This work about mechanical devices, written by an engineer in the service of the Artuqid sultan of Diyarbakr and completed between 1204 and 1205, is derived from the Greek scientific tradition inherited by Byzantium. The Automata, as it is usually called, was popular in the Muslim world, particularly among the Mamluks for whom this manuscript was finished in Ramadan of A.H. 715 (December 1315 A.D.), probably in Syria.

The treatise is divided into six categories: the construction of clocks; the fashioning of vessels and figures suitable for drinking sessions; pitchers, basins, and other things; fountains and perpetual flutes; machines for raising water; and miscellaneous objects. Each section was heavily illustrated and diagrammed. The elephant clock, which belongs to the first category, had the time marked at half-hour periods by the scribe sitting in the howdah. Then the bird at the top of the dome whistled, the figure at the balcony on the left would allow a ball to be released from the falcon's mouth into that of the serpent. The serpent would then discharge it into the vase on the elephant's shoulder. The mahout (elephant driver) strikes the head of the elephant with his ax and then his mallet, the ball then falls onto a cymbal in the elephant's body, and comes to rest in a container between its legs. The falcon, serpent, and vases are pairs, changing from tight to left with each hour.

The style of painting is a continuation of that of the so-called Baghdad school of the first half of the 13th century, rarely unaffected by other artistic influences invading the Muslim world at this period.