Gadara holds one of the world’s longest underground aqueducts

Gadara has been identified as the ancient city half-hidden beneath modern Umm Qais in Jordan. 

Until late Hellenistic times, the citizens of Gadara had to rely on a variety of cisterns that collected rainwater. So far, no less than 75 such reservoirs have been identified with a storage capacity varying from 6 to 450 cubic meters. After the arrival of the Romans in the 1^st century BC, the growing population spread out over a wider area, needing more water than the cisterns could provide. 

Water had to be brought into Gadara from a spring 11 kilometers away. It probably flowed through a series of clay pipes buried underground, called Qanat Turab, making a detour around the valleys. Near Gadara, the water crossed another valley by means of a bridge and reached a tunnel under the city’s Acropolis. From here, it was distributed to the baths, Nymphaeums, and houses. 

By the end of the 1^st century AD, however, the population of Gadara and neighboring settlements had exploded to reach about 50,000 people. To meet their needs, a daily debit of 300-400 liters per person was required. Together with the cities of Adra’a and Abila, Gadara decided to build a second long-distance water supply running through a series of tunnels cut in the rock. The project, known as Qanat Fir’aun, was started in 90 AD to be completed in several phases by 210 AD. It is known to have been functioning until the devastating earthquake of 747 AD, which destroyed Gadara. 

[Picture from Culture in Crisis, credit Paul Fischer]

I already touched on the subject in my earlier post, Preservation of the Roman aqueduct at Gadara, without digging deeper into the prowess of the Roman engineers. This elaborate structure started at a reservoir at Wadi Harier, near the Syrian border village of Dille, with a storage capacity of 4 to 6 million cubic meters. The water covered a distance of 170 kilometers to Gadara using gravity, in this case, a gradient of about 217 meters! How these engineers from antiquity managed to figure this out without the help of our modern technology is a pure wonder. For a good 100 kilometers of its course, the water ran through a system of tunnels. On its way, 14 tributaries from Lake Muzarib in southern Syria and several springs added their waters to the main stream. For the maintenance of the entire system, karezes or qanats, providing underground access, were added at regular intervals. 

Access to both aqueducts can be found on the Acropolis of Gadara, i.e., where the remains of the abandoned Ottoman village of Umm Qais now stand. Today’s tourist can visit the last section of this 170-kilometer-long tunnel in a guided tour. A real treat!

Another qanat discovered in Iran

A hitherto unknown qanat has been discovered near the town of Chaqabol in western Iran, roughly one hundred kilometers south of Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana).

Incredibly, so many of these underground water canals have been dug out over the centuries, and so many are still in working order. The main problem is the maintenance they require. I dedicated an earlier blog to the qanats (see: The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind). 

It appears that in 2018, the cultural heritage body of Iran had documented some 120,000 qanats. About 37,000 such canals are still being used, mainly for irrigation purposes, compared to the approximately 50,000 qanats in Iran in the last century. 

With climate change affecting our daily use and need for water, the qanats regain their importance. Over the centuries, the local tribes and chiefs kept the system in working order. However, today's construction projects, such as cities and barrages on existing rivers, often disrupt and/or interrupt the water supply. Since those projects are overseen by a governmental institution, little attention is paid to this centuries-old supply system on which many local populations still rely. In the process, small communities lose their only access to water. They cannot raise their crops and lack water for their own basic needs. 

It is noteworthy that eleven aqueducts across Iran were put as “Persian Qanat” on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016. 

We can learn a lot from our ancestors if we earnestly try to listen to them!

The concept of the caravanserai

It was in Turkey that I saw my very first caravanserai, probably the best example around, and it left an everlasting impression. It happened in the busy town of Kervansaray, halfway between Aksaray and Konya.

This was many years ago, and at the time, I was told that the Ottomans built hans (storage areas) and caravanserais (inns) to protect and accommodate the merchants moving on the busy caravan routes, like, for instance, the Silk Road. Large caravans of camels carrying silk and spices from China would make their way to Bursa, the then capital of the Ottoman Empire. These convenient stopovers were meant to stimulate business, of course. However, they also served as social gathering places and eventually led to further expansion of the Empire.

Later on, I discovered that these caravanserais could be found alongside the entire network of trade routes, mainly throughout southeastern Europe and Asia. Also, the very concept was not an Ottoman invention as I was led to believe initially, but existed already in Achaemenid Persia and even in Assyria.

