Editing Windmill (section)

== Horizontal windmills ==
{{main|Panemone windmill}}

{{further|Vertical axis wind turbine}}

[[File:Perzsa malom.svg|thumb|right|The Persian horizontal windmill, the first practical windmill.]]

[[File:Margate Hooper's Mill.jpg|thumb|upright|Hooper's Mill, Margate, Kent, an eighteenth-century European horizontal windmill]]

The first practical windmills were [[panemone windmill]]s, using sails that rotated in a horizontal plane, around a vertical axis. Made of six to 12 sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind grain or draw up water.<ref name="Wailes, R. Horizontal Windmills pp 125–145">Wailes, R. Horizontal Windmills. London, Transactions of the Newcomen Society vol. XL 1967–68 pp 125–145</ref> A medieval account reports that windmill technology was used in [[Iran|Persia]] and the Middle East during the reign of [[Rashidun]] caliph [[Umar ibn al-Khattab]] ({{reign|634|644}}), based on the caliph's conversation with a Persian builder slave.<ref name="Science and Technology in Islam: The exact and natural sciences">{{cite book |last1=Ahmed |first1=Maqbul |last2=Iskandar |first2=A. Z. |title=Science and Technology in Islam: The exact and natural sciences |date=2001 |publisher=UNESCO Pub. |page=80 |isbn=9789231038303 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FUPnSxbUREgC |access-date=27 December 2021 |format=Paperback}}</ref> The authenticity of part of the anecdote involving the caliph Umar is questioned because it was recorded only in the 10th century.<ref>Dietrich Lohrmann, "Von der östlichen zur westlichen Windmühle", ''Archiv für Kulturgeschichte'', Vol. 77, Issue 1 (1995), pp.&nbsp;1–30 (8)</ref> The [[Geography in medieval Islam|Persian geographer]] [[Estakhri]] reported windmills being operated in [[Greater Khorasan|Khorasan]] (Eastern Iran and Western Afghanistan) already in the 9th century.<ref name="Al-Hassan, Hill, p. 54f.">Klaus Ferdinand, “The Horizontal Windmills of Western Afghanistan,” Folk 5, 1963, pp. 71–90.. [[Ahmad Y Hassan]], [[Donald Routledge Hill]] (1986). ''Islamic Technology: An illustrated history'', p. 54. [[Cambridge University Press]]. {{ISBN|0-521-42239-6}}.</ref><ref name="Lucas65"/>
Such windmills were in widespread use across the Middle East and Central Asia and later spread to Europe, China, and India from there.<ref name="Hill">[[Donald Routledge Hill]], "Mechanical Engineering in the Medieval Near East", ''Scientific American'', May 1991, p.&nbsp;64–69. (cf. [[Donald Routledge Hill]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20001212015400/http://home.swipnet.se/islam/articles/HistoryofSciences.htm Mechanical Engineering])</ref> By the 11th century, the vertical-axle windmill had reached parts of Southern Europe, including the [[Iberian Peninsula]] (via [[Al-Andalus]]) and the [[Aegean Sea]] (in the [[Balkans]]).<ref>{{cite web |title=Asbads (windmill) of Iran |url=https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6192/ |website=UNESCO World Heritage Centre |language=en}}</ref> A similar type of horizontal windmill with rectangular blades, used for irrigation, can also be found in thirteenth-century China (during the [[Jurchen Jin dynasty]] in the north), introduced by the travels of [[Yelü Chucai]] to [[Turkestan]] in 1219.<ref name="needham volume 4 part 2 560">
Needham, Joseph (1986). ''Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering''. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd., p. 560.</ref>

Vertical-axle windmills were built, in small numbers, in Europe during the 18th and nineteenth centuries,<ref name="Wailes, R. Horizontal Windmills pp 125–145"/> for example [[Fowler's Mill]] at [[Battersea]] in London, and Hooper's Mill at [[History of Margate#Windmills|Margate]] in [[Kent]]. These early modern examples seem not to have been directly influenced by the vertical-axle windmills of the medieval period, but to have been independent inventions by 18th-century engineers.<ref>Hills, R L. Power from Wind: A History of Windmill Technology Cambridge University Press 1993</ref>