Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to describe the contributions of scientists, among them Canadians, to the fields you are studying. The museum offers one person of the Islamic world, an engineer, described in a single reference work; the Canadian scientists and the contributions closest to your own course are for your class to bring. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- A2.2 describe the contributions of scientists, including Canadians […], to the fields under study
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What counts as a contribution?
A contribution can be a book, a device, a method or a question. For each person you meet, ask what they added, who says so, and what the record does not claim for them.
Go deeper
Look at one machine from al-Jazari's book, the elephant clock. The Met's catalogue describes the rider and the bird moving, a ball passing to a dragon and then to a vessel and gong every half hour, and the counting of balls to find how much time has passed 2. Ask what each moving part is for, and what is being counted.
Why they did it
The records hold no sentence in which al-Jazari says why he built his machines. They show where he stood. TDV places him in a tradition running from Hellenistic engineering to the Banu Musa, and describes an engineer improving earlier work 3. About the double-piston pump, TDV judges water-raising machines economically more important than elaborate clocks, although the book gives them less space 3.
Often misunderstood
It is easy to read a book of machines as a list of inventions. TDV describes an engineer improving earlier work, not the inventor of every underlying principle in his book 3. For the animal-powered scoop lifter, the sources support his authorship and engineering context, not a claim that he built the device or originated every component 4 5.
How do we know?
The picture of the elephant clock is a copy. Met folio 57.51.23 preserves the image in a copy by Farrukh ibn Abd al-Latif, dated 715/1315, probably produced in Syria or Iraq 6. The record says the copy is not an original working machine 2. So the page shows how the book travelled and was illustrated.
Think about it
TDV describes al-Jazari as an engineer improving earlier work. Would you count improving a machine as a contribution to science, and what is your reason?
Into the museum
- Al-Jazari: his work and his patron, as the records give them.
- The elephant clock: the machine on the Met's folio.
- The double-piston pump: a machine of his water-raising division.
Try this
Read about al-Jazari. Write one sentence on what he contributed and one on something the record takes care not to claim for him; then add one scientist from your class's list.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Al-Jazari, Ismail ibn al-Razzaz have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
An engineer at a royal court. Al-Jazari was an engineer who wrote a book on mechanical devices. The record, following the TDV encyclopedia, says he served the Artuqids at Amid between 1181 and 1206 and that his book was commissioned by Nasir al-Din Mahmud. Its six divisions cover clocks, vessels for drinking and banquets, handwashing and bloodletting vessels, fountains and automatic musical instruments, water-raising machines and miscellaneous devices. What problem would each kind of device solve for the people who used it?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: Science
- 2. The Elephant Clock, folio 57.51.23 — Metropolitan Museum of Art, Catalogue Entry
- 3. CEZERÎ, İsmâil b. Rezzâz — TDV (Sadettin Ökten), pp. 505–506
- 4. Al-Jazari — Donald Hill translation1974, pp.184–185
- 5. CEZERÎ, İsmâil b. Rezzâz — TDV (Sadettin Ökten), pp.505–506
- 6. The Elephant Clock, folio 57.51.23 — Metropolitan Museum of Art, Overview