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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

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pbhjpbhj·

Al-Jazari's knowledge seems to have ultimately derived from a Baghdad library, via the Banu Musa brothers.

I find the history of those libraries fascinating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom.

Kinda OT.

Apparently he was a Yazidi Kurd; that's what the circumstantial evidence shows, and there's no other evidence AFAICT.

It says "Muslim engineer", which would be like saying Steve Jobs was a "Christian Engineer".

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> It says "Muslim engineer", which would be like saying Steve Jobs was a "Christian Engineer".

I note that Ismail al-Jazari's wikipedia article [1] describes him as muslim, and also an engineer -- which appellation are you concerned about here?

I'm unsure how that compares to describing Steve Jobs as either christian or an engineer, though I'd be struggling to try to substantiate either descriptor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_al-Jazari

Steve Jobs was a cultural engineer.

> Steve Jobs was a cultural engineer.

You mean like P. T. Barnum?

I'm a crap history student, but wasn't this during a time when a central Caliphate ruled over most Muslims? It might be more accurate to say that calling him a "Muslim engineer" is like calling Steve Jobs a "Western engineer". Specifying a particular region he was from might be like calling Jobs a "California engineer".

Slightly off-topic but if the "history of science" is a subject that interests, I can recommend "The Cambridge Illustrated History of Science". It's an expensive book but I was able to borrow a copy from a library near where I live and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

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