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First Flight of Abbas Ibn Firnas
The flying machine seemed to be ready at long last. He now stood next to it on the side of the mountain not far from Córdoba. The mountain was known as Jabal al-Arus (the mountain of the bride). It wasn’t easy to get the glider up there either so Abbas was glad he had the help he did.
Seif, Ahmad, Jericho, and Jamal had proven to be quite a blessing today as they always had. Abbas thanked Allah silently for sending them to help him. Without them many of Abbas’ experiments couldn’t have been accomplished over the years.
Together they had helped to demonstrate the methods Abbas had perfected of cutting quartz and also making colorless glass. The latter was used for reading stones which were a type of corrective lens. He was especially proud of that invention as it helped so many to be able to read for the first time and it made all of the polishing efforts worth it. You simply had to lay the stone on the page to make the words and letters clear so that you could learn what Allah was trying to teach you.
They had gotten the craft as close as they could by the road. It wasn’t that it was all that heavy but the cart was hard to move with the rather ungainly set of wings sitting on top of it. The ends of the wings kept catching on the nearby underbrush and would bump on the road as they passed through the dips.
When they came to a stop the craft had to be carried up the hillside. What he was calling an ornithopter would cover completely two full grown men who were lying down on the ground. It had to be that large though to support the full weight of Abbas who would be dangling underneath it.
So much preparation had gone into the soon coming moment he would be experiencing. Because it was meant to allow him to be able to fly like a bird he was tentatively calling the thing an ornithopter. That was even though it wasn’t going to flap its wings like a bird did which would have been overly complex. He couldn’t work out the mechanism right in his mind anyway. Allah made amazing creatures when he made birds. The questions that were raised he wanted answers to just fascinated him to no end.
The thought that it would work correctly this day was so exciting to him. It had all worked the right way in his mind and he had mulled it over a long time. He was sure the machine would allow him to ride upon the wind and carry him through the air across the face of the mountain.
From the time he’d watched that daredevil jump from that tower in Córdoba during 852 the thought of flying fascinated him greatly. If there had only been a better frame, and some rigidity for the wings, the young man probably could have flown away into the distance. That would have really impressed Muhammad I of Córdoba who was the new Caliph at the time.
On that day the young man was able to walk away with only a few minor injuries. Everyone spoke of how he should have been dead instead of still being able to walk around. The design the young man came up with could have obviously used some improvements which Abbas mulled over for a long time.
For years after that day Abbas tried to study Allah’s handiwork, the birds of the air. He focused his vast intellect on divining how they were able to accomplish the feat of heavier than air flight. What secrets did the feathered creatures hold? How did they do what they were able to do? It was just so fascinating and he had to have the answers so he could share it with fellow believers and the rest of the world.
One of the guiding verses from the Holy Quran was verse 19 of Surah al-Mulk. This scripture inset within him a desire to discern the beauty of the winged creatures Allah made in his infinite wisdom. "Do they not observe the birds above them, spreading out their wings and folding them in? None upholds them except Allah the Most Gracious… Truly it is he that watches over all things"
He caught sight of a bird that had just taken off from a nearby perch. The shadow of it passing overhead caught his attention. As he watched it fly across the sky it brought back memories of the many hours he spent studying the feathered creatures.
One of the breakthroughs came one day when he figured out there was a little curve in the wing surface of the dove he had been looking at. To double check he looked at several more and found they were similar in shape. He excitedly drew it out on a piece of parchment with some charcoal.
At first he thought each wing was cupping the air so they were acting a little like a set of scoops. That would have involved something akin to rowing a boat. There was no way that concept could be right since it didn’t match what he had observed.
After mulling it over for days he realized it was actually something quite different though he was never quite sure what it was. He noticed there was a bit larger surface area on the top side than there was on the bottom. Because of the amount of distance it had to move he figured the air was moving faster over the top than the underside. There was no way he could be sure though and there was no way to check. The moving air was invisible to him.
The second breakthrough was realizing a bird would flex its wing as it flew. His framework would also have to be flexible as a result. By twisting the wing slightly it would change the characteristics of the surface.
Soon after that is when he made his first toy glider and tested it. It proved to be unsuccessful and fell immediately to the floor. So were most of the experiments over the next twenty years. Finally he chanced upon his present design which was similar in shape to the wings of a bird. He knew he could scale it up as needed.
You couldn’t really see the frame work of ash if you had seen it from a distance. He supposed it might even actually look to observers like feathers were covering the craft. To complete the effect he painted feather shapes on the fabric. Pretty much this craft was just a scaled up version of the toy gliders he’d built at his laboratory.
He picked up the contraction and lifted it over his head. Lowering it down to his shoulders he felt the weight settle down on to him. He took the ends of the ropes into his hands that were meant to help him control the machine.
Some of the feathers that were sown into his shirt poked through the fabric and into his skin. He tried to ignore the sharp points as he moved his shoulders around to readjust the fabric so it wouldn’t poke him. Some would say he looked like a buzzard today but he didn’t really care what they said.
He looked to the left and then to the right to make sure the wings were fine. Jostling it around one last time he tried to make it as comfortable as he could. His mind he began to prepare for the launch into the sky.
Down the mountainside all four of his observers looked up at him expectantly. He nervously waved to them. Though he willed his heart to stop pounding he was unsuccessful. So much was riding on this moment and it was truly do or die. Feeling as if he was pushing through a wall he leaned forward and began to run.
When he felt he reached the proper speed he began to hop lightly. He was trying to launch himself into the air. Finally he reached the point his legs almost couldn’t keep up. The little rise allowed him to leap into the open air.
The winged craft immediately dropped several feet and his stomach uncomfortably lurched within. He had halfway expected that to happen and he figured for a split second he would be experiencing it. Terror surged through his veins as he figured he was going to be dashed against the mountainside.
Then, to his great relief, he heard the cloth rustle. He caught the updraft he had expected to catch and the craft lurched up as it began to lift. The machine started rising toward the clouds. He couldn't help but laugh in joy and relief as the elevation increased.
&nbs
p; Realizing he didn’t want to gain a lot of altitude he tried turning the machine so it would bring him closer to the ground. The old Greek story about the flight of Icarus entered his head. Visions of melting wax, and feathers floating downward around him, was terrifying.
Unfortunately it didn’t respond very well to his attempts at changing the direction of his travel. He pulled hard on the ropes and it took almost all of his strength to get the wing to warp at all. The control mechanism would need improvement before making any more attempts.
The craft also needed an appendage like that of an avian creature. I should have added a tail, that’s how the birds can turn so well. Finally he managed to get the craft to circle so that he could begin descending toward the ground. He now wanted to work on the necessary improvements to make a viable craft.
Abbas didn’t realize how fast his descent actually was. The ground was getting closer and he swung his legs out forward in preparing to land. He was hoping to land like he’d watched the birds do many times.
The closer he got the faster he seemed to move. It scared him a little as he got near but he couldn’t concentrate on it too closely. As his feet connected with the ground, shock and pain traveled up his legs. He crumpled down to the ground in agony. Fire traveled up his back. Luckily for him his observers were there to see him and could now take care of him.
Since he was an old man at 65 he would never recover enough to be able to make another attempt. Many of the observers who were there would tell others about the events of that day.
Eventually the tale reached some who were able to write it all down. They would include references to the events of that day in letters and in books that became lost to the sands of time.
Abbas also created a folio that would disappear around the time of the Inquisition. Some even say the tale even reached Leonardo DaVinci though we’ll never really know.
A little about the story
I came upon the story of Abbas Ibn Firnas who lived from 810 to 887 A.D. For a time he called Córdoba, Spain home. He was the one who invented the first glider that was able to successfully carry a human. His work was the origin of ornithopters and also of fixed wing aircraft.
I do not believe the one Abbas built actually flapped its wings like most ornithopters these days are designed to do. However, I do think he got the concept of an air foil correct which provides lift though I can’t prove it. I tried to base the wing size in the story line on actual lift to weight ratios of present day gliders. If it’s too small of a wing surface there’s no way the glider he came up with would have worked.
The more I learned the more the story absolutely fascinated me which made me want to do even deeper research. He was like DaVinci in many ways, a really brilliant individual who I would have liked to have met. There were many inventions that Abbas can be credited with of which a couple of them I mentioned in the story like making clear glass.
Some of what I found in my investigation didn’t make any sense to me. In many of the stories the wings were made of wax and feathers like those in the story of the flight of Icarus. If the wings were really made of wax and feathers it wouldn’t have been successful I’m quite certain. That told me that Abbas did something different since his experimental flight was about ten minutes long and probably was several hundred feet.
There were quite a few I was able to infer that had watched the flight happen that day. Naturally I began wondering who those people might be. Wouldn’t it be his assistants? All the documentation created by Abbas disappeared over time. So I imagined the assistants telling others about what they had seen and those people told other people. Eventually it would lead to several other glider experiments by other inventors over the centuries.
I will note many of the early sources seem to mix the guy jumping from the tower and Abbas into one individual. They are, I’m quite sure, two different people. That much I was able to confirm with multiple highly researched sources. For some reason I think the parachute and tower incident was getting mixed up with the flight in the various accounts I was coming across. Both of the names are fairly similar.
This is one of the best sources of information I could find. It’s also one of the few sources that mentioned where the flight actually took place.