Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf (Damascus, 1521 – Istanbul, 1585), astronomer and polymath of the Ottoman Empire, describes in his treatise Al-Turuq al-samiyya fi al-alat al-ruhaniyya (1551) a device that uses the thrust of steam to turn a spit: a wheel with vanes driven by steam jets from a boiler, connected via gears to the spit mechanism. The device anticipates the functional principle of the impulse turbine — the same one Parsons would use in 1884 — and conceptually improves on Hero's aeolipile by incorporating transmission of useful motion to a practical application. The treatise was ignored by Western historiography until the 20th century.