All in all, I always found these caravanserais highly fascinating, but my encounter with the Sultan Han or Sultanhani in Kervansaray always remains my standard reference point. This quite impressive building covers a surface of 4,900 m2 and dates from 1226. It is much larger than a castle and is fortified similarly, with strong defense towers at the corners. It has a rectangular shape, much deeper than wide, with one single entrance gate to ensure security. This gate is decorated with lace brickwork, as seen on mosques, and gives access to a large open courtyard measuring 44 x 58 meters. At its center stands a square, two-story high kiosk-mosque, which is said to be the oldest example in Turkey.

Along the inner wall on the right runs a shady arcade in front of the merchants’ sleeping quarters. The opposite side is mainly occupied by a hamam where the tired traveler can relax. At the far end of this courtyard, there seems to be another gate, but this is the entrance to the area where the merchants could safely store their goods and shelter their horses, camels, and donkeys. This space with high vaults reminds me of a cathedral, ensuring warmth in winter and coolness in summer. High above the transept, a small octagonal windowed dome acts as a lantern, filtering the light. It strikes me as a comfortable, safe haven where the weary traveler could rest in peace. This important meeting point was also used to sell or swap their merchandise. This is so much more ingenious than one can imagine!

Another, very much commercialized caravanserai is the one in Ilhara in Cappadocia. This one has been heavily restored to be used for the entertainment of tourists.

A few years later, I visited the han of Alara-han on the road from Alanya to Antalya. This building is relatively small and measures only 34.5 x 45m. An inscription above the entrance gate tells us that it was built in 1231 by Alaeddin Keykubad I. It is said that it served the needs of the sultan when he traveled from Konya to his winter quarters in Alanya. Maybe that explains the size. Although this han is hailed for its construction technique, details, and proportions, I am not impressed. It has been converted into a true tourist attraction with the inevitable souvenir shops, restaurants, and gathering places of all kinds.

In Syria, I am confronted with the caravanserai of Qalaat al-Madiq, actually located at the foot of the ancient city of Apamea. This is a sizable building from the 16^th century displaying a fully paved courtyard. In the middle is a stairway that once led to the well, but it has now been sealed off. Overall, the caravanserai has not been tended with care, but interestingly, it houses a few select finds from Apamea. The best and most beautiful artifact is the Roman mosaic of Socrates and the Wise Men from the 3^rd century AD.  Unfortunately, I am not allowed to take pictures inside!

Iran, in turn, came with its own surprises of caravanserais. Here, they often stand in the middle of the desert, battered and withered by the wind and sand. Their lonely location is usually connected to the precious qanats that brought the much-needed water to the site (see: The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind).

Nongobade exhibits an entire series of such vital stopovers. Well-preserved is the caravanserai from the Seljuk era, 13th century, followed by another one from Safavid times, i.e., 17th century. The old city of Na’in at the edge of Iran’s Central Desert seems to have grown around its caravanserai and nearby cistern, whose water supply was guaranteed by qanats. The adjacent wind towers added to the comfort of the caravans.

In Isfahan, the capital created and built by Shah Abbas in 1598, the Abbasi Hotel is worth a visit since it was initially another important caravanserai. Unlike the “modernization” of the Alara-han, this conversion into a luxurious hotel is a success story. The large central courtyard has been transformed into a lush garden with fountains and pleasant alleys. Knowing the world-famous Maidan Square, the size of this construction is not surprising. For Shah Abbas, big was better, and that idea has spread all over his city. The story goes that he built 999 of these caravanserais. True or not, in any case, Abbas thought that people would believe that number rather than if he rounded it to one thousand. PR avant la lettre, yes?

Last but not least, I have to mention Uzbekistan in Central Asia. We are well aware that Bukhara and Samarkand stand on the Silk Road, and it is obvious to find caravanserais in those cities. I may not have noticed all of them, but in Bukhara, for instance, I visited the Sayfiddin Caravanserai from the 19^th century, which is now one of the places selling carpets and other handicrafts.

