The book Jazari’s Extraordinary Machines: Jazari For Everyone, has been prepared befitting to the genius of the great inventor and reveals the texts he wrote and the technical drawings he drew in a colorful, fairy tale-like language, so that his engineering and philosophy could not only be understood by engineers but by everyone, all thanks to the 15 years of meticulous work by Durmus Caliskan.

Over 15 years, Durmus Caliskan, translated Jazari’s texts into Turkish that can be understood by today’s engineers and even by those in unrelated fields, based on the small number of measurements given by Jazari and using calculations, he obtained the quantities of all the instruments, using modern techniques he drew up technical drawings and projects to assemble all of the instruments, he wrote detailed notes for areas of the text and machines which were in need of explanation, and found and omitted the mistakes that had been made previously in the texts and machines particularly in Hill’s work. This book on Jazari’s machines, which everyone had had a hand in since the early 1900s, was published as of 2015 left no stone unturned. It consists of texts and technical drawings by Durmus Caliskan so that not only engineers but everyone can understand Jazari. In the book Jazari For Everyone, the technical drawings drawn by Durmus Caliskan are modeled in 3-D and Jazari’s machines are grouped with a methodology appropriate to the present day rather than according to the categories in Kitab-ul Hiyal. There is a general introduction text at the beginning of each chapter and this introduction text holds importance to the machine group both in terms of the period and Jazari. On the inside pages where the machines are introduced, first, general drawings of the appearance for each machine are found and the Hagia Sophia copy of Jazari’s Kitab-ul Hiyal was used for these original miniatures and the missing ones were completed from the other copies. Following the original miniatures are short texts outlining the function of the instruments and how they work.

The importance of Jazari in terms of mechanical history is an indisputable fact. However, another characteristic that makes his legacy important to us is that he presents a story about general science and particularly mechanics, that relates to us and that we can tell our children to make learning enjoyable for them. There is no doubt that science is the owned by all of humanity and Jazari is a scientist who has made significant contributions to this heritage. In this context, the fact that an impressive story that contributes to the common ideal of humanity belongs to our history, allows us to raise children as self-confident individuals possessing this ideal. To learn the basic principles of mechanics directly through Jazari’s machines, and to gain a more effective and more concrete mental space combined with a historical story on the transfer of scientific knowledge, ‘Jazari’s Extraordinary Machines -Jazari For Everyone’ will be available to you at all select book stores and book sales websites.