Arab and Muslim participation in the invention of watches
Muslims contributed to the invention of the hourglass and the water clock, as time was of great importance to them due to their need to know prayer times, fasting times, festivals and Hajj . It started in the past, with the water clock which was used in Egypt before the year 1500 BC. It consisted of a container with graduated sections, which measured the amount of water flowing from a small gutter to the bottom.
As for more elaborate water clocks, their invention began in the 13th century, with a scientist called Ismail bin Razzaz al-Jazari, who was from Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey. He was a devout Muslim and a brilliant engineer, and by 1206 A.D. Al-Jazari had designed and built many watches of multiple shapes and sizes. He wrote a book on mechanical engineering titled “The Combination of Science and Useful Labor in Trick-Making”.
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The water clock is also attributed to the scholar Abbas Ibn Firnas who imagined a clock to measure time and prayer times in particular. It was called the Miqana, because it had a rounded appearance, fragmented into equal parts, the angles displayed the minutes and seconds.
At the beginning of the 12th century, Muslim astronomers improved the astronomical clock, the sundial and employed them in mosques. Among the most famous of those who participated in the process of its evolution were "al-Jazari, Ibn al-Shater and Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni".
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Ibn Al-Shater realized that when using a sundial parallel to the axis of the Earth, this sundial shows constant hour values ​​throughout the year." The clock of Ibn al-Shater is the oldest known polar clock, this concept was transferred to the West in 1446.
In the register of mechanical watches, the engineer Taqi al-Din al-Shami detailed in his work "Al-Kawkabat Al-Duryeh" (the position of the rotating banks), which he wrote around 1556, a clock composed of stem, traceable gears and an alarm that shifts under the force of weight, and specifies the phases of the moon. The alarm was adjusted by placing a wedge in the indicator wheel at the specified time. His watch had three pointers displaying hours, minutes, and seconds. After that, Taqi al-Din al-Shami designed a clock for his observatory in Istanbul. This was an important 16th century innovation in astronomy, as until the 20th century clocks were not accurate enough to be used for astronomical purposes. . In 1702, watchmaker Mishur Shah Didi built a watch that showed minutes.
The development of watches around the world
Continuous evolution of clocks and tools for calculating time until the clock pendulum appeared in the 16th century. In 1675, Christiaan Huygens imagined what is called the “spring pendulum”. This invention had a great impact in the evolution of the watch industry, which subsequently became a small-sized mobile hand-held industry, instead of large-sized clocks that were hung on the wall or placed on floor. In the middle of the 19th century wristwatches became popular, Arundinson and Edward Howard produced over 1000 wristwatches.
Then quartz watches emerged, a development that carried over into the wristwatch. This type of clock was based on the piezoelectricity of quartz crystals, which was invented by the two scientists, Pierre and Jacques Curie in 1880. The first watch of this kind was designed in Canada at the beginning of the 20th century, then it s is widespread all over the world and is still made today.
Birth of the automatic movement
At the beginning of the 20th century, the automatic movement was invented by an English watchmaker, John Harwood, in 1920. This mechanism was based on the use of a weight which rotated 180° back and forth, when the wearer was moving, with a 12-hour power reserve. In 1930, Rolex improved this system with a semi-circular weight, fixed in the center of the movement for 360° rotations. The power reserve increased to 35 hours. Interesting theory, but what does it look like in practice? It's time for you to shed light on this little technological marvel.
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SHAMS was created in 2023 with the aim of designing sumptuous Arabic numeral watches with high quality materials. Making this type of article easily accessible was essential for us. The brand pays homage to the Arab civilization which largely participated in the emergence of watchmaking, designing the most precise and complex clocks in history, in its golden age.