On the road from Bukhara to Samarkand, I passed the Barboti Malik caravanserai from the 11^th century. The place is pretty isolated, more in the middle of nowhere than alongside a major route. This caravanserai is in a pretty poor state; only the façade has been re-erected, while all the other outer and inner walls are only reconstructed to a height of approximately one meter. It is easy to imagine what a safe haven such a place must have been to the traveler, considering the surrounding hostile lands. On the other side of the road is the ever-required water reservoir, a Sardova from the 14^th century. This is an impressive vaulted construction that protects the water from dust and pollution while offering a clean spot to drink and water the animals. To me, it is evident that this entire construction covers an old well that has been used over the centuries by local sheep and cattle herders, as well as by the merchants on this busy east-west road.

The sheer number of these hans and caravanserais is inevitably linked to the Silk Road that crisscrossed Eurasia in general (see: The Silk Road, some historical aspects of this trade route). 

For me, of course, the diversity and presence of these caravanserais give an insight into the welcome stops Alexander may have encountered on his desert crossings. It is impossible that they served the entire Macedonian army, but the proximity of water must have been a precious asset.

After all, Alexander followed the old Persian Roads whenever possible, and these were strung with such relay posts every 30 or 40 kilometers or so. The posts certainly could not provide fresh horses for an army. However, I secretly think that the king himself may have “borrowed” an animal or two during his wild pursuit of Darius in northeast Persia. In any case, he must have welcomed whatever comfort they offered and, in these vast deserts, water was a major commodity.

An eye for beauty in spite of the daily challenges

On a lovely autumn day, I was enjoying a picnic high up the hills among the ruins of Tlos, overlooking the Xanthos Valley. My mind automatically drifted away to Alexander, who must have ridden down this very valley towards Patara, Letoon, and Xanthos. I pictured him proudly riding his faithful Bucephalus, who was happily shaking his colorful tassels and twinkling bells.

In my pleasant mental picture, I imagined a good-humored Alexander enjoying the ride and the beauty of the land with Hephaistion at his side. No history book will mention this, of course. The landscape, roads, or weather conditions are no topic unless they reach extremes.

The few such exceptions our historians picked up are, for instance, the blizzards that hit the army on the passes of the Hindu Kush, the never-ending monsoon rains in India, and the flash flood in the Gedrosian Desert. Otherwise, we can only use our imagination, and that is not easy since most of us have not traveled to those faraway lands.

I feel privileged to have trodden in the footsteps of this great conqueror on several occasions, but to truly appreciate what is involved, we would have to venture out on foot. Only a handful of braves have set out on such an adventure. Traveling by plane or car, as is common nowadays, does not allow us to experience the impact of the elements. The wind, the rain, the heat or the cold remain blocked until we step outside of our metal cocoon. We miss out on the smells of the land, the dust, the fog, the crispy frost in the air. The most common sounds of bleating sheep, mooing cows, the songs of the birds, and the laughter of children are stifled entirely.

The topic of the weather fully hit me when I drove south along the Zagros Mountains in a relentless dust storm. The sands from Mesopotamia were carried through the air in sweeping gusts. As long as I sat inside the comforts of my vehicle, I only noticed a hazy landscape, but as soon as I left my protective shell, the grains hit me in the face, stinging me with thousands of needles. The wind was tearing at my clothes, the sand was crushing between my teeth, and breathing became difficult. Alexander must have known such days. 

The role of the landscape and the climate during Alexander’s campaign became even more apparent to me after reading “The Road to Oxiana” by Robert Byron. This book is a true eye-opener when it comes to envisioning the full scale of his daily challenges.

In 1933, Byron traveled from Damascus to Baghdad and crossed Persia to finally reach Afghanistan one year later.  It is quite exciting to discover that long stretches of his route match the itinerary taken by Alexander more than 2,000 years earlier. The landscape is a commanding factor common in both cases. Then and now, roads run along the same rivers, pass the same oases and towns, skirt the same deserts and mountains, and use the same passes and goat tracks. I enjoy his descriptions of the many valleys in full spring bloom in Central Asia, where the fiery red poppies rule the fields as they still do in Alexander’s homeland. They are a welcome breather after witnessing the barren deserts with their frequent dust devils whirling around.

Byron hitchhiked on board lorries but also traveled by car or on horseback. Despite modern means of transportation, he did not move much faster than a traveler on foot would. Roads were often impassable because of flooding or flash floods that washed away entire portions, including bridges or other rudimentary crossings.

