Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device: Illustration from The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Automata) of Ibn al-Razza al-Jazari (recto) (1315): Art, History and Details

Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device: Illustration from The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Automata) of Ibn al-Razza al-Jazari (recto) (1315) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This leaf from a 1315 Syrian copy of Ibn al-Razzāz al-Jazarī’s The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, written in 1206, depicts a peacock basin automaton for ritual hand washing. There are 15 surviving manuscript copies of al-Jazarī’s work, ranging from the early 13th to the late 19th century. An engineer from upper Mesopotamia, al-Jazarī was in the service of King Nasrī al-Dīn when he completed his masterwork, an anthology of automated devices including clocks, trick vessels for drinking sessions, devices for washing, fountains, water-raising machines, and measuring instruments. His designs clearly illustrate that automata were not innovations from Western Europe, but they stemmed from a tradition known in the ancient, Islamic, and Byzantine worlds. We do not know with certainty that al-Jazarī’s device was ever actually constructed.

Object facts

• Title: Peacock-shaped Hand Washing Device: Illustration from The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Automata) of Ibn al-Razza al-Jazari (recto)
• Date: 1315
• Culture: Syria, Damascus, Mamluk Period, 14th Century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: opaque watercolor and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 31.3 x 21.5 cm (12 5/16 x 8 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1945.383.a

A detail from the museum

The mouth of the peacock acts as a spigot pouring water; the figure emerged from a small door and offers soap to the hand washer.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollis, Howard. "Page from an Automata Manuscript." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 33, no. 6 (June 1946): 85-87.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.