Comparative Study of Illustration of three Manuscripts from the “Kitab al-Hiyal” Written by Badi' al-Zaman al-Jazari

Badi' al-Zaman al-Jazari is a scientist, designer and engineer of Islamic civilization in the sixth century AH who lived in the Diyarbakir (South east of turkey), and has 50 new machines in his book “Al-Jami' bayn al-‘ilm wa 'l-‘amal al-nafi' fi sina'at al-hiyal (A Compendium on the Theory and Useful Practice of the Mechanical Arts)” has described and illustrated. This book, which is a documentary of his scientific, engineering and artistic abilities, has been copied and exploited many times, with at least 20 copies are available in the museums of the world, but in our country there are few studies, especially about the artistic aspects of this creative designer. In this descriptive-analytical study, library data and historical manuscripts have been observed, analyzed and adapted. The statistical population of this research is the illustrations of three manuscripts (715 AH edition, no. 3306 of Berlin and no. 2477 of Paris), which, for the statistical sample, have been selected in inaccurately 3 pictures of them and in trivial copies, has been studied comparatively. The main questions of the research, which sets out the purpose of the research, include what are the differences and similarities between the illustrations of the various copies of the book of al-Jazari? How do the illustrations of this book evolve over time? What are the features of various manuscripts? Therefore, the present manuscripts were examined and it became clear that the manuscript of 715 AH was fully artistic and based on the Abbasi painting school, but since the writing of this book was taken away, the artistic aspects of the images were reduced, so that the images of the two other versions have turned into technical and geometric illustrations, and have much less artistic value than the 715 AH version.