Scholars, Artisans, and Charlatans: New Perspectives on Mechanical Devices from the Hellenistic to the Islamicate Worlds
This Workshop is organised by Alessia Zubani with the collaboration of Yuhan Vevaina.

Programme

14:00-14:15 Welcome address and introduction
14:15-15:45 Session 1: Automata at the Crossroads of Technology and Politics
Chair: Francesca Leoni (Ashmolean Museum)
Eleni Fragaki (University of Ausburg) Automata in the Court and Society of Hellenistic Alexandria
Alessia Zubani (University of Oxford) Automated Dialogues: Mechanical Devices and the Byzantine-Sasanian Diplomacy
Gwenaëlle Fellinger (Louvre Museum) Animal Mechanical Devices and Imperial Power in al-Andalus and beyond
15:45-16:15 Coffee break
16:15-17:45 Session 2: Automata in the Street: Mechanical Play between Science and Society
Chair: Francesco Calzolaio (The Hong Kong University)
Lucia Raggetti (University of Bologna) “Street Automata”: Technical Strategies and Knowledge of Nature for Low-Cost Entertainment in the Mediaeval Arabic Tradition
Lamia Balafrej (UCLA) On the Popular Science of Automata (Hiyal) On the Popular Science of Automata (Hiyal)
Vivek Gupta (UCL) Living, Breathing Cyborg and God
17:45-18:00 Final Remarks Umberto Bongianino (University of Oxford)

Abstracts

Eleni Fragaki – Automata in the Court and Society of Hellenistic Alexandria
Animated figures and other similar contrivances seem to have been very popular in the Alexandrian cultural environment in Ptolemaic and Roman times. Their role in the realm of royal propaganda is evidenced by the colossal mobile statue of Dionysus’ nurse Nysa, described by Callixenus as part of the spectacular procession which took place in the reign of Ptolemy II. A magical rhyton set in the temple of Arsinoe II at Cape Zephyrion, and the queen’s suspended effigy in another edifice dedicated to her cult also assume clearly ideological connotations. The automatic theatre indirectly exalts the court’s engineers, as well as the sovereign’s divine aura and power. Other inventions of this kind are bathed in an idyllic, bucolic atmosphere, evolving in a welcoming, reassuring world, devoid of any danger and hostility. They feature birds singing, ethereal dances of Bacchantes, shepherd-like figures of Pan and Satyrs peacefully accompanying animals in pastoral scenes. The peculiar qualities of such astonishing devices enable us to specify both their social function and their political dimension as a means of enhancing the kings’ authority and public image: imitating and manipulating physical phenomena or imbuing inanimate matter with life implicitly demonstrated the sovereign’s overall dominion overnature. The dynast thus appeared as the master of the universe or even as a god on earth taming the natural forces and reproducing their effects.

Alessia Zubani – Automated Dialogues: Mechanical Devices and the Byzantine-Sasanian Diplomacy
Mechanical devices flourished in the Hellenistic world, especially from the 3rd-century BCE, and their legacy endured across the Byzantine, Sasanian, and Islamic worlds. This presentation explores the intersection of technology, material culture, and diplomacy between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, focusing on the circulation of automata and mechanical marvels. Primary sources vividly describe these ingenious devices moving between courts and creating striking visual effects. Examining this corpus reveals how such artifacts played a diplomatic and ideological role, serving as tools of soft power and mutual fascination. Ultimately, these exchanges fostered a shared courtly culture, in which automata became emblems of technical mastery, artistic sophistication, and cross-cultural dialogue.

Gwenaëlle Fellinger – Animal Mechanical Devices and Imperial Power in al-Andalus and beyond
The Department of Islamic Art in the Musée du Louvre houses two of the most famous zoomorphic bronze sculptures, the Lion of Monzon and the so-called “aquamanile peacock”. During decades, those were considered as fountain spout and pouring vessels. While both have different histories, they nevertheless share similarities in term of manufacturing techniques, decoration, conception and, probably, dating. Recent observations and scientific analyses now allow to consider them as potential parts of automatic devices, in context of the Andalusi courts of the 10th-11th century. But the making and use of these artworks has also to be compared with a broader Mediterranean political conception of power drawing from Late Antiquity.

