Kept Alive in Arabic
Hero's Mechanics
حِيَل إيرن
Hero of Alexandria wrote a book on lifting heavy loads with small forces, by pulleys, gears and levers; its Greek original is lost but for excerpts. It survives whole in an Arabic translation ordered by the caliph al-Musta'in and made by Qusta ibn Luqa, from which Ludwig Nix published it in Arabic and German at Leipzig in 1900.
- Author
- Hero of Alexandria (1st century; translated by Qusta ibn Luqa for the caliph al-Musta'in (r. 862–866))
- Field
- Mechanics
- What Arabic kept
- The whole book
- Greek title
- Μηχανικά
- Arabic title
- كتاب إيرن في رفع الأشياء الثقيلة
- Latin title
- Mechanica
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Sources
- Heronis Alexandrini opera, vol. II: Mechanica et Catoptrica, ed. L. Nix and W. Schmidt (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900), Internet Archive
- Wikipedia, «Hero of Alexandria»: works preserved only in Arabic translations
- ل. نِكس، مقدّمة النشرة، ص XVIII–XX، ورأس المقالة الأولى ص١
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