Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
by
Supervisor:
Ms.Zatur
1
Introduction
Availability of water is a must for living in any area. Water brings life and has a
settlements and civilizations in the history were close to water bodies and
agriculture and cultivation of arable lands, the water had a great value. In
addition, the labor force deriving from both human and animal sources
work on the arable lands required water to drink. Thus, further developments
of the region were, and to some extent are, highly dependent upon the
accessibility to the water for the purpose of irrigation as well as drinking. Lack
of water cause serious problems and may act as a barrier to the development.
Without water agricultural products will not grow and man and animals cannot
many sections where the main centralized quarter was ruling section that
had a defense function and inhabitants used to live there. This area was
2
encircled by defense walls of the city that arable lands were located out of this
wall. Besides the trade and essential crafts inside the wall, the majority of
natural disasters and epidemic diseases, the sustainability of the city was a
function of the area of farms. The larger the surrounding farms, the more
potential to increase the city population. Once again this urges the necessity
of water for irrigation and drinking. So the extent to which inhabitants had
there were many other factors inter alia political situation, religious reasons
and being located on the important routes. These factors could results in
development of the city but water constraints impeded further growth. Water
that city. Many cities had the extensive potential for enlargement but lack of
access to sufficient water was an obstacle. This had to be tackled specially for
those cities with strategic position. There were number of cities that needed to
be expanded. It was the point that local governments sought remedy for the
problem of water scarcity. The solution was simple; they had to bring water
from farther areas to the town. In spite of the simplicity of concept, the way to
do so was not easy. For the first time, the concept came into existence by
3
tunnels called Kareez. The invention of Kareez dated back not later than
were adopted by Arabs and soon expanded to the world being ruled under
Islamic regulations.
2. Problem statement
The water shortage has been hindrance for development. Special attention
must be paid to the semi arid and arid areas where these regions suffer
inherently from severe limitation of water availability. Since semi arid and arid
regions occupied large portion of Persian Empire, this problem called for
temperature fluctuates in winter and summer and difference between the day
and night temperature can exceed 40º C. The sun radiation is very straight
and strong and the clear sky with no cloud does not attenuate the intensity of
solar radiation. The humidity rate is very low yielding in higher level of
evaporation. The precipitation is insignificant and rare and only limited to the
winter time. These all cause in huge doughtiness in the region. The remote
easily reaches above 40º under shadow, the need of water to quench and
4
1. For more information on the origin and date of invention of Kareez please see the section 5.2 of this
article.
deemed to have equally the same value of life. Any single drop of this
this region crucially relies on the water access. The only solution is to bring
water from far distanced area to the city. The brought water had conditions to
be taken care of including that it must remain sanitary thereby potable, reduce
the evaporation rate, low cost harvesting but still automatic, sustained supply
and minimum water wastages. But how did the Persians almost 3000 years
ago challenge the nature to transfer water to their cities in arid region and
3. Objective
This research aims to study architecture of Kareez and its pertinent aspects
as follows:
5
4. Methodology
and scholarly articles, the method which is known as library study. Where
5. Discussion
This section deals with architecture of Kareez and comprises of four parts
namely the definition, the origin, the function and the construction as follows:
One can find different definitions for Kareez but of the most precise ones is
water from water tables’. The underground water is not brought up to the
earth’s surface but rather it is drained out to the surface. The tunnels are built
slightly tilted from horizon with just a few degrees of slope in order to
manipulate the gravity of the Earth to flow the water inside of the earth onto its
All scholars believe and agree on the origin of Kareez to be the Persia, the
modern Iran. But some convergences occur on the time of invention. Doman
6
(1908) stated the Persians as the first nation who transferred water. Wulff
(1968) elucidating the Persia as the actual birthplace of Kareez, indicates that
the Kareez technology has been invented long ago before Christ. He refers to
the report by the King Sargon II, the Assyrian king who was in a campaign in
operation near the Lake Urmia. According to the Persians model, his son King
disclosing the donation of idea to Egyptians after the ancient Egypt was
transferred the water from 100 miles away to the oasis of Karg from an
underground water table of Nile River. Remnants of the Kareez are still in
settlement at the oasis still call it Persian works. The other scholars mention
older date for the invention of Kareez e.g. Bickman et al (1999) acknowledge
the Persian originating to the first millennium before the Christ. Lightfoot
(2000) in his article ‘The Origin and Diffusion of Qanats in Arabia’ cites a
holistic number of articles denoting Persia as the kareez origin dating back to
5.3.1. Importance
7
Today, groundwater is the source to supply more than 1.5 billion dwellers in
the world while also provides water to irrigate for agriculture. More than one-
purposes:
Salih (2006)
Using underground water (Kareez as the carrier of water) is not only important
for the arid zones, but also in many regions where surface water is abundant.
