There is a tradition that Hārūn al-Rashīd (763 or 766–809), the fifth Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, perhaps best known to the Western world as the caliph in the One Thousand and One Nights, sent a water clock as a gift to the Frankish King and Roman Emperor Charlemagne (742–814).[1] Some twentieth-century historians have seriously questioned the veracity of the story,[2] but the existence of water clocks, some of them quite remarkable, in Muslim-ruled parts of the Near East and North Africa is unquestionable. The illustrated treatise Kitab fi ma’rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya (The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices), finished in 1206 by Ibn al-Razzāz al-Jazarī (1136–1206), describes water clocks that came in fanciful shapes, sounded the hours, and caused automaton figures to function. The descriptions and illustrations are accompanied by detailed instructions on how to make them.[3]



For various reasons, mechanically driven clockwork was apparently not introduced into the empire of the Ottoman Turks until the sixteenth century. In 1531, however, a watch that reportedly struck the hours embedded in a gold ring made by the Italian clock and automaton maker Giorgio da Capobianco (1511–1550) was bought by the Ottoman Sultan Süleyman I (1494–1566).[4] Ten years later, the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) instituted the custom of giving yearly gifts to the sultan in exchange for peace on his borders. An early list of these gifts included a clock, a planetarium, and objects made of silver.[5] By 1548, the “gifts,” or, more accurately, the tribute, consisted not only of clocks but also the clockmakers to care for them. Further documents indicate that the clocks were chiefly made in the Habsburg-ruled, imperial city of Augsburg and that many were made by some of the best clockmakers of the time.[6] In 1568 Gerhard Emmoser (active 1556–84), Court Clockmaker to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II (1527–1576), was paid for two small clocks or watches that were sent to Turkey.[7]



The Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606 produced a new agreement between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Ottoman sultan that ended the yearly tribute. By that time Galata, a suburb of Istanbul (Constantinople), had become a colony of foreign goldsmiths, engravers, and clockmakers,[8] in addition to native-born Turkish clockmakers who already resided there. No clocks apparently survive in Turkey of either European or Turkish origin from this period,[9] however, well-known astronomer and chief astrologer to Sultan Murad III (1546–1595), Taki-al-Din, or Takiyüddin (1526–1585), was the founder of the short-lived observatory in Galata in 1575.[10] His treatise, Al-Kawakib al-durriyya fi wadh’ al-bankamat al-dawriyya (The Brightest Stars for the Construction of the Mechanical Clocks),[11] describes in detail the technology of European mechanically driven clocks that he had seen. The treatise is thought to have been used as a manual of construction by native Turkish clockmakers.[12]



Information about foreigners in seventeenth-century Galata is scant, but it is known that both French and Swiss watchmakers were among them.[13] A watch in the Musée International d’Horlogerie, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland,[14] has an inscription identifying it as having a movement by a member of the Arlaud family of Genevan watchmakers. Several members of that family are recorded as having been in Galata during the middle of the seventeenth century.[15] The case of the watch, looking a great deal more Turkish than Swiss, resembles a watchcase in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection (fig. 50),[16] and the similarity provides evidence that the Museum’s watch is likely to have been the product of the Galata colony.



The Metropolitan’s watch has a closely comparable dial with an allover pattern of vegetal ornament, some of it suggesting the strawberry- leaf designs used by mid-century European watchmakers for watch cocks. The chapter ring is applied and has numerals representing the hours and a single, sculptured hand. The numerals are adaptations made by European clockmakers of the numbers used in Arabic arithmetic, and eventually they were adopted by Turkish watch- and clockmakers as well.[17] The back plate of the watch is covered almost entirely by an openwork pattern of flowers. The watch is fitted with a later balance cock that is undoubtedly European-made.



