In this episode we discuss what is perhaps the most famous and distinctive invention of Middle Eastern and North African hydraulic engineering is the qanāt (also known as foggaras, khettāras, and aflāj): an underground tunnel dug horizontally into a hillside to harvest water from the water table.

Speakers: Majid Labbaf Khaneiki and Louise Rayne.

Majid Khaneiki is a human geographer who specializes in traditional irrigation and hydro-social cycles in rural communities. He has conducted or cooperated with more than 20 research projects on water issues in Oman, Iran, Iraq, India and Azerbaijan. He is the author of 13 books about traditional water management, water history, qanat system, and Indigenous water knowledge. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Nizwa in Oman, where he works in the field of socio-hydrology and conducts a research project on the interplay between water systems and social structures Oman’s local communities.

Louise Rayne is Newcastle University Academic Track Fellow in School of History Classics and Archaeology. She has a background in both Archaeology and Geography (joint PhD), especially remote sensing. Originally working in the Middle East on water management archaeology of Syria and Iraq, she is now also working in North Africa on remote sensing of land-use change, especially traditional water management and desertification.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

M. L. Khaneiki, Cultural Dynamics of Water in Iranian Civilization (Springer, 2020).

Rayne, L.; Gatto, M.C.; Abdulaati, L.; Al-Haddad, M.; Sterry, M.; Sheldrick, N.; Mattingly, D. Detecting Change at Archaeological Sites in North Africa Using Open-Source Satellite Imagery. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 3694. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12223694

A. A. S., Yazdi, & M. L. Khaneiki, Qanat knowledge: Construction and maintenance (Springer, 2010).

Edmund Hayes

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

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It is often difficult to reconstruct the water infrastructure at historical sites due to recent building and patchy excavation and survival. In this episode we look at a site in which we can see a great deal of the water supply as a connected system, and how it developed over time: the great late antique White Monastery on the edge of the Egyptian desert.

Speaker: Louise Blanke. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.

Louise Blanke is Senior lecturer in Late Antique Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, and has written extensively on late antique and early Islamic archaeology and the archaeology of Egyptian monasticism.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

Louise Blanke, Archaeology of Egyptian Monasticism, Settlement, Economy and Daily Life at the White Monastery Federation (New Haven: 2019)

Louise Blanke, “Life on the Desert’s Edge: The Water Supply of a Late Antique Monastery in Egypt.” In J. Kuhlmann Madsen, N.O. Andersen and I. Thuesen (eds.) Water of Life, 130-143 (Copenhagen: Orbis, 2016).

Edmund Hayes

twitter.com/Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop

Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases online and in-store.

Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout.

Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC bookshop for details.

https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast

You can’t think about clean water without also thinking about removing dirty water and other waste. In this episode we take a deep dive into sewage (figuratively speaking) on the basis of excavations and documents that survive about cities in Muslim Spain in the Middle Ages.

Speaker: Ieva Rèklaityte. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.

Ieva Reklaityte is an independent researcher. She graduated in Archaeology at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania, and did her PhD thesis at the University of Saragossa in Spain.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

Ieva Reklaityte, Vivir en una ciudad de Al-Andalus: hidraulica, saneamiento y condiciones de vida (University of Saragossa, 2012).

Ieva Rèklaityte, (ed.), Water in the Medieval Hispanic Society: Economic, Social and religious implications (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2019).

Ieva Rèklaityte, “Les latrines en al‑Andalus : leurs principales caractéristiques et les conditions sanitaires urbaines (The Latrine in Al‑Andalus : its Main Characteristics and the Urban Hygienic Conditions)” in “Lieux d'hygiène et lieux d'aisance en terre d'Islam (VIIe-XVe siècle)” special issue of Médiévales 70 (Spring 2016) edited by Patrice Cressier, Sophie Gilotte et Marie-Odile Rousset, https://doi.org/10.4000/medievales.7683 (and see this special issue in general).

Edmund Hayes

twitter.com/Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop

Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases online and in-store.

Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout.

Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC bookshop for details.

https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast