Nalut,
situated on the top of a mountain, about 800 m above sea level, is one
of the oldest pre-Saharan cities. Built of mud, lime and palm-tree
trunks, a huge fascinating kasr (grain store), more than 3,000 years
old, was a special attraction. The kasr/ qasr perched precariously on
the edge of an escarpment, consisting of 400 ghurfas (chambers), which
were used mainly for storing and protecting grain and oil.
In the past, when the climate was wetter, the small town Nalut, on the
extreme western edge of Libya, was a fertile area extending over several
thousand acres. This site of Allah’s garden was “once watered by natural
springs arising in the hills to the south and flowing down through the
Nalut area. Cultivation around Nalut began about 4400 BC. As the climate
became more arid, one of the ancient world’s longest and deepest Qanats
was constructed underground in an effort to resist the effects of the
encroaching Sahara desert, running from some hills to a town with
irrigated fields. Running through the earth was a horizontal bore with
vertical well- like shafts, extending to the surface very so often all
along its length” to quote the Twice Blind, part mystery, and part
techno-thriller of James Forester. To continue, “Built about 700 B. C.
E. the underground tunnel from the hills is as much as 300 feet under
the surface in places. Although increasing aridity is steadily reducing
the flow of the springs, the Nalut qanat still carries water the 12
miles from the springs in the southern hills providing the only water
for the oasis town, which is now comprised of about 500 people….It’s
hard to believe men could have built such a thing 2700 years ago; …Men
were just as intelligent and resourceful 2700 years ago as they are
today, and they just lacked the technically sophisticated understanding
inherent in the accumulated stored knowledge we have today. That is to
say, they simply lacked books.” These lines depict the history of the
Middle East, nay the ancient world, in a nutshell. In the distant past,
agriculture with the help of natural springs was prevalent. Later, with
the advent of arid climate, aqueducts and Qanats were introduced. This
fact takes one’s imagination to an age 30 centuries behind. Like a
trickle Qanat geared the growth of agriculture. With the passage of
time, the technology crossed borders and began to engulf the region and
beyond.
Conduit is something like a tube or pipe by means of which a fluid is
conducted, for example, an aqueduct. A Qanat is an underground aqueduct.
They are water catchment and distribution systems found in hot arid and
semi-arid regions from ancient times. They tap groundwater from the
cliff, or base of a mountainous area, following a water-bearing
formation (aquifer) where ancient water is naturally trapped
underground. This water, routed through a series of massive, man- made
horizontal drainage tunnels that connect the bottom of a well in the
underground, flows through the catchments of humidity and hidden
precipitation. Qanat, typical of the desert environment, serves as an
integral part of agricultural landscape in the arid regions of the world
for centuries. Most of them, excavated in the distant past, using
manpower and very primitive tools, remain intact even today. The roughly
horizontal tunnels with a gentle slope, allow water flow on gravity
gradient to an oasis, without any mechanical use, providing a reliable
supply of water for food production that sustains human settlements. The
long history of tunnel digging, employed in mining in Armenia, has been
attributed to the origin of this concept. This amazing hydraulic
feature, considered to be the oldest feat of human engineering, is known
to have developed and existed in many areas of the ancient world. This
system of irrigation can be found functioning well in North Africa,
China, Afghanistan, Iran (Persia), Egypt’s western desert, Bahariya,
Farafra, Kharga, the Arabian Peninsula, western Mexico, Peru, Chile and
beyond. The adoption of this technique in a big way transformed many
parts of the arid Arab world into a sort of oasis of date palms or other
crops.
A natural spring that sustains a natural oasis can be considered as a
natural Qanat. These man -made underground aqueducts turned other oases
into splendid areas, enabling settlers to find pastures new in the arid
zone of the desert. The first settlers who lived in the natural oases
might have developed the idea of Qanat to bring other fertile terrains
in the neighborhood under cultivation and sustain their life. Building
up and maintaining Qanats is not labour intensive. But the steady supply
of water across a wide area of Asia moulded an agricultural society,
which is labour intensive. The Qanat system comprises a human culture as
well as physical ecosystem and the nature of the Qanat supplies set a
rhythm to life in the village.
The two main components of the Qanat are the vertical dug well that tap
water, and the gently sloping tunnels that conduct the water from higher
lands down to the place where it is required. That presents the picture
of a cave with so many entrances. The length of a Qanat from mother well
to the outlet point varies from 1 to 50 kms. Significantly it depends on
the topographic and geological characteristics and also on the
precipitation of the site. The average time to build a Qanat also varies
from 2 to 7 years.
Water harvesting is a method of collection and storage of rainwater that
can be used to meet household, agricultural and navigational needs. As
early as 4,000 years ago, people of the Negev Desert in Israel stored
rainwater to meet household and irrigation requirements. Qanat is
another traditional method of groundwater extraction. This system is
still active today, and has 170,000 miles of active underground canals
in Iran alone, and supplies 75% of the water used in that country.
The ancient Persian Empire is a conglomeration of parts of Turkey,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and parts of the southern former
U.S.S.R. As early as 3000 BC, a system of irrigation began in Persia
called the Qanat. This came to our knowledge when a devastating
earthquake of 26 December 2003 uncovered an old city and the Qanat
system in Bam. The preliminary studies held by the Archaeologists
discovered this Qanat to be the oldest one, belonging to the time of the
Seleucids-Achaemenids who devised Qanats to bring water to remote areas
throughout the empire. Polybius credits the Achaemenids with the origin
of Qanats and draws a direct connection between the spread of a
technology and a political initiative. “At the time when the Persians
were the rulers of Asia they gave to those who conveyed a supply of
water to places previously unirrigated the right of cultivating the land
for five generations, [so that] people incurred great expense and
trouble making underground channels reaching a long distance.” In
Central Asian states with hot and arid climate, people harvested water
in underground tunnels, which were also used to transport water to long
distances. Iran has 22,000 tunnels called Qanat comprising more than
273,000 km and supplying about 75% of all water used in the country.
