The Book of Secrets, written by Andalusian engineer Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi, dates to the year 1000 CE. Today, a single surviving copy made in Toledo, Spain, in 1266 CE is preserved in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence.
The original manuscript includes descriptions and drawings of over thirty ingenious devices, including mechanical apparatuses, water clocks, automatic calendars and war machines, making it an extraordinarily important reference in the history of science, as it represents one of the earliest written and drawn testimonies about complex ancient machines.
The exhibition presents a digital and interactive manuscript reconstruction based on three-dimensional models animated through a holographic touchscreen and other interactive digital stations to bring the medieval machinery designs to life. The project was sparked by the Italian study centre Leonardo’s discovery of this important Arab manuscript, which has never before been fully studied or disclosed in all its complexity.
The Book of Secrets is a unique source for studying ancient Arab technology, which must be considered when studying the inventions of the Renaissance, like those by Leonardo da Vinci. The enormous and difficult task of interpreting the manuscript has allowed researchers to reconstruct of all the mechanisms and machines, which, surprisingly, all function, though not without some mysteries.