Both watchcases in New York and in La Chaux-de-Fonds could conceivably have been made by Turkish craftsmen, however, the movements tell a different story. Casual examination of the Metropolitan’s watch identifies its movement as a rather clumsy version of an Arlaud movement. The watch is not signed, but there are a small number of known watches that are signed by makers with Turkish names, such as Dūnā [18] or Şeyh Dede.[19] Wolfgang Meyer, writing in the catalogue of the collection of the Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, Istanbul, lists the names of nine Turkish clockmakers working between 1650 and 1780 whose works are now in Istanbul.[20]



By the 1780s, a flood of English and, to a lesser extent, French watches had captured the high-end Turkish market.[21] The English Levant Company (1581–1825), founded as a monopoly for trading with Turkey and the lands ruled by the Ottoman sultans, was older than the English East India Company, which had held the monopoly on English trade with China. Similar to the Chinese emperors, the Ottoman sultans appreciated gifts in return for the right to trade.[22] As early as 1599, the Levant Company presented to Mehmet III an elaborate, English-made organ clock by Thomas Dallam (ca. 1570–after 1614) with clockwork attributed to John Harvey (active 1594–99, died before 1608) of Oxford.[23] During the 1600s, the Swiss and French overshadowed English imports in Turkish lands, but by 1786 English watches had become the dominant imports.[24] fig. 50 Watch, Turkish (probably Galata), mid-17th century. Gilded metal, 2 1⁄4 × 1 7⁄8 in. (5.7 × 4.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.1560)
215 The success of the English was probably due to their ability to produce quantities of high-quality watch movements in cases exhibiting the fine workmanship provided by a network of independent suppliers of craftsmen, which existed in London during this period. The enameled gold and diamond pair-case quarter-repeating watch in this entry is an excellent example of the type of watch intended to please a luxury-loving Turk. The white enamel dial painted with “Turkish” numerals (1–12) for the hours and the minutes (5–60, by fives) marks it as intended for the Ottoman trade. The elaborately sculptured silver hands are set with tiny diamond chips. Most watches for this market had not one but two, and sometimes three, outer cases, the outermost of leather, shagreen, or silver filigree to protect their delicate inner cases. This watch now has only one outer case, and in fact, had none when it entered the Museum’s collection as the gift of J. Pierpont Morgan. The outer case had become separated at some time between its possession by Carl H. Marfels25 and the inclusion of the rest of the watch in the catalogue of the Morgan watch collection.26 For this reason, the watch acquired two separate accession numbers: one for the watch and inner case, and one for the outer case, which had been misidentified as French. The outer case is in fact a tour de force of English craftsmanship. Wavy edged, the case is made of chased gold ornamented with concentric bands of translucent, basse-taille enamels in emerald green and royal blue, one band set with a circle of diamond chips, which is punctuated by ovals at the four corners and contains gold stars. In the center, a panel with a flower-draped Neoclassical vase enameled in shades of gray and lavender is set against an oval chocolate-colored ground. The case is hinged at the nine o’clock position and opened by applying pressure to a large rose-diamond thumb-piece. The interior of the case bears an Detail of the diamond-set hour and minute hand 216
incuse mark “GH” below a coronet. The bezel repeats the design of the outermost band of ornament on the case, yet is framed by another circle of diamond chips. Hidden within the design, tiny openings allow the sound of the bell for the repeating mechanism to escape. The gold inner case has a glass cover with a plain gold bezel. The case has a band of chased, openwork scrolling issuing from a stylized shell motif at the six o’clock position. The exterior of the back of the case sports rows of chased-gold and white-enameled lozenges, each containing a six-petal flower in green enamel with the rows separated by a zigzag pattern of translucent blue enamel. The whole design is enclosed by a wavy, circular frame of translucent blue enamel, which completes a perfect candy-box effect. Engraved at the twelve o’clock position is the number 17389. A separate dust cover for the movement and fitting is engraved: “Fras / Perigal / LONDON” and numbered 17389. The movement consists of two circular plates of gilded brass held apart by four cylindrical pillars. It is quarter repeating and has a cylinder escapement. As usual for this period, the worm-and-wheel setup for the mainspring is located between the two plates. The back plate supports a balance cock with a solid, engraved foot that is screwed to the plate, and a diamond endstone for pivoting the balance staff, as well as a silver figure plate for adjusting the balance spring. The back plate is also signed “Fras Perigal / LONDON” and numbered 17389. The mainspring is wound through keyholes in the back of the inner case and the dust cover. Of the five Francis Perigal watchmakers known to have worked in eighteenth-century London, it is possible to identify “Perigal Royal / Exchange London” on the dial of this watch to either “Francis Perigal at the Royal Exchange,” a member of the Clockmakers’ Company, mentioned in an extant list of freemen of the company between 1766 and 1773, or the “Francis Perigal jr,” also at the Royal Exchange during the same period.27 According to historian Ian White, the first Francis Perigal established himself at the Royal Exchange in 1740 and was succeeded by his son and grandson, both of the same name. The founder’s son became apprenticed to his father in 1748, and according to White, in the third generation, Francis Jr. was apprenticed to his father in 1778 and became a freeman in the Clockmakers’ Company in 1786. The latter two Perigals are the ones believed by White to have been engaged in providing watches for both the Chinese and Turkish trades.28 From the high serial number engraved on this watch, it would seem that the signature probably stands for Francis Perigal Jr. How much of any movement from the workshop of a successful London watchmaker in the 1770s is the actual work of the watchmaker who signed it may be questioned, however. The production of another watchmaker, George Prior (1735–1814), to the Chinese and Turkish trades, perhaps the most prolific, has been compiled by White. Prior’s workshop is estimated to have produced more than 10,000 watches between about 1765 and 1780, or soon thereafter.29 The Museum’s Perigal watch is of very high London quality. The mainspring is unfortunately now broken and the fusee chain has come loose. There are numerous losses of enamel on both the outer and the inner cases. The most extensive damage is on the outer case, where the element that frames the left side of the painted enamel vase is largely missing its translucent green enamel. cv / jhl



