Fathers of Robotics: Ismail Al-Jazari

This is the last part of three in our series "Fathers of Robotics". With robots getting more and more present in our daily lives, it's interesting to look back and get to know the great minds who first conceived a future where machines would help humans.

Ismail Al-Jazari

Born in 1136 in Cizre (current Turkey) during the Islamic Golden Age, Ismail Al-Jazari was a polymath. He was simultaneously a scholar, an inventor, a mechanical engineer, an artisan, an artist, and a mathematician. He served as the chief engineer at the Artuklu Palace, like his father before him. Despite his work traversing the ages, almost noting is know about his personal life.

The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices

Published in 1206, the year of his death, this book became quite popular and is considered among the first occurrence of the "do it yourself" philosophy. Indeed, Ismail Al-Jazari was more interested in the craftsmanship necessary to build a mechanical device rather than in the theory or the technology behind it. The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices gathers 100 devices he built, and the instructions to built them. He was inspired by previous works of other inventors and makers, which he tried to improve and innovate upon. While the inventions might appear trivial today, the mechanisms and ideas he featured are quite significant. From crankshafts, escapement mechanism, segmental gear, to double-action suction pump with valves and reciprocating piston motion, many inventions displayed revolutionary mechanisms.

Using these, he built what are considered among the first automatas and robots

While everyone is aware of Da Vinci's legacy and genius, very few know that he was inspired by Al-Jazari's work and inventions. He built many automated mechanisms such as moving peacocks powered by hydropower, but also the first automatic gates and doors. The impact Al-Jazari, and in a certain measure the rest of the Arab engineers of the time, had on robotics has been summarized by Mark E. Rosheim as follows:

"Unlike the Greek designs, these Arab examples reveal an interest, not only in dramatic illusion, but in manipulating the environment for human comfort. Thus, the greatest contribution the Arabs made, besides preserving, disseminating and building on the work of the Greeks, was the concept of practical application. This was the key element that was missing in Greek robotic science. The Arabs, on the other hand, displayed an interest in creating human-like machines for practical purposes but lacked, like other preindustrial societies, any real impetus to pursue their robotic science"

One of his most elaborated robot was a musical robot band. It was a boat that floated on a lake and entertained guests with 4 robot musicians. It's also among the first programmable automata: you could define the drum machine's rhythms and patterns using pegs.

A forgotten legacy

Centuries before the modern robotics and computers, Ismail Al-Jazari was building the first automated devices and nd was among the first to introduce the concept of programming. While few details of his life have survived the ages, his work and vision have. And despite being relatively unknown of the general public, he can and should be considered as one of the fathers of robotics, as well as one of the "do it yourself" and maker philosophies.