Lucia Raggetti – ‘Street Automata’: Technical Strategies and Knowledge of Nature for Low-Cost Entertainment in the Mediaeval Arabic Tradition
The tradition of ancient automata entered the Arabo-Islamic tradition in the 9th century with the Banū Mūsā and was later developed by the Andalusian Ibn Ḫalaf al-Murādī (11th cent.) and the brilliant engineer al-Jazarī (12th cent.). While these complex and refined devices were likely intended for the court and enjoyed by elites, they also had a popular echo in figurines animated by various means —natural magnet, pulleys, animals, or steam. Sources about entertainment and deception, in fact, share many interests with the more erudite scientific tradition, a pattern also observed in parallel cultural contexts of the same period. The experts who made their living on the streets worked with inexpensive and readily available materials, designing devices meant for a large and relatively quick fruition. Their knowledge looked at nature from a different angle, certainly not from a lower step, a real ‘Street science’. This presentation will offer a typological survey of such automata, aiming to reconstruct the specific kernels of natural knowledge used to skillfully manipulate nature and human perception, as well as to explore the social context and occasions in which street automata were brought to life.

Lamia Balafrej – On the Popular Science of Automata (Hiyal)
Automata or self-moving machines from the medieval Islamicate world are usually known in Arabic as ḥiyal handasiyya or engineering ruses. From the Arabic verb ḥawwala “to move or transfer,” the term ḥiyal (sing. ḥīla) was generally applied to stratagems and means implemented to evade or transform a situation, often in a skilled, if cunning, manner—including, then, in the realm of technology. As such, ḥiyal recalls the etymology of “trope” from the Greek word tropos “to turn.” Instead of emphasizing Hellenistic origins, however, or considering the mechanical arts strictly within the high sciences of geometry and mathematics, this talk will delve into the popular culture of mechanical ḥiyal in medieval Islam: how self-acting devices like trick vessels crisscrossed social groups, linguistic registers, and textual genres, beyond the modern, class-based divide that has kept the study of state-sponsored automata isolated from vernacular articulations of the mechanical arts. Trick vessels—jugs and pitchers with secret compartments, tubes, and valves—were a case in point, manifesting in courtly settings, philosophical experiments, and street entertainment, thus allowing us to begin to comprehend a popular culture of ḥiyal.

Vivek Gupta – Living, Breathing Cyborg and God
Intellectuals and bookmakers based in India transcreated several classics ofIslamicate science from Arabic to Persian manuscripts. In many cases, these imaginative transcreations (i.e., a translation in both form and content) became a standard Persian text. And, these Persian versions circulated far beyond the subcontinent, forever changing the work’s imprint. Although some technical vocabulary and apparatus carried over from Arabic to Persian, a book’s scale, intertextual resonances, and cultural referents often transformed. Such is the case of al-Jazari’s Arabic compendium of automata, the Compendium of Theory and Practice in the Mechanical Arts (Diyar Bakr, 1206), which a South Asian scholar known as Da’ud Shadiyabadi rendered into Persian in 1508.
In the Compendium al-Jazari describes a miraculous elephant clock with a robotic rider (mahout) bearing the “head of an Indian.” Most medieval al-Jazari manuscripts diagram this Indian as dark-faced and fearsome. Yet, when remade in a Persian manuscript, the Indian is no longer darkened and sheds several of its menacing qualities. This paper examines the mutable racialization of al-Jazari’s mahout and demonstrates how its topographical wonder shifts as the work is transcreated in South Asia. By tracking the transmission of al-Jazari’s manuscripts from Egypt to India and the processes of textual and diagrammatic translation, we can better contextualize the choices various scholars and artists made.
Date: 23 May 2025, 14:00
Venue: Wolfson College, Linton Road OX2 6UD
Venue Details: Levett Room
Speaker: Various Speakers
Organisers: Alessia Zubani (Oxford), Yuhan Vevaina
Organiser contact email address: alessia.zubani@ames.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Laura Spence, Belinda Clark