop wheel(7). The rotating wheel rotates the axle and the pegs(8)connected to it, hitting the levers connected to the musician’s arms. This causes the up and down movement, simulating the drummer bit and the playing of the lute. The rods, an early version of camshaft transform the circular motion into linear motion were the rods pattern creates different drumming bit and lute music. The wine flow from the 2nd scoop wheel to the air tank, pushing air in a narrow pipe with a whistle at the end(9). This produces the sound of the flute player. Finally, the wine goes down in a hidden tube (10) through the slave body and fills the bottle. The latter is on an axle, and the weight will cause it to tilt and fill the goblet. For clarity, I skipped two mechanisms. Readers who love to ponder on this kind of gadgets can try to decipher the remaining components and questions will be, as always, appreciated.

Fashion and clothing in the “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.”

The choices of clothing by Muslims reflect their religious and cultural world. We call the veil worn by some Muslim women to cover their hair- hijab (Arabic: حجاب). In the Qur’an and other classical Arabic texts, the term was used to denote a partition, a curtain and it is a generic term for modest attire. During the Hajj (حَجّ), the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam, the men wear a white outfit that was not touched by a needle or thread (how is that even possible?).  What (if anything) can we learn about life in the 12th century in Diyarbakır by looking at the illustration and the few direct references of al-Jazari to clothing details?

Five slaves from the “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices” Topkapi manuscript,1206

In the top left illustration, we can see a young black slave (غلام) truncates the candle wick from The candle clock of the swordsman (Hebrew). No explicit description of him in the book but his attire is the simplest, in comparison to all the other slaves and includes a short red dress with stripes on the sleeves. The sleeves’ stripes appear in almost every dress of slaves or free men. I don’t know if this was the fashion in Diyarbakır or the stripes had a meaning or use? If a knowledgeable reader can enlight me, I would love to learn.

The slave girl pouring wine at the center is from the automaton in the present post. She wears a blue dress or gown with decorations that cover her from neck to ankles. She also has two brown stripes on her sleeves. The garment doesn’t look “cheap” or “service uniform” Her black hair can be seen under the cover. Although her dress could have been worn by devout Muslim today her head cover is not acceptable by contemporary moderate standards (hijab) and certainly not by more religious Muslims demanding a niqāb or chador.

We met the slave washing the king’s hands here (in Hebrew). The illustration, in this case, is large and rich with details. The blue dress is very similar, if not identical, to dress of the slave girl. It is particularly interesting. Muslim men are forbidden(حَرَام‎ ḥarām) to wear silk clothes or gold jewelry. This is not from the Quran but a later story told by Ali Ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad cousin and the fourth Caliph accepted by both Sunni and Shia. The restriction is very specific but interpreted as an echo of the biblical verse:

“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God.”

(Deuteronomy 22:5 King James Version)

It is possible that his red jacket without sleeves is enough to distinguish between them? He is also wearing a small red hat quite similar to the fez (more correctly ṭarbūsh). It is interesting to note because the ṭarbūsh is usually attributed to the period of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839) when it was introduced as part of the Ottoman Empire judges and spread to clerical circles and the educated elite.

The next slave, to the left and below, is from the automaton of a standing slave holding a Fish and A Goblet. In this case, al-Jazari himself provides a relatively detailed description of the dress:

” He is a standing slave, ten years old in appearance, dressed in a short jacket (farajiya) with a robe(qaba) underneath it, and a cap (qalansuwa) on his head.”

The qaba (قابا, I hope I spelled right?) is a type of a robe with sleeves, at mid-calf –between the knee and ankle that has a diagonal fastening of one side over the other. The “Encyclopedia of Islamic Civilization” claimes that in Abbasid times qaba belonged to the military? According to the illustrations in the book, the qaba was widely used among slaves and free men. The hat (qalansuwa  = قلنسوة‎) is written like the Arabic city in the center of Israel; I don’t know if this is the origin of the city name. This hat was quite popular, and Harun al-Rashid was wearing this hat in his nocturnal wanderings through Baghdad in disguise. Unlike the qaba which repeats itself in many illustrations, there is quite a selection of headdress. For example, the slave girl who emerges from a cupboard holding a glass of wine is covered with a colorful scarf with a picturesque ribbon. Quite similar to today hijab. She is also wearing loose red trousers under the qaba. This combination can be found both in the book and outside.

