Qanats in the Levant: Hydraulic Technology at the Periphery of Early Empires

Abstract

Research Note QANATS IN THE LEVANT: HYDRAULIC TECHNOLOGY AT THE PERIPHERY OF EARLY EMPIRES DALE R. LIGHTFOOT On the east side of the Jordan Valley during the Roman and Byz­ antine periods, dynamic populations pushed out into marginal lands where no permanent, sedentary civilizations preceded or followed them, doubling the population of many sites in the area compared to the pre-Roman era.1 In this marginal, summer-dry Mediterranean land, the concern for water supply is pervasive, especially in the steppe or desert land of the Levant, where the presence and posses­ sion of water were decisive for life and death.2 During the RomanByzantine period, as at present, the development of surface water resources was primarily emphasized,3 but an attempt also was made to develop groundwater resources by constructing wells, spring tun­ nels, and qanats. Dr. Lightfoot is associate professor in the Department ofGeography at Oklahoma State University. His research interests include historic landscapes, cultural ecology, and traditional agricultural and water technologies. This research was funded by a grant from the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR, Amman) with funds provided by the U. S. Information Agency, with additional funding from the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. Dr. Pierre Bikai, director ofACOR, and Dr. Beni Hani, secretary general of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation in Amman, were instrumental in securing letters of introduction and working out the logistics of fieldwork. Engineer Azmi Mubarak of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation guided the fieldwork; his familiarity with rural culture and enthusiasm for this project were instrumental in recovering knowledge of these abandoned irrigation works. ’Michael Fuller, Abila Reports (Amman, 1986), unpublished manuscript at the American Center of Oriental Research, Amman; Nelson Glueck, The RiverJordan (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 129. 2A. Reifenberg, The Struggle between the Desert and the Sown (Jerusalem, 1955), p. 51. 3Ian Manners, “The Development of Irrigation Agriculture in the Hashemite Kingdom ofJordan, with Particular Reference to the Jordan Valley” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1969), p. 255.© 1997 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/97/3802-0006$01.00 432 Hydraulic Technology at the Periphery ofEarly Empires 433 Qanats are a form of subterranean aqueduct—or subsurface ca­ nal—engineered to collect groundwater and direct it through a gen­ tly sloping underground conduit to surface canals which provide wa­ ter to agricultural fields or oases (fig, 1). Water seeps through the walls of a mother well, which is sunk into an aquifer upslope from the fields being irrigated and then is carried by natural gravity flow through the qanat tunnel to a point tens ofmeters to tens ofkilome­ ters away. Qanats are found throughout the Islamic world and as far east and west of this region as Japan and Mexico. This same irriga­ tion system in other regions is known as karez, khettara, falaj, foggara, galena, and about twenty other terms. Qanats were recently studied in Jordan and Syria as part of a broader project examining the role of qanats in a modern world. This article reports on theJordanian portion of this research. Field­ work was conducted in order to (1) produce a regional map ofJor­ dan’s qanats; (2) examine the relationship among qanat sites, an­ cient settlements, and physiographic zones; and (3) determine the status of qanats at each site, toward an understanding of the pattern of qanat abandonment and reuse. Ten sites, with thirty-two separate qanat galleries, have been iden­ tified in Jordan (compared with 239 qanat galleries in Syria) (fig. 2). Only five of theseJordanian sites had been previously recovered; five new sites were discovered through this research. During the course of fieldwork, I followed many additional leads provided by articles, books, maps, resource officials, village mukhtars (advisers), and felaheen (peasant/farmer) union members. Many dozens of towns, villages, and remote field locations were checked during this process, especially within regions where qanats were already known to exist and in physiographic zones best suited to qanat use, includ­ ing the Mafraq-Jebel Druze area, the Irbid-Yarmouk area, theJordan Valley (El Ghor), the Arava Valley, and the...