Abstract
It has been said that Palermo is short of available water. However, nothing could be more wrong. Well-documented Arab sources and narrative chronicles reported an abundance of groundwater resources in Palermo Plain since the Middle Ages. The scarcity of sources and surface water in the Palermo Plain, compared to the groundwater abundance, led the inhabitants to use groundwater both for irrigation and domestic usage through a complex and sustainable hydraulic system. Vertical and horizontal (qanāts) wells, conveyed water towards gardens and public fountains making the Arabic Bal’harm (Palermo) a flourishing town. When visitors walk through the streets of Palermo’s historical center, among Arab ruins and Baroque architecture, they hardly imagine that there is a wide and varied cultural heritage of underground cavities hidden in the basements where water flows in intricate networks fed from a numerous springs. Only in recent years was a part of this system brought to light. Moreover, the city still has a wide and fascinating water distribution system consisting of irrigation basin (gebbie), ingenious hydraulic machines named senie, and distribution chessboard of irrigation (saje) and drinking water (catusi) canals. The medieval water collection and distribution systems and their various components in the Palermo Plain are reviewed together with the influence of the Arab water management on environment.
Highlights
Contrary to what is commonly believed, Palermo is a city of water
Flysch) with a thickness of more than thousand meters, and the high permeability of surface rocks, rainwater does not disperse in depth but accumulates as groundwater (Figure 1). This hydrogeological feature has historically allowed the exploitation of both surface water resources, known since the medieval period and groundwater aquifer through the use of thousands of vertical wells and horizontal wells called pozzi a ripiano or ingruttati
The first qanāt discovered in Palermo (Uscibene qanāt) has been dated at the Islamic high Middle Ages but the maximum qanāts spread was achieved only after the 16th century during the Spanish period [3]
Summary
Contrary to what is commonly believed, Palermo is a city of water. The first Phoenician settlements of Palermo were sat between the banks of two rivers, Kemonia and Papireto which made the plan of the town looks like a flower; its first name was Ziz, the flower [1]. In arid climates where erosion rates are minimal, even ancient qanāts are identified in aerial photos as lines of craters formed by the deposition of excavation material around vertical shafts which can reach the depth of 100 m and have a spacing of 20–100 m [11] Their bottom is connected by a tunnel about 1 m wide and 2 m high in which water is freely flowing by gravity away from the main well (mother well) to lower and flatter agricultural lands [7]. Since a qanāt relies entirely on passive tapping of the water table by gravity, it does not upset the natural water balance, whereas the withdrawal of water by pumping can lead to aquifer depletion [2,5,12] For this reason, they represent one of the most ecological water recovery systems available for arid regions. The paper examines the influence that the Arab water management had on its environment
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