Eight “free” people (in the sense of not slaves) from the “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices” Topkapi manuscript,1206.

The top left illustration is the scribe from the elephant water clock. There are three scribes in the book, all three wear green qabas with brown stripes on the sleeves and wear pale blue turbans. I couldn’t find any evidence of “professional clothing” of scribes. You should also note that the scribe has a beard. Allowing the beard to grow (لحية) and trimming the mustache is mandatory in Sunni Islam and is considered to be Fitrah (فطرة‎) or the state of purity and innocence we are all born with including the natural tendency to distinguish between good and evil and to believe in the existence of Allah. As none of the slaves are bearded, they probably weren’t Muslims.

The two Sheikhs are part of the automaton in Category II dedicated to vessels and figures suitable for drink sessions.  Al-Jazari did not write anything about the Sheikhs, but Sheikh (( شيخ is a title given to the leader of the Bedouin or Arab tribes. The meaning of the name in Arabic is old, although the Sheikh is not necessarily old. They are also dressed in qaba and turbans. I don’t see in the illustration a difference between the of Sheik’s qaba and the slaves’  qaba. It is quite possible that there were large differences in the quality of the cloth or decoration which are not captured in the illustrations. However, the turban characterizes only the free people. Before anything else, the turban was practical in protecting the eyes from the sand and providing the face protection from the sun.  On top of this, the turban (عمامة, pronounced amama) was part of Muslim’s traditional attire and their identity. The turbans were a source of pride and a symbol of religious affiliation. Taking a man’s turban was considered a humiliating act, touching someone’s turban was perceived as an insult. It explains well why none of the slaves wear a turban.

The last picture below is from the musical boat(Hebrew). This is the King and his boon companion ( نديم =Nadim) I wrote about it here (Hebrew). Everyone is wearing a qaba, including the King himself. His blood-red qaba has gold trim. On top of the decorations, everybody has, he has additional decorations of the collar, the cufflinks and the fringes of the qaba as well as a golden belt. Red is not necessarily Royal, another member of the party is wearing red, though with fewer decorations.

I’m pretty sure al-Jazari was very surprised from this post, and it didn’t occur to him that the illustrations he prepared to improve the understanding of his machines, and are truly groundbreaking, would become a fashion guide for 12th century Diyarbakir. However eight hundred and twelve years later this is the only window that would allow me to peep into the  Palace in Diyarbakır. At least for me, this was an interesting journey.

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The automaton of a slave girl holding a glass of wine and slaves in the Artuqid Palace

Introduction

It is a decorated wooden cupboard by the king’s side during the feast. It has a door with two closed leaves. Every seven and a half minutes the doors would open and reveal an automaton (a mechanical device made in imitation of a human being) of a slave girl holding in her right hand a glass filled with wine and in her left a small towel. The king takes the glass, drinks the wine it contains, puts the glass back in her hand and, if he wishes, wipes his mouth with the towel. Then he closes the door leaves on her.  This process will repeat itself every eighth of an hour.

We met slaves and slave girls here and here(in Hebrew), but a quick search of the” Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices ” reveals ten different chapters mentioning slaves or slave girls. This seems a lot! I went to study slaves in the Islamic world in the twelfth century and how similar or different it is from al-Jazari’s book. To my surprise, my journey led me to Cairo Geniza.

Automaton of the Slave Girl, Serving a Glass of Wine”, a folio from Syria or Iraq, 1315

How does it work?

The technical explanation, as always, will be colored in blue, so anyone who is not interested in an inclined plane or a tipping bucket can skip those bits. To understand the mechanism, I use a drawing by the book translator Donald R. Hill with my captions. The slave girl became a boy? I guess Hill or his illustrator did not think that gender was important?