Having more than 30000 kareez in use with average length of 6 kilometres in
Iran, the total length of the digging path of kareez only in Iran is almost 7.7
times the circumference of our Earth (Ahmadi, Samani and Malekian 2010).
5.3.2. World
8
34 countries today (Salih, 2006). The map below shows the distribution of
Valley in the 1920s were reopened for irrigating about 600 hectares of fields
and gardens.
of Asia e.g. Jordan, Palestine, Pakistan, Yemen, India and Cambodia, Africa
e.g. Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunis, Europe e.g. Spain, Italy, Germany,
Englang, France and Cyprus, and the Americas e.g. Chile, Peru and Mexico
9
As urban layout of kareez is in service of public use, architectural layout
mainly lies in the category of private profits. Architectural layout of the kareez
beneath houses, private access points provide water for various domestic
beside the underground stream with tall shafts reaching upward to wind
According to the Bahadori (1978) (Figure 2), a shaft (b) connects the kareez
to the basement of the building to be cooled. Hot and dry air comes to the
kareez through one of the shafts (a) and is cooled as it flows along the water
that usually is cold. Then, the cold and moist air from the shaft enters the
house (c). The mixture of air from the kareez and air from the tower (d)
10
Source: Bahadori (1978)
(a). Putting the majority of the channel underground reduces water loss
(b). Since the system is fed entirely by gravity, the need for pumps is
eliminated; and
Karaji, a Persian scholar of the 10th century A.D., has a chapter on Kareez
highlands to distribution canals. The water source is the head well which
11
reaches down to the water table. The other shafts provide ventilation and
give access for cleaning and repair of the conduit tunnel below.
with a trial well which is shown in the figure below in the far left. Then, a
tunnel connects all the trial wells and the ventilation wells. The tunnel is
slightly sloped toward the water table at the highhill to allow the automatic
flow of water to the city. Excluding the discharge point, the tunnel does not
masonry material. The ventilation wells are about 45 meter away from
each other and can be utilised to winch the excavated rock to the surface
too. Oil lamps were used to make sure that digging the tunnel is on the
right track. A bad flame was the sign of insufficient amount of oxygen in
12
(c).TUNNEL CROSS SECTIONS (Figure 4) show the variation of a kareez
conduit or tunnel. It was supported by the tile hoops for clay type of the soil
whereas for the well-compacted soil the walls may be left unlined (b). If the
head well should go dry and therefore need to he dug deeper, the conduit
on the next page. The rows of small holes reveal the presence of several
Kareez systems below the surface: each hole is the top of a ventilation
shaft.
13
Figure 5: Aerial Photo which shows the remains of Persepolis
(e). TILE HOOPS (Figure 6) to support the tunnel are usually piled up near
one of the vertical shafts that lead to the conduit tunnel of a Kareez under
14
Figure 6: Tile hoops
(f). ROW OF CRATERS (Figure 7) each one marking the mouth of a Kareez
ventilation shaft, runs across and plain in western Iran. The walls of the
craters protect the shafts and the tunnel below from erosion damage from
15
(g). STREAM OF QANAT WATER flows past a wall-enclosed garden in an
Iranian town. The stream first flows through the town and then is diverted
6. Conclusion
masterpiece for transferring water from remote areas to the city. Kareez has
been used for both irrigation and drinking water in many parts of the world for
in future due to the relatively costly construction and lack of skilled experts
since younger generations would rather to immigrate to bigger cities and are
kareezes in use.
References
16
Ahmadi, A, H N Samani, and a Malekian. "The Qanat: A Living History in Iran."
Beekman, C.S., P.S. Weigand, and J.J. Pint. "Old World Irrigation Technology
Lightfoot, Dale R. "Jordanian Qanat Romani." Technology and Culture 38, no.
2 (1996): 432-451.
17
Rafiei, B. Descriptive Dictionary of Persian Architecture. Tehran: Building and
17, 2010).
Wulff, HE. "Qanats in Iran." SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 218, no. 4 (1968): 94-
100.
18