'Book of Tricks') is a large illustrated work on mechanical devices, including automata, published in 850 by the three brothers of Persian[1] descent, the Banū Mūsā brothers (Ahmad, Muhammad and Hasan ibn Musa ibn Shakir) working at the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) in Baghdad, Iraq, under the Abbasid Caliphate.
[3] The book was commissioned by the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, Al-Ma'mun (786–833), who instructed the Banū Mūsā brothers to acquire all of the Hellenistic texts that had been preserved by monasteries[specify] and by scholars[who?]
[7] While they took Greek works as a starting point, the Banu Musa went "well beyond anything achieved by Hero or Philo."
Their preoccupation with automatic controls distinguishes them from their Greek predecessors, including the Banu Musa's "use of self-operating valves, timing devices, delay systems and other concepts of great ingenuity.
[10] Given that the Book of Ingenious Devices was widely circulated across the Muslim world, some of its ideas may have also reached Europe through al-Andalus, such as the use of automatic controls in later European machines or the use of conical valves in the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
However, the automatic crank described by the Banu Musa would not have allowed a full rotation, but only a small modification was required to convert it to a crankshaft.
[14] Some of the other valves they described include: The double-concentric siphon and the funnel with bent end for pouring in different liquids, neither of which appear in any earlier Greek works, were also original inventions by the Banu Musa brothers.
[18] The book describes the construction of various automatic fountains, an aspect that was largely neglected in earlier Greek treatises on technology.
[14] The Banu Musa invented an early mechanical musical instrument, in this case a hydropowered organ which played interchangeable cylinders automatically.
According to Charles B. Fowler, this "cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained the basic device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the nineteenth century.