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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