He used old caravanserais when there was no local governor or friendly Brit around to offer him a room for the night. Lodging was, more often than not, uncomfortable and dirty. He generously recounts the folklore details of such encounters, and it seems to me that life has not really changed much since the days of Alexander.

As I read on, I search for those landscapes and cities that most likely have seen the Macedonian army marching through. Places like Ecbatana, Persepolis, Pasargadae, Balkh, Kabul, and Peshawar, the crossing of the Elbruz Mountains towards the Caspian Sea, and the perilous trek over the Hindu Kush.

Byron describes a poignant moment as he descends to the Caspian Coast. In a few minutes, the world of stone, sand, and mud he had endured since Damascus turned into one of green-leafed trees and bushes. The everlasting drought made way for moisture as even his body somehow returned to its natural buoyancy. I imagine Alexander and his dust-covered Macedonians must have experienced the same kind of refreshing relief.

Insofar as possible, Alexander used the well-maintained Persian Royal Road. Once beyond that network, it came down to finding tracks and trails. It appears that Byron had a rather similar experience, and his worst progress was made after he left Persia to enter Afghanistan.

The sudden changes in the weather pattern are widespread in that part of the world, and Byron truly undergoes these extremes. He tells how it rained all night, how the river had subsided but rose again fast, four feet deep at times. Of rain falling like bath-waste turning the road into a river for miles in a row, flooding the desert, and turning every mountain into a cataract. He describes the dark skies as cloud-wracked set against inky jagged hills.

At one time, after passing the Paropamisus, he labors for an hour and a half, ankle-deep in freezing slush, to lever away the rocks blocking the road. Landslides were common, and he mentions how not one but a dozen such landslides prevented him from reaching Kabul overnight. A mile beyond the Shibar Pass across the Hindu Kush, which Alexander also used, Byron hits more landslides, heaps of liquid mud and pebbles concealing large rocks. The crops below the road, already half destroyed by a river of mud, are then menaced by a new spate.

Another exciting feature that is not mentioned in our history books, either, is the qanats. A very recognizable and ingenious water management system from antiquity that still exists today and is still functioning in some parts of the world. The quality of the river water could not always be trusted, but the qanats carried the precious fluid from the snow level high up the mountains or from clean underground water tables (see: The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind).

Earthquakes were another frequent occurrence at every stage of Alexander’s route. Surprisingly, the sudden shaking that rocked tents, as well as men and beasts, is never mentioned either. They probably were prevailing events not worth talking about.

No, this way of traveling is definitely not for the faint-hearted. Yet Alexander and his brave Macedonians constantly faced the elements. However, I like to believe that many, and especially Alexander, had an eye for beauty as well. Byron tells us, for instance, that he reached the most beautiful part of his entire journey at the foot of the Hindu Kush. Of all places! After leaving the river, the road constantly climbed not in twists but followed a succession of steeply sloping saddles leading from ridge to ridge. I have seen pictures of this road in a presentation at the exhibition “Afghanistan, hidden treasures from the National Museum, Kabul,” and they entirely match Byron’s description.

On the other hand, flowers must have been plentiful in antiquity, creating landscapes that were familiar to Alexander. Nowadays, they have mainly disappeared from our cities and our concrete roads. I fondly recall the Macedonian fields covered with an array of spring flowers ranging from the white chamomile and pink hollyhock to the deep-red poppies and purple wild onions. The explosion of colors over the rolling hills felt like a homecoming. The land was pleasantly green, crossed by refreshing, clear streams tumbling down from higher elevations under the blue sky filled with fleets of puffy clouds. Yet, I came across the same picture in many other places, further east to Turkey and beyond.

Truly, so much, so very much remains to be discovered and disclosed on Alexander’s whereabouts!

The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind

The qanats are an ever-returning and ever-fascinating subject of discussion.

[Picture from klikabol.com]

It is a water supply system that transports water from underground reserves to irrigation canals and even to cities. The qanats are a valuable asset in desert regions. They are known all over the world, from North Africa to Asia, Arabia, the Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Italy, and Greece, and even in the Nazca Valley of Peru and Chile!

My first encounter happened in Libya, where I was introduced to the Garamantes, who used this water supply system. It is still visible in the Sahara desert, although the local Berbers called it foggaras (see: Could Alexander have known the Garamantes?). It is impossible to trace its origins back and we don’t know who really invented the system or implemented it first. Persia seems to be a good candidate, and it may have traveled from there over the Silk Road.

