Ibn Firnas
Abbas b Firnas was not only the poet and astrologer, but he attempted to fly by leaping from Rusafa palace in Cordoba- a feat reminiscent of the later attempts made in this direction by english monk Aylmer of Malmesbury.
Unfortunately, Ibn Firnas could not understand the role played by the tail when birds alight on the ground, and he injured himself. But he was an enterprising man: he modified and in doing so, perfected the technique of cutting rock crystal (quartz), which was already known to the Sassanians and the Romans.
In one room of his house he built a kind of planetarium and he invented a clepsydra ( or water clock) capable of indicating the times of prayers, albeit without a high degree of accuracy. This machine (called minqana in Arabic) may perhaps be regarded as the prototype of those machines that were invented in 11th century.
Abbas b Firnas was not only the poet and astrologer, but he attempted to fly by leaping from Rusafa palace in Cordoba- a feat reminiscent of the later attempts made in this direction by english monk Aylmer of Malmesbury.
Unfortunately, Ibn Firnas could not understand the role played by the tail when birds alight on the ground, and he injured himself. But he was an enterprising man: he modified and in doing so, perfected the technique of cutting rock crystal (quartz), which was already known to the Sassanians and the Romans.
In one room of his house he built a kind of planetarium and he invented a clepsydra ( or water clock) capable of indicating the times of prayers, albeit without a high degree of accuracy. This machine (called minqana in Arabic) may perhaps be regarded as the prototype of those machines that were invented in 11th century.