A painting on paper in color and gold leaf from al-Jazari's Kitab fi marifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya (The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices).

Ab贖 al-'Iz Ibn Ism?'蘋l ibn al-Raz?z al-Jazar蘋 (1136??206) was a polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, craftsman, artist, mathematician and astronomer from Al-Jazira, Mesopotamia, who worked in service of the Artuqid dynasty in Diyarbak覺r, Asia Minor. He is best known for writing the Kit獺b f穩 ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya (Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices) in 1206, where he described fifty mechanical devices along with instructions on how to construct them.