Since Libya, I did indeed come across repeated qanats all over Iran. According to the statistics, approximately 50,000 such qanats were still working in Iran last century. In Afghanistan, about 20,000 qanats were still in use at that time.

With the climate change that is affecting our daily use and need for water, the qanats regain their importance. Although the concept is rather simple, it does require regular maintenance. Over the centuries, the local tribes and chiefs were in charge of keeping the system in working order. However, modern construction projects such as cities and barrages on existing rivers often disrupt and/or interrupt the water supply. Since those projects are overseen by a governmental institution, little attention is given to this centuries-old supply system on which many local populations still rely. In the process, small communities lose their only access to water. They cannot raise their crops and lack water for their own basic needs.

In northeastern Iran, the qanats of Gonabac are among the world's oldest and largest. Their origin seems to go back to 700-500 BC, to the days of the Achaemenid kings. My question about Alexander getting his knowledge from the Garamantes in Libya is obviously outdated. The hydraulic system existed way before he arrived in Persia, but he must have seen it at work.

Once you know what to look for, the scars in the landscape are unmistakably clear. The vertical openings reaching down to the horizontal underground aqueduct appear like a string of pearls. Heaps of soil around the shafts are the visible traces of these access columns. For the maintenance operation, men were lowered down those shafts, and each one would clear a section of the horizontal water flow at the bottom. These shafts also functioned as wells and contributed to the ventilation along the route. The water comes from a faraway source, often in the mountains. Gravity carries it through these man-made tunnels. An additional advantage is that these underground conduits significantly reduce the evaporation of the water in the hot desert climate.

The Gonabac complex runs over a total length of 33 kilometers and has 427 wells. The structure has nothing to envy our modern knowledge of geology and hydraulics. After 2700 years, the qanats are still working! Quite an amazing achievement, that teaches us a precious lesson, doesn’t it?

In this context, a previous post on water management may be interesting reading as well (see: Water management in antiquity).

Preservation of the Roman Aqueduct at Gadara

Roman aqueducts are a constant marvel of engineering, as each and every aqueduct is unique. Their remains are still clearly visible in many landscapes around the wide Mediterranean area.

The latest news on the subject comes from Umm Qais, the modern name for ancient Gadara in Jordan. It has been established that Gadara had the largest Roman water system in the world, running over a distance of 170 kilometers all the way into modern Syria.

In an earlier blog (see: Another legacy of Alexander in Gadara), I casually mentioned the discovery of a network of water tunnels, including a number of Hellenistic ones, but at present, the entire system has been traced and mapped.

Scholars speak of a twin aqueduct as two systems run parallel, the upper and the lower tunnels. On their way to Gadara, water from other sources was added, coming from springs and channels that were cut in the rock surface to collect the rainwater. It has been established that the aqueducts were combined with karezes or qanats, which automatically provided underground access to the channels in order to carry out the maintenance works.

Since most of Gadara is built on top of the ancient city, the exact course of these aqueducts cannot always be followed exactly, but they appear in the section that has been excavated near the Baths, the Byzantine Church, and several private houses. Around the many Nymphaeums that survived, for instance, those along the Decumanus, it is still possible to find traces of the connecting aqueducts.

A detailed study on the Roman aqueducts in Jordan can be found on the site Roman Aqueducts.

Water management in antiquity

Water management is a modern word for something that exists since early antiquity.

We tend to think of the Romans as being the first to bring water where it was needed thanks to the ingenuity and the skills of their architects since they left us a great number of aqueducts and fountains, but they certainly were not the first to “manage” water.

Other civilizations in other climates had to rely on other techniques and other resources. One such system is known as the kareez or qanats, which were first mentioned to me in Libya. There the ancient people of Garamantes, a Berber population that prospered from about 500 BC to 700 AD, used this technique locally known as “foggaras”. It consists of a network of underground tunnels with shafts by which fossil water is led to the desert surface creating sudden magic fertile lands and oasis.

