Cleveland Museum of Art

Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device (recto); Text Page, Arabic Prose (verso)

Date

1315

Medium

opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Culture

Syria, Damascus, Mamluk Period, 14th Century

Department

Islamic Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This leaf from a 1315 Syrian copy of Ibn al-Razzāz al-Jazarī’s The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices , written in 1206, depicts a peacock basin automaton for ritual hand washing. There are 15 surviving manuscript copies of al-Jazarī’s work, ranging from the early 13th to the late 19th century. An engineer from upper Mesopotamia, al-Jazarī was in the service of King Nasrī al-Dīn when he completed his masterwork, an anthology of automated devices including clocks, trick vessels for drinking sessions, devices for washing, fountains, water-raising machines, and measuring instruments. His designs clearly illustrate that automata were not innovations from Western Europe, but they stemmed from a tradition known in the ancient, Islamic, and Byzantine worlds. We do not know with certainty that al-Jazarī’s device was ever actually constructed. The mouth of the peacock acts as a spigot pouring water; the figure emerged from a small door and offers soap to the hand washer.

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