Notes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Vincent and Leopold, European Clocks and Watches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015)



[1] See Kurz 1975, p. 7; White 2012, p. 16.

[2] See North 1975, pp. 382, 395, n. 16; see also Beliaev 1969, p. 221.

[3] See al-Jazarī 1974; Turner 1984b, pp. 21–22; Turner 2002.

[4] Kurz 1975, p. 22; Morpurgo 1950, pp. 41–42.

[5] Kurz 1975, p. 23.

[6] Mraz 1980, pp. 39–40. See entries 1, 9, 11, and 29 in this volume for more about Augsburg clocks.

[7] Hofzahlamts-Rechnung, 1568, fol. 93, entry of Sept. 10, 1568, quoted in Boeheim 1888, p. cxxix, no. 5136. See also entry 4 in this volume for more about Gerhard Emmoser.

[8] Kurz 1975, p. 49.

[9] Ozdemir 1993, pp. 99–109.

[10] For more about the observatory, see Sayılı 1960, pp. 289–305.

[11] One manuscript is in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris; another is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. For an English translation, see Tekeli 1966.

[12] White 2012, p. 59.

[13] Kurz 1975, p. 49. See also Jaquet 1948b; Jaquet and Chapuis 1970, pp. 27–28.

[14] Inv. no. I-555. See Cardinal and Piguet 2002, pp. 120–21, no. 117. See also Chapiro 2001, p. 32, figs. 3, 4.

[15] Patrizzi 1998, pp. 75–76.

[16] Acc. no. 17.190.1560.

[17] For an example with more nearly correct Turkish numerals, see a plate clock by the Turkish clockmaker Bulugat from about 1650; illustrated in Meyer 1975, no. 2/1239.

[18] Kurz 1975, pl. viii, fig. 15a, b, and fig. 16a–d, and pl. ix, fig. 17a, b.

[19] Ibid., p. 59; Ozdemir 1993, pp. 115, 117. For a selection of European-made and Turkish-made watches of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see Chapiro 2001; Kremer 2014.

[20] Meyer 1975, p. 6.

[21] Kurz 1975, pp. 72–79, citing contemporaneous evidence of the quantity of English exports.

[22] See White 2012, pp. 48–58, for a history of the clock and watch trade through the Levant Company.

[23] Ibid., pp. 49–52.

[24] Ibid., pp. 60–74.

[25] Marfels 1889, pl. x, figs. 1a–d.

[26] Williamson 1912, p. 192, no. 210. The outer case was not included in the catalogue but was part of the Morgan gift to the Museum.

[27] Clockmakers’ Company, London, Ms. 3941, unpag., Guildhall Library, London.

[28] White 2012, p. 347.

[29] Ibid., p. 69.