Persian Empire emerged in the 6th century BCE under the Achaemenid
dynasty, controlled vast areas from present day Greece to northwestern
India. The name Persia is a derivation from Persis, the ancient Greek
name of the empire. In Iran, which traces its national origin to Persia,
the oldest remains of Qanat go back to 3,000 years. This traditional
system of water provision was adjusted to the harsh and hostile
environmental conditions of the country and in some regions provided
irrigation water for as much as 80% of the irrigated area. In Iran, up
to 50,000 ranges of Qanat with 22,000 still in operation have been
recorded with a total annual discharge of 16 billion m3, which is
equivalent to 75% of the total discharge of Euphrates River.
Qanat, a multi-mile subterranean structure, was invented about 750 B.C.
for transporting water efficiently in the dry desert climes of the
Middle East. The shaft-tunnel structures run for miles. They represent a
prodigious amount of labour. The longest runs more than 40 kilometers
into the mountainsides. End to end, it is said; they would reach
two-thirds of the way to the Moon. In the 1950s, it is estimated that
one in seven of the population in some areas of Iran was a Qanat digger,
a member of the Mughani caste. Qanats rank right up there with the “Inca
roads and the Great Wall of China as wonders of the ancient world”. No
wonder, Iran minus Qanat will be a desert.
Throughout the world, Qanats are known as filtration galleries, foggara,
fuqaras, water mines, madjrat, minas, Crevillente (Valencia), apantles
con tragaluces, pozería, Tehuacán, Puebla, fuques; picos and by many
other names. They are described in Asia and North Africa with
alternative terms such as karez, kakuriz, chin-avulz, fugara, mayun, and
falaj. The word Qanat is pronounced as kanat in Arabic, but it’s
spelling varies in English: k(h)anat, kunut, kona, konait, ghanat,
ghundat, and quanta.
They have been widespread since the 1st millennium B.C. with different
names: The comparable systems that still exist in many parts of the
world are known in each place under a different name. Other local
nomenclature is Foggara/ fughara are the French translation of the
Arabic Qanat, used in North Africa. The existence of Qanats in 34
countries of the world has been confirmed. An attempt is made here to
enlist them. Afghanistan/ Pakistan: karez; Algeria/Libya: foggara;
Baloch: kahn; Bahrain: Qanat; Cambodia: China: kanerjing/ kanjing,
karez; India: surangam; Iraq: khariz/ Qanat; Japan: mambo, mappo;
Jordan/ Syria: Qanat romani; Korea: man-nan-po; Oman: falaj; Pakistan:
Palestine: Saudi Arabia: Syria: The United Arab Emirates: falaj; Turkey:
Turkmenistan: Yemen: felledj, a ghayl/ miyan; Algeria/ North Africa:
foggara; Libya, khettara/ khattara, rhettara, hattaras (Morocco);
southern Morocco: Marrakesh/ Tafilalet; Egypt:..; Sahara:..; Tunisia:..;
Europe: Cyprus:..; Czechoslovakia:..; England:..; France:..; Germany:..;
Italy: Ingruttato..; America: puquios/ pukios (Peru); Latin America,
Spain, Canary Islands: galeria; Chile and Mexico: pozería (sic), picas;
Southern Morocco: Marrakesh/ Tafilalet; Madrid: viaje/ viajes de agua;
Southeast Asia: Bahariya: manafis; Farafra: jub; Kharga: manawal, so on
and so forth.
The Spaniards obtained the technique from the Arabs and built themselves
Qanats in the New World. The Tehuacan and Parras in Mexico are of
Spanish origin. Qanats found in Peru and Chile are considered as
pre-Columbian. “It will not be possible to resolve definitively the
origins of these putatively Inca systems without documental evidence, or
without comparing the institutions of Qanat management and water
distribution with those of the Madrid and other Old-World systems”.
Qanat technology came before aqueducts and remains as an ancient
mystery. All the irrigation water for a small village can be met by a
pair of good well made Qanats and can be used by many families for many,
many years.
The widespread distribution of Qanat, known in each place under a local
name, has confounded the question of its origin. The variety of names
suggests that different people at different points of time introduced
this technology in the wake of human migration in search of new fields
for cultivation. In this background an investigation on the origin of
Qanat is a journey back in time.
The Qanat captures hidden waters present in alluvial fans, and the
tunnels excavated, using mining technique, conduct water to the
destination. Many investigators cite ancient Persia (Iran) as the home
of the Qanat. From Persians, Qanats expanded to the east along the silk
route to China and spread to Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Cyprus, the
Canary Islands and Spain and even to the New World. Geographer Paul Ward
English considers the realm of the Persians as the core area with
numerous old and fully developed Qanats.
The Persian construction techniques are old and their language rich in
words relating to Qanat technology. Of course, the answer to this
question also holds the key to unlock the prehistory of mankind. An
attempt is made here to fix the place of origin of this system of
irrigation following the pattern of word formation, pertaining to men
and material, technology and water distribution. Qanat is an irrigation
system found not in Iran alone but everywhere in the Middle East. When
the terms connected with the construction of a tunnel are examined, we
come across many words that rhyme with Dravidian and Sanskrit words. In
this background if we examine the philological details, the historical
background of the Qanat will become clearer.
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