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Iraq: Water clock from al-Jazari's 'Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices' (1206).

Iraq: Water clock from al-Jazari's 'Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices' (1206).

Little is known about Al-Jazari, and most of that comes from the introduction to his ‘Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices’ (Kitab fi ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya). He was named after the area in which he was born, Al-Jazira, the traditional Arabic name for what was northern Mesopotamia and what is now northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria, between the Tigris and the Euphrates.