Reconstruction and Performance Appraisal of Liquid Separating Jars of the Book Al-Hiyal from 850 A.C

Ahmad ibn Musa ibn Shakir Khurasani is one of the greatest Iranian scientists of the ninth century A.C. He worked on mechanical, hydraulic and pneumatic designs and devices. He presented his works in a book titled "Kitab Al-hiyal". The book was originally written in Arabic in Baghdad, around 850 A.C. To revitalize the old Iranian culture in its scientific and technological sense, the Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology (IROST) in conjunction with the Museum of Iranian Science and Technologies decided to under take a research project to establish an understanding of his works along with manufacturing, their working samples. The project was proposed and carried out by the Mechanical Engineering Research Center at IROST. A part of this work covered mechanisms and systems of separating liquids on the bases of their densities or viscosities. This paper provides an introductory and technically comparative view of these historical technological masterpieces. More details of design process of various mechanism are discussed in the article.