A drawing of the mechanism by Donald Hill with my captions

The cupboard is about 1.6 meter (originally six spans, in Arabic شبر or shabr) and width of approximately 60 cm. There is a wine reservoir above the cupboard which is dripping slowly to the tipping bucket below. I already discussed the tipping bucket here. The tipping bucket fills in seven and a half minutes (eighth of an hour) and discharges all at once into the glass in the slave-girl’s hand. The glass becomes heavy enough to lower the hand of the slave which is on an axis, lifting the extension rod from the docking station.

The slave-girl will roll down the inclined plane and pushes the left leaf with her left hand, which is holding the towel like she is offering the wine glass to the king. The king takes the glass from her hand, drinks its contents, and if he wishes, wipes his mouth with the towel. Then he puts the glass back in her hand, presses it down, and pushes the slave girl gently until she docks. This process will repeat itself every seven and a half minutes as long as there is wine in the reservoir.

Slaves and girl slaves in the “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices “

In ten chapters of the “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices “ slaves are mentioned:

  1. Category I, chapter seven – The candle clock of the swordsman(Hebrew): An automaton of young black (غلام),  with no beard holding a sword to shorten the candle wick.
  2. Category  II, chapter three – An arbiter for drinking parties: An automaton of a young a slave girl ( (جَارِيَة‎) in Wikipedia also a concubine)  with a  bottle and a glass as well as four slave girls in the balcony.
  3. Category II, chapter four –The musical boat: An automaton of a musical boat with a slave holding a jug and goblet, and four slave girls, flute-player, a harpist and two tambourine-players. I believe that they are “qiyan” – educated girls and women who entertained and entranced the caliphs and aristocrats. I already wrote about them here (in Hebrew)
  4. Category II, chapter seven – A slave holding a Fish and a Goblet: An Automaton of a young slave pouring wine
  5. Category II, chapter eight – A man holding a goblet  and a bottle: An automaton of a slave pouring wine into a goblet
  6. Category II, chapter ten –A slave girl emerges out of a cupboard with a glass of wine: (The current post) Automaton of a slave protruding from a cupboard with a glass of wine.
  7. Category III, second chapter- al-Jazari’s motivation to make the automatic pitcher is written explicitly: ” King Salih, may God double his righteousness, disliked a servant or slave-girl pouring water on to his hands for him to perform his ritual ablutions and he wished me to make [something] for pouring water onto his hands for his ritual ablutions.”
  8. Category III, third chapter – A  slave who pours water over the king’s hands: An automaton of a  slave who pours water over the king’s hands.
  9. Category III, ninth chapter – A basin of the peacock for washing the hands (Hebrew): Automaton for washing, one with soap, the other with a towel
  10. Category III, chapter ten- A basin of the slave for washing the hands: An automaton of a kneeling slave holding a water pitcher in his right hand

Cairo Geniza and slavery in the twelfth century

Do we know who were the slaves and the female slave? How they were enslaved and what kind of life did they have?

Cairo Geniza (storage) is a large collection of Jewish manuscripts and fragments written between the ninth century and the nineteenth century and preserved in the attic of the synagogue in Fustat or old Cairo. Maimonides, while in Cairo, used to pray in this synagogue, and it is therefore also known as the Maimonides synagogue.

In my ignorance, I thought the Geniza was for damaged Bibles and holy books but apparently because the Hebrew language was considered sacred they saved everything: court documents, bills of sale, and the correspondence of the local Jewish community and more. Craig Perry wrote his doctoral thesis: “The Daily Life of Slaves and the Global Reach of Slavery in Medieval Egypt, 969-1250 CE” based on materials from the Cairo Geniza. This is not the story of the slaves in Diyarbakir palace where al-Jazari worked, but we can learn a lot.

In an undated letter from the Cairo Geniza, a local court in the Red Sea port of Aydhāb (today in Sudan). Two slave women appeared before the Qadi (Muslim judge), one of them testified that they were kidnapped when they went to fetch water at a local well and sold into slavery. The Qadi asked if they were Muslims? Because according to Islamic law, Muslims were ineligible for enslavement. One of the two insisted that she was Jewish and therefore the case was transferred to a Jewish court. The writer of the letter asked for advice from Fustat about how to handle the matter. His decision to consult with associates explains how this document came to be preserved in the Genizah. We don’t know what happened to the unfortunate women but this is an example of how women were enslaved, and there is a wealth of information about buying and selling of individual slaves.