The idea sounded rather abstract till I came across a similar system near the city of Nurata, roughly north between Bukhara and Samarkand in Uzbekistan. At the foot of the Nurata fort (Nur in antiquity) is a holy mosque that boasts about its sacred waters that come from the distant hills through a system of qanats. Here, the qanat is an underground tunnel that slopes gently and transports water from a spot under a distant hill to the lower lands; it is punctuated with a series of vertical access shafts at set intervals through which the channel could be cleaned. (See: The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind)

More recently, I was told that it was, in fact, an ancient Persian invention or maybe even older, since similar waterworks were mentioned in Sumerian and Assyrian documents, i.e., at least one thousand years earlier. Yet the invention is generally attributed to the Iranians at some time during the first millennium BC, who heavily relied on the qanats until the middle of the 20^th century. When I was recently in Iran, I was shown a succession of heaps of stones which were the shaft’s entries into the underground channel. Unfortunately, all I saw were these mounds, merely oversized anthills, not a real illustration of this ingenious system.

Striking, however, were the so-called yakhchal or ice pits, which are clearly visible above ground in Iran, like this one on the road between Shiraz and Yazd. The system, said to have been mastered around 400 BC (just before Alexander’s arrival!), is quite sophisticated, as clearly explained in Wikipedia: “they built a wall in the east–west direction near the yakhchal (ice pit). In winter, the qanat water would be channelled to the north side of the wall, whose shade made the water freeze more quickly, increasing the ice formed per winter day. Then the ice was stored in yakhchals — specially designed, naturally cooled refrigerators. A large underground space with thick insulated walls was connected to a qanat, and a system of windcatchers or wind towers was used to draw cool subterranean air up from the qanat to maintain temperatures inside the space at low levels, even during hot summer days. As a result, the ice melted slowly and was available year-round”.

On another front, the water supply system of Petra in Jordan is at present under close scrutiny. The attentive visitor walking through the narrow canyon (Siq) to the heart of the city will automatically notice the water channels at the elbow’s height following the contours of the side walls, interrupted by shallow holes meant to filter the water. Yet the entire landscape around Petra is littered with smaller and larger cisterns using the natural slope of the rock walls and the cracks in the cliffs. I was taken to such a cistern from Nabataean times on the road to Little Petra, nothing more than a square door in a huge rock wall. A narrow staircase led me down into the dark water reservoir, and I could only guess its depth. In its glory days, it is said to hold as much as 1.2 million liters – how can I size that up? Today’s water level is much lower, but the precious water is still being used to irrigate the Bedouin crops in the surrounding fields and to water the animals.

It is rather unusual to encounter a water problem high up the El Deir Temple at Petra, also known as the Monastery. (see: Hellenistic Petra, indirect heritage of Alexander). Where it stands, El Deir always takes the full brunt of any storm that rolls in from across the desert. Besides, this monument is not cut deep enough into the soft sandstone wall and leaves the façade very exposed.

In front of  El Deir, there used to be a catch pool designed to collect the water from occasional downpours, but at present, the very entrance to this pool is obstructed by rubble and soil that accumulated over the centuries. Storms, when they occur, are rather violent and turn into torrents of fast-moving water that create puddles at the base of the façade. Today, the flash floods hit the monument from all sides, and water stagnates at the base of El Deir, whose walls absorb salt and other minerals from the soil, leaving a crystallized crust on the stone's surface. This crust weakens the stone and eventually will lead to its destruction. The Nabataeans clearly were aware of the problem and built that wall with the catch pool. Archaeologists now realize that the reconstruction of this wall is a priority.

Evidently, water is not always where we need it and is not always available in the appropriate amount. Another part of the archaeological project at El Deir aims to clear out dozens of water channels and cisterns in order to restore the Nabataeans’ efficient water management. At the same time, the current inhabitants could profit from the precious water, and this efficient system could eventually serve other desert communities.

Water management is nothing new, and it is quite amazing that in our advanced 21^st century, we can still learn so much from our forefathers! 

Could Alexander have known the Garamantes?

It never ceases to amaze me how much people in antiquity knew about other civilizations far beyond their own borders and apparent areas of communication. We in Western Europe like to keep our attention centered around the Mediterranean countries, where we are aware of seafarers crossing back and forth for eons. We need to learn more about what the Persians, with their repeated invasions, added to our daily lives. Still, we definitely know that Alexander the Great opened up the Eastern world to us as much as he brought Asia in touch with our civilization, which all contributed to what went down in history as Hellenistic.

