Al-Muradi

See Abu Jafar al-Muradi for the Egyptian grammarian.

Alī Ibn Khalaf al-Murādī, (11th century) Al-Andalus, was a Mechanical engineer and author of the unique technological manuscript entitled Kitāb al-asrār fī natā'ij al-afkār (The Book of Secrets in the Results of Thoughts).[1] It was copied and used at the court of Alfonso VI of León and Castile in Christian Spain in the 11th century.

The manuscript provides information about a "Castle and Gazelle Clock" and many other forms of complicated clocks and ingenious devices. Al-Muradi was a contemporary of Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī.

In 2008, the Book of Secrets of al-Muradi has been published in facsimile, translated in English/Italian/French/Arabic and in electronic edition with all machines interpreted in 3D, by the Italian study center Leonardo3.

He also devised, with help from al-Zarqali, the universal astrolabe.[2] Both al-Muradi and al-Zarqali's design were included in the Libros del Saber (1227) of Alfonso X of Castile.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Technology in the service of progress: The examples of hydraulic technologies, Ahmed Djebbar, Arab-Muslim Civilization in the Mirror of Universal, (UNESCO, 2010), 292, 300.
  2. ↑ David A. King, World-maps for finding the direction and distance to Mecca, (Brill, 1999), 330.
  3. ↑ The Migration of Instrumental Knowledge from Flanders to Spain, Koenraad Van Cleempoel, Silent Messengers: The Circulation of Material Objects of Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries, Ed.Sven Dupré and Christoph Herbert Lüthy, (Transaction Publishers, 2011), 76.