The second way I already mentioned (in Hebrew) is diplomatic exchanges: for instance, the Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizidescribes  large processions of male and female slaves arrived in Cairo from regions to the south, the first one at 1023 CE:

“On Tuesday, when eight days remained in the month the gift of Ibn

Makārim b. Abū Yazīd arrived from Muḥdathah in Aswān, and it was:

twenty heads of horses, eighty fine camels, a number of black [slaves], females and males, a cheetah in a cage, Nubian goats, birds, monkeys and elephant tusks. “

Prestige gifts of slaves were not limited to Nubia. The Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir Billah received gifts of Turkish slaves from the Byzantine emperor Michael IV, slaves, and eunuchs from the Amir of Yemen and slaves the ruler of al-andalus(الأندلس), the Muslim kingdom of Iberia.

The near constant warfare at the edges of the Islamic empire produced a steady supply of prisoners-of-war and  “wholesale” slave trade.

We don’t know if the slaves in the Palace in Diyarbakır came as a gift from another ruler, purchased individually, or captured during a war.

The bills of sale contain a wealth of information that is useful for reconstructing the geography of slavery, Allowing Perry to do the statistics on the origin of slave girls, horrifying as it may sound. Perry found a large majority of Nubian slaves along with quite a few slaves from other sources:

It is impossible to know, of course, the origin of the slaves in the Palace in Diyarbakır but the Geniza documents cover slave trade in the entire Middle East, and it is reasonable to assume that that is was not very different.

When I think of slaves, I think of hard work in the cotton fields or the sugar plantations in South America. The Islamic world of the 12th century was not associated with large-scale agricultural production. The use of domestic slaves reflects the relative wealth and urban nature of the Muslim elite. Families of merchants, judges, scholars, and others were able to purchase slaves to help with raising the children and household chores. This is evident from the Geniza and is very similar to the book of al­-Jazari. All the slaves in the book are part of the Palace household, helping with daily tasks or helping during the feast.

Slave women were frequently used as child-bearing concubines by Muslim men. According to Islamic law, children born to a Muslim master and a female slave were free-born Muslims. The Fatimid  Caliph al-Mustanṣir Billah, already mentioned, was the son of Sudanese slave named Rasad. That was not the situation in the Jewish community where the Rabbinical establishment struggled to deal with the phenomenon, but that’s another story. I completely Ignored the topic of slave soldiers. This is essential to the history of the twelfth century but is not part of al-Jazari’s book.

Epilogue

My deep connection to al-Jazari makes me want to apologize on his behalf because of the casual manner in which he relates to slavery. It is more painful due to human rights situation in Israel and the general feeling that human rights are under attack.

This is childish; you can’t throw me and the education I received at home and in  “Hashomer Hatzair” (a Socialist-Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement) to the 12th century. While I was searching for information on slavery I found  a text by Benjamin of Tudela  which for me was always just a happy song  (in Hebrew) by “HaGashash HaHiver”, an iconic Israeli comedy trio:

” And from there (Aden) to the region of Aswān is a journey of twenty days through the desert. This is Sebā on the Nile River that descends from the land of Kush. There are some among the Kush who have a king and they call him the sulṭān al-ḥabash. There is a people among them that are like animals that eat the grasses that grow on the bank of the Nile and in the fields. They go about naked and lack the intelligence of human beings. They lie with their sisters and with anyone they wish. (Sebā) is very hot. When the people of Aswān go raiding in their land, they carry with them bread, grain, raisins, and figs. They throw this toward (these people), who come to get it. They obtain many prisoners and sell them in Egypt and all of the kingdoms around them. These are the black slaves, the sons of Ham.”

This is more documentation (?) of capturing slaves in Nubia, but the reference to slaves is chilling and I’m afraid that it tells more about Benjamin of Tudela and his lack of ability to see another human suffering then it tells about the poor enslaved Africans. I would like to conclude with a line from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

universal declaration of human rights, December 1948