بديع الزمان أَبُو اَلْعِزِ بْنُ إسْماعِيلِ بْنُ الرِّزاز الجزري In the early thirteenth century, a scholar and engineer named Badīʿ az-Zaman Abu l-ʿIzz ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ar-Razāz al-Jazarī (1136–1206) wrote a famous treatise called Kitab fi ma‛rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya, or The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. The text offered detailed descriptions of a series of elaborate machines designed to delight and impress the elites at the court where he served, in eastern Anatolia. Al-Jazari’s text and its illustrations belong to a long tradition of studies about these kinds of devices, including Greek compendia on mechanics and mathematics. This page belongs to a copy of the text that was produced in Mamluk Egypt in 1354, and was copied by Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Izmiri for a Mamluk ruler.