Introduction and Review of Books and Periodicals: Natijat al-Dawla or Three Treatises on Industrial Inventions معرفی و نقد

خلاصه ماشینی:

Book Introduction Mohammad Hafiz Isfahani authored the book Natijat al-Dawla in the first half of the tenth century AH, during the Timurid era and most likely in Khorasan. The book consists of three articles in which the manner of designing and constructing a mechanical clock, an oil press, and a water mill are respectively described, and many figures have been drawn to explain each device. The author calls each chapter in the first article "Asl" (Origin), in the second article "Misbah" (Lamp), and in the third article "Ma'idah" (Table); he also provides a preface at the beginning of the first article in which he describes, in a literary manner, dealing with engineering works, or in his own terms, inventions, as well as the connection between his works and the emirs of the court. The main chapters of the book, which deal with the description of the devices, are purely technical, such that if if someone does not read the introductions, they might think they are facing an author for whom only technical and structural engineering issues matter. After some time, when Hafiz al-Isfahani finally accepts the construction of the clock based on the foreign model, he says that he invented several tools and implements of various types of files and others (p. Taqi al-Din Rasad, one of the last famous engineers of the Islamic era and a contemporary of Hafiz al-Isfahani, was born during the same period of the book's authorship (927 or 932 AH) and was in Istanbul once in 953 and then in the years 975, so naturally, he was unaware of the story of constructing this clock.