Amazing Mechanical Devices from Muslim Civilisation

Fully automated environmentally friendly water raising devices, pumps, windmills and more! Discover some of the most facinating devices from the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation that brought creative innovative ideas helping to drive agriculture and industries from southern Spain to China.

“Muslim devices were used for many practical ends such as pearl fishing, protection in polluted wells, clepsydre used to regulate irrigation time with extreme accuracy through the year, and telling time. With regard to bulky machinery, the same concern for practicality was also in force; water lifting devices, for instance, were used for irrigation, whilst other machinery was used for crushing sugar cane and for extracting vegetable oils. Al-Hassan, in his edition of Taqi al-Din (Taqi Eddin), also points out that the Muslim engineer, from the early days of Islamic civilisation, used his skills and knowledge to build cities and dams, projects for irrigation, and in making machinery that had a wider public use. Colish also notes: There is another dimension to Muslim science that must be noted along with the indubitable creative achievements of its golden age. The Muslims were interested in selected fields and in particular problems… In each case, the subject was appealing because it had practical applications. Pure scientific theory, the lure of scientific knowledge for its own sake that had animated ancient Greeks, was not.” (Al-Djazairi, S.E.)

Note: Composed by Cem Nizamoglu and first published in 1001 Inventions website.

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During the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation creative new innovative ideas travelled across the land from southern Spain to China – innovations in medicine, astronomy, trade, navigation, architecture, technology, industry, agriculture and much more were common place. In the field of agriculture, innovation meant that farmers were planting new crops, developing state-of-the-art irrigation techniques, using organic fertilisers, harnessing global knowledge in local areas, and basing their agronomy on scientific findings. This all led to an agricultural revolution, harnessing clean energy sources, making fresh food available to more people.

“It is admitted with difficulty that a nation in majority of nomads could have had known any form of agricultural techniques other than sowing wheat and barley. The misconceptions derive from the rarity of works on the subject… If we bothered to open and consult the old manuscripts, so many views will be changed, so many prejudices will be demolished…”  A. Cherbonneau

Farmers and engineers in the Golden Age inherited existing techniques of irrigation, preserving some while modifying, improving and constructing others. It was common across the Muslim world to see hundreds of windmills and waterwheels busily irrigating crops. However, they did not have the capacity to supply every town and village. Engineers like Al-Jazari designed water-raising machinery aimed to bring water supplies directly to local people and enhance the farming capacity.

Here we look at a few innovative machines that powered the agricultural revolution in Muslim Civilisation.

Double Suction Pump of Al-Jazari, Early 12th century

(Left) A manuscript shows Al-Jazari’s reciprocating pump. This was the first time an illustration of a crank appeared in a manuscript* – (Right) 3D animated image of reciprocating pump

A chapter of Al-Jazari’s book was devoted to water raising machines. It also included  sophisticated machines  powered by water and gravity, simulating the principle of the balance (see the video below). As the water fills one bucket and as it spills into the large cylindrical tank, a siphon sets into action, generating air pressure through a flute and resulting in a sound at controlled intervals. The interval is controlled by the rate at which the water flows from the tap.

It is impossible to over-emphasize the importance of al-Jazari’s work in the history of engineering. Until modern times there is no other document from any cultural area that provides a comparable wealth of instructions for the design, manufacture and assembly of machines… Al-Jazari did not only assimilate the techniques of his non-Arab and Arab predecessors, he was also creative. He added several mechanical and hydraulic devices. The impact of these inventions can be seen in the later designing of steam engines and internal combustion engines, paving the way for automatic control and other modern machinery. The impact of al-Jazari’s inventions is still felt in modern contemporary mechanical engineering…” Donald R. Hill

This is a water-driven twin-cylinder pump. The important features embodied in this pump are the double-acting principle, the conversion of rotary into reciprocating motion, and the use of two suction pipes. The hand-driven pumps of classical and Hellenistic times had vertical cylinders, these stood directly in the water which entered them through plate-valves in the bottoms of cylinders on the suction strokes. The pumps could not, therefore, be positioned above the water level. This pump of Al-lazari could be considered as the origin of the suction pump. The assumption that Taccola (c. 1450) was the first to describe a suction pump is not substantiated. The only explanation for the sudden appearance of the suction pump in the writings of the Renaissance engineers in Europe is that the idea was inherited from Muslim Civilisation, whose engineers were familiar with piston pumps for a long time throughout the Middle Ages.

The Six-Cylinder Water Pump of Taqi al-Din, 16th century

(Left) Third page of the section devoted to the six-cylinder pump in the Chester Beatty MS (p. 38) of Al-Turuq al-Saniya. – (Right) 3D animated image of six-cylinder pump

Among the original machines described in the corpus of technology from Muslim Civilisation, the six-cylinder “monobloc” piston pump designed by Taqi al-Din Ibn Ma’ruf in the late 16th century holds a special place. Working as a suction pump, this complex machine included components that are often associated with modern technology, such as a camshaft, a cylinder block, pistons, and non-return valves. In this article, Joseph Vera, an expert in re-engineering ancient inventions, describes how he created a SolidWorks CAD model of this remarkable pump, that he completed with a motion simulation. The conclusion he drew after creating the model and the simulation is that the engineers of the Muslim tradition, represented by Taqi al-Din, had a very solid grasp of kinematics, dynamics and fluid mechanics. He notes also that Taqi al-Din’s “monobloc” pump is a remarkable example of a machine using renewable energy, a topic that is currently of utmost importance…

Taqi al-Din… completes the Islamic Era’s most crucial phase in mechanical engineering…” Ragheb El-Sergany