ʾAnbūba: A Medieval Instrument for Measuring Relative Ground level

Document Type : Research/Original/Reqular Article

Authors

1 Institute for History of Science University of Tehran

2 The university of Tehran

Abstract

ʾAnbūba is a simple instrument that has been in use during the medieval Islamic age. The Arabic term ʾAnbūba literally means the tube. The instrument was a tube devised in a particular way to determine the relative height between two lands for water transportation with the purpose of irrigating the farms and gardens. In the classic Islamic age, the description and instruction of such instruments were not generally registered in a textual format, regarding that they were a component of agricultural know-how. However, the information about ʾAnbūba has reached us in four independent treatises. This article introduces the instrument ʾAnbūba, discussing its construction and application. The article also includes the edition and translation of a fifteenth-century Persian treatise written exclusively about this instrument.

Keywords

References

Bahāʾī, Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn. (1843). Al-khulāṣat al-ḥisāb (Essenz der Rechenkunst). Edited and translated by Nessselmann. Berlin.
Dar shinākhtan-i chigūnigī-i sanjīdan-i zamīnhā wa makānhā (On the Knowledge of How to Survey the Grounds and Locations), collection 772, National Library of France, p. 63-64.
Hill, Donald. (1996). Engineering. In Rashed, R. Encyclopedia of the history of Arabic science. Vol 3. Routledge.
Hinz, W. (2003). Measures and weights in the Islamic world. Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC). Translated by Dr. M. Ismail Marcinkowski (Original work published 1955).
Karajī. (n.d.). Inbāṭ al-miyāh al-khafīyya, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection: LJS 399.
Karāmatī, Y. (2020). Kūbanānī. In The great Islamic Encyclopedia. Vol.5. Iran: Center For Iranian and Islamic studies.
Kohlberg, E. (1988). BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN ʿĀMELĪ, In Encyclopedia Iranica, III/4, pp. 429-430.
Miranda, A. d. (2007). Water Architecture in the Lands of Syria: The Water-wheels. Italy: L'Erma di Bretschneider.
Natiq, M.J. (2014). In Encyclopedia of the world of Islam. Vol. 11.
Reynolds, T. S. (1983). Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel. United Kingdom: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Shinākhtan-i pastī wa bulandī-i zamīn bi hingām-i īḥdāth-i qanāt (On Knowing the Elevations of the Land During the Construction of the Well), collection no. 734, the Goharshād Mosque Library in Mashhad, p.109.
Wescoat, J.L. (2017). In The International Encyclopedia of Geography. U.S.A: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
 
Journal for the History of Science
Volume 19, Issue 2 - Serial Number 31
February 2022
Pages 85-103

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics