The Politics of Automata in Medieval Islam

Studies of automata or self-moving devices in medieval Islam have generally focused on the elite figures of patron and engineer, and on the transmission of the mechanical arts from antiquity to Islam, using the high-register genre of technical manuals. My current book project reshapes the contours of this field by examining the labor that went into the machines, the figures automata represented, the work they were supposed to perform, and the range of emotions they elicited. I also move beyond courtly production to consider a wider array of settings and sources. This expansive approach reveals automata’s enmeshment with complex, sociopolitical processes that ranged from slavery to racialization.