4to. 75 pp., of Arabic text + facsimile reprint of the original Arabic manuscript kept at Chester Beatty Library, b/w illustrations, 3 folding plates, edited & introduced by Ahmad Yussuf Al-Hassan, publisher’s original wrappers, lightly faded, biblio. Institute For The Arabic Scientific Heritage, Aleppo University of Aleppo, 1976.

Synopsis

Taqi al-Din (1521-1585) was born in Damascus and was educated in Cairo. He was a mathematician, astronomer, optician and a mechanical scholar. He is famous as founder and director of Istanbul observatory. He made various astronomical instruments and for the first time he used automatic-mechanic clock in his astronomical observation.
This work was written when the author was 26 years old. he focuses on the geometrical and mechanical analysis of the structure of the clock, in the frame of the Islamic tradition of ‘Ilm Al-Hiyal in which outstanding treatises were left by Banu Musa and Al-Jazarri.