When I visited the Archaeological Museum of Tripoli in Libya, my guide pointed proudly towards (primarily copies of) petroglyphs from the Libyan Desert made by the Garamantes. They lived in the Fezzan area in the southern Sahara, where they created their own kingdom. It was a Berber population that prospered from about 500 BC to 700 AD, mainly because of their clever building of "foggaras," i.e., a network of underground tunnels and shafts by which fossil water was led to the desert surface from a limestone layer buried deep under the desert sands, which in the process created fertile lands and oases.

The Garamantes are mentioned for the first time by Herodotus. He describes them as a great nation that herded cattle, farmed dates, and hunted the Ethiopians from four-horse chariots. Tacitus talks about their raids on Roman settlements along the coast, while Pliny the Elder reports that 15 settlements were captured by his countrymen in 19 BC. How exactly this Garamantian Kingdom declined is still being determined. Still, it was probably connected to a change in climatic conditions and/or the overuse of their groundwater since fossil water is a non-renewable resource (precisely what is happening now with the Great Manmade River project in Libya).

So, when I heard the name Garamantes in Libya, it only had a familiar faraway resonance, but I don't remember whether anything was said about this marvelous water management. Since I was neither interested in rock art nor in the prehistoric history of Libya, I paid no further attention to this information till last week when I saw a program on TV about the strange shafts still visible in the Sahara desert landscape, remains of said foggaras (a name given by the local Berbers). The program went into some detail about their ingenious concept and complex construction (see diagram from Wikipedia)

[photo Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Qanat_cross_section.svg]

They made it appear as something entirely unique, as if the Garamantes had invented the principle. At this stage, Alexander came to my mind.

Recently, I traveled to Uzbekistan, where I stopped at a fort built by Alexander the Great near today's city of Nurata, roughly north between Bukhara and Samarkand. At the foot of this fort was a holy mosque that boasted about its sacred waters that came from the distant hills through a system of kareez or qanats, as the Arabs call them. I was told it was Alexander the Great's doing (or his engineers, most probably). Of course, I was entirely flabbergasted, for I had never heard of this Alexander fort and even less about his laying out such an intricate and sophisticated water system without which the oasis of Nur (modern Nurata) could not have flourished.

In light of the TV program, my immediate question now was: could Alexander have known about the foggaras in the Libyan Desert? Nothing is impossible, of course, but he had never been further west than the Egyptian/Libyan desert on his way to Siwah. Could he have picked up this tale during that trip, or was one of his engineers familiar with the system? Or is the story here in Nur only a legend lost in time and conveniently connected to Alexander? Quite an exciting discovery, as far as I'm concerned!

I tried to find out more about the subject. In the process, I discovered that this system is known worldwide, from North Africa to Asia, Arabia, the Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Italy, and Greece, and even in the Nazca Valley of Peru and Chile! It goes by many different names according to the country or civilization throughout the centuries. The Persian word is kariz or kareez, which is still used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the countries of Central Asia, like Uzbekistan; in Morocco, it is called khettara; in Spain, galleria, in Arabia falaj, and in North Africa, foggara or fughara. It is also known as kakuriz, chin-avulz, or mayun, while qanats may be spelled in different ways as kanat, khanat, kunut, kona, konait, ghanat, ghundat. Pick your choice.

But whatever the name, the origin of the entire system has not been traced to any particular location. However, Persia is the area from where it probably traveled over the Silk Road across the Eurasian continent. I'm pretty amazed to read that in the last century, there were approximately 20,000 qanats still in use in Afghanistan and about 50,000 in Iran.

[Image courtesy U. Leicester/DigitalGlobe/Google]

To add some livelihood to my astonishment, I found an article on the subject in National Geographic (Nov 2011) – although not directly. It so happened that images of more than one hundred "lost" fortresses were seen on new satellite photographs taken over the Libyan desert. These castles seem to belong to the Garamantes, a civilization National Geographic places between the 2nd and the 7th century AD. Researchers have discovered walled towns, villages, and farms thanks to these views. An early 2011 expedition found remarkably well-preserved brick walls standing up to 3-4 meters high, which previously had been erroneously attributed to Roman frontier forts. Their investigation led further to these underground canals, which enabled the Garamantes to cultivate crops such as wheat, barley, figs, grapes, sorghum, pearl millet, and even cotton!

What a fantastic world out there!

The above information has been updated in the post The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind.