These are cool. One of these gravity-driven miniature aqueducts still flows from the Sierra Nevada directly between Plaza Larga and las Pesas at one of the highest points in the Albaycin in Granada, and (I've heard) is accessible through the basements of the buildings there. It's extremely impressive that someone engineered running water to a hill that high from an even higher source miles away across deep ravines, and that it still flows.
I don’t know why I find water harvesting so fascinating, nifty use of aquifers.
There was a civilisation in the Sahara that had tunnels in the mountain that provided water, I imagine they ran dry.
Persia had (has?) underground tunnels that convey water to farmland.
With the increasing amount of heavy rain fall I’m not sure how much of that can be caught and sequestered.
This was made all the more apparent when there was a sudden downpour in London some years back and the river Fleet, sewer as it is now backed up into the office’s canteen.
Yes, throughout Morocco’s south east you will find what’s called khettaras (?????). They are underground irrigation network that was used to transport water from the Atlas Mountains to regions about 300km away.They were in used until the late 80s as far as I know.
It seems to me that the acequia are an open and distributed technology, so even when the central authority collapsed, each individual community was able to keep the services running based on that technology, for over a thousand years.
Modern irrigation is incredible, modern cities are amazing, modern software connects most humans on the planet. But ... we can learn.
That was the exact same with the khettaras, they were built and Maintained by the communities.
Talking about notion of a central authority that provides governance is an anachronism in the context of North Africa. But that’s a separate discussion.
The qanats in the middle-east, and north africa are particularly interesting. They are underground water conduits and sources dug by human muscles alone.
Madeira was initially settled by the Portuguese in the 15th century, 200 years after the end of the Portuguese Reconquista, so it's quite a stretch to claim that the "levadas" were "established by the Moors", even if they initially brought the technology to Iberia.
The same system exists across parts of the north American southwest colonized/taken over by the Spanish. New Mexico still has many acqueias, though like Span, less and less each year as the skills and desire to manage them, uhm, dries up.
There’s a Dutch company called Groasis that had the nifty idea of planting a tree that goes though a bucket of water, the bucket slowly leaks water into the ground.
“You must plant the rain before you plant a seed or tree!” proclaimed rain farmer Mr. Zephaniah Phiri Maseko of Zimbabwe. By doing just that, he and his family turned a wasteland into an oasis, raised groundwater and well levels even in dry years, reduced flooding in wet years, and enhanced the fertility of the soils. This inspiring story will be shared along with the strategies used, and more importantly, the guiding principles that informed the choice, placement, and implementation of these strategies into a more integrated and productive system. These principles work in any climate experiencing a dry season or drought. And they help us see and act more holistically by asking us questions that direct our attention to important aspects of water and fertility systems we might otherwise overlook.
The article is about some low-tech but historically effective water-management techniques, brought to Spain by the Muslim conquest (711-721). It walks back very quickly on the headline's claim of "invention". And mentions that similar techniques were independently invented in other parts of the world.
Note: "Moor" is both a wretchedly vague exonym, and often a mild ethnic slur.
I only know the region as a repeat tourist (just came back from my second visit this year), but my impression from this is that locals are quite proud of their cosmopolitan past and "moro" is the simply term they use for their melting pot ancestors of that era. Nothing negative about it at all.
>but my impression from this is that locals are quite proud of their cosmopolitan past and "moro"
Literally no one is.
There is a vast difference between giving credit for a given concept/tool/technique because it's useful, and thinking the locals have sort of ancestral connection with a foreign invader.
Don't speak for a whole country. There are people that are proud of this heritage, like me, and many more, especially in the places where Moorish culture had a stronghold (e.g. Andalusia, C. Valenciana, Murcia, etc.)
I find it hard to believe that there would be no cultural heritage after ~700 years.
What I think you want to say is that the "identity" of modern Spain and Portugal has been shaped and defined by its opposition to the moor/muslim/north-african identity.
I do disagree with your last sentence, a lot of Portuguese are proud of their north-african connections. Most families come from "newly-christians" after all (and you gotta blame Spain's Phillips for that one).
I'd really like to know how you reach the conclusion of "most families" when we are talking about two ethno-religious minorities, that allegedly were victims of indiscriminate killings, and mass deportations to the Low Lands, North Africa and to the Americas, but end up leaving a gigantic genetic footprint.
Different time scales. Aqueducts are (mainly) used for transporting water. These things are used to store springwater in aquifers so that it slowly trickles out or can be pumped during the dry season.
OK, I have nothing bad to say about acequias or irrigation. Having grown up with a big orchad at home I enjoyed watching all those water inventions. Not sure about "Moorish". More like "muslim era" heritage?
"Making life possible in one of Europe's driest regions" is misleading though.
Eastwards Sierra Nevada you find Almería, where all the Spaghetti Westerns were filmed. It's indeed a desertic zone, just not a very big extension.
The hyperbolic headline somehow implies a scale that's not real. In any other direction from Sierra Nevada, there's plenty of rain, water and woods. That system just provides the same for some villages on the drier zones.
Edit: OK, people disagree... so be it, but before downvoting, why don't you take a look at Google Earth and see for yourself?
You are simply wrong and are touching a sensitive point.
I grew up in Córdoba (which is west from Sierra Nevada). It gets to 49 centigrades in the summer. It’s not officially considered “a desert”… but it will soon. Temperature has been going up and rain went down. Fewer plants survive each summer.
This is a pattern that you see through all the Spanish south. Desertification is a big, visible problem that should not be minimized. I recommend that you apply your own advice to yourself.
So the headline is precise and I'm wrong when I say those acequias can only provide water for small zones... and because it's a "sensitive point", nobody can disagree.
IMHO this is one of the few reasonable uses of this term (which has otherwise acquired a negative connotation). The Muslims who colonized Iberia were referred to as Moors because of their Maghreb origin (cf old Mauritania), which itself is the other, technical, use of the term.
And given that it’s the BBC I’d give them a pass for correct usage, even if it’s likely few in the audience will get it, with many instead enjoying the derogatory implication.
The Muslims who colonized Iberia were referred to as Moors because of their Maghreb origin (cf old Mauritania)...
That's not the whole truth. Invaders came from far away Arabia, but they were few. From the top of my head, a few thousands.
Roman era Hispania was said to reach a million population. Not sure if that number declined during the Goths' kingdom (that were also a minority themselves) so the Arabians had to recruit 100k warriors of Maghribi origin to help them subjugate the peninsula.
When I hear "Moorish" (I'm Spanish, not an English native speaker, so not sure how they've come with that word) I suspect they're translating "un invento del tiempo de los moros" that would be more precisely translated as "an invention from the time of muslim Spain".
If it was invented here, it was a Spanish invention, no matter what the religion or ethnic group of the author was. If it was brought from outside, it would be interesting to know if it came from Arabia or the Maghreb.
I disagree that "moro" is a bad word in Spanish. It's just descriptive of NW Africa. Those countries are Morocco and Mauritania in English and I don't see their inhabitants protesting the names.
There's a weird projection phenomenom around denomyns: some people attribute ill intentions to perfectly natural names that the addressed people find fine. In Spain, I've heard someone upset about calling "Chinese" to... Chinese people and suggested calling them "Asian" or something like that because "Chinese" is derogatory. WTF?
New Mexico, one of the beneficaries of the acqueia system, is even more of a "true" desert than Almeria, and yet it would still not be wrong to say that the system helped make life possible here. The population density just before the Spanish arrived was not high, but it was lower than it was since they bought this water management technique to the area.
Just because such a region does not have a city like Madrid or even Albuquerque does not mean that people do not live there, nor that they are not reliant to some extent on acqueias.
I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia, https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-...). All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain, they destroyed much of the Roman infrastructure in a fit of religious fanaticism so a great deal of it has been lost.
They solve different problems. And every culture usually builds over the ones before them. And the Romans were gone several hundreds of years before the Moors conquered Spain and their infrastructures were already decaying or had disappeared, no religious fanaticism there.
> I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain
I'm not sure why many think it is so fascinating the Romans built aqueducts. The Etruscans built hydraulic works as irrigation channels, drainage systems, dams, etc., while the Greeks had also built similar hydraulic structures long before Roman influence. And the Romans neither invented aqueducts nor built the first aqueducts. The first sophisticated long-distance raised conduit canal systems were constructed in the Assyrian empire in the 9th century BCE, half a millennium before the earliest Roman aqueducts.
> There were highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/ long before the Moors came along.
It is the fallacy of simple location to try to pinpoint concrete details in explicit segments of space and time. It does not matter to Leibniz where Newton discovered calculus, only whether Newton did so first by up to a decade. It would be fallacy of simple location for Leibniz to claim, "but that was at Cambridge, not Paris." The Romans can no more claim validly they were first in Spain with the aqueduct than Leibniz can claim validly he was first in Paris with the calculus.
Invading Muslim armies of that era typically left the major infrastructure and economies, and even the lower levels of political bureaucracies relatively intact. I'm interested in the claim that "when the Moors invaded Spain, they destroyed much of the Roman infrastructure in a fit of religious fanaticism so a great deal of it has been lost," do you have any sources for that?
Furthermore my understanding is they ushered in an amazing era of translation and learning where great state resources were directed to supporting linguistic, cultural and pedagogical achievement and were explicitly pluralistic in terms of state policy on the religions of their subjects. (Source: BBC video series on the Moorish period)
Compare Spain today; you can barely get around without being fed jamon. My understanding is that historically there was actually a purposeful, vindictive re-introduction of pork in to (nearly all) Spanish food to "flush out" any Muslims in hiding after the Moorish period and this culture of ham-in-everything has basically continued to the present. (Source: Traveling with a Muslim in Spain)
Wow, I'd love to read more about this if you have any sources.
I visited Spain as a vegetarian a few years ago and I found the pork thing so weird. I'd go into a random bar and ask for a beer then they'd give it to me with a plate of sausages on the side without mentioning it or asking first!
In my experience, no. This is the tapas culture typical in some areas of Spain. If they are brought to you without discussion, they are complimentary — you only pay for the drink whether you eat any or not. The only way to know if you’ll receive something typically is to ask and there is no harm or insult in specifying dietary restrictions, though they may just bring bread or olives if you’re on a strict diet. Other regions offer them for a cost and that will be clearly marked on a menu. And even in regions that do provide them gratis, there can even be nuance based on what kind of beverage is ordered.
Not. Giving a small amount of free food (called "a tapa") when you buy a drink in a bar is part of the tradition. If is served without asking for it is a free appetizer.
Some Spanish king was concerned about the accidents of drunk people while riding or traveling at chariot between villages, and required that the vine served to travelers include some food to mitigate the alcoholic effect. To obey the new law, innkeepers started to put a slice of bread over the vine jars, like a lid covering it. The Spanish word for lid is "Tapa"; so you have your drink, and "the lid". This only applies to a bar/restaurant context.
You can order one or several tapas of "X" with your drink but in that case is an extra. You'll be served a bigger amount (or a more elaborated mouthful) of the product that you asked for, and is expected that you pay for it. (Same if you order a ration or a half ration of X).
Is not obligatory to eat it. If you are a vegan or have food allergies, just explain it politely and they will remove the offending dish, and probably bring you a more appropriate replacement if they have one.
> Furthermore my understanding is they ushered in an amazing era of translation and learning where great state resources were directed to supporting linguistic, cultural and pedagogical achievement and were explicitly pluralistic in terms of state policy on the religions of their subjects. (Source: BBC video series on the Moorish period)
> Compare Spain today; you can barely get around without being fed jamon. My understanding is that historically there was actually a purposeful, vindictive re-introduction of pork in to (nearly all) Spanish food to "flush out" any Muslims in hiding after the Moorish period and this culture of ham-in-everything has basically continued to the present. (Source: Traveling with a Muslim in Spain)
Jews were also victims of such dietary inquisition (sometimes literally).
> you can barely get around without being fed jamon,
> my understanding is that this is to [...] annoy muslims.
Not. We have a culture also, and pork is a big part of the European culture since the glaciation. Culture that we share with most European and Asian people, from China to Portugal. Europeans ate pork much before Islam. Other cultures have food taboos around pork. We, don't. We toke many useful things of the Muslim culture, but keep the things that worked in European cultures also.
But nobody will force you to eat Jamon in Spain if you explain your diet restrictions in advance.
(And not all things that look like jamon are necessarily made of pork).
Much to your dismay, Arabs never destroyed things with religious fanaticism. They were mostly hands free and laid back with the fewest rules for non-ruling communities, especially in the early years of the expansion.
Instead what they did was build on top of existing stuff. The Arabs didn't invent aqua ducts. They got it from other civilizations. What Arabs did do was connect ideas from the Greeks, Romans, Indians, North Africa, and sub sahara Africa. And because they were laid back with the fewest rules, lot more innovation and mashing of ideas occurred during this period.
this was in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church which was more domineering and controlling to a fault.
Search youtube for "how Islam saved western civilization" for a rundown. The library in Spain was a collection of all the great European works until Europe awokened in the Renaissance which was built off of the works Arabs had continued.
It does seem like the perfect thing to be documented in a GIS. Presumably you could even use high resolution satellite or drone footage to automate much of the data collection. Interview the caretakers in situ recording GPS locations and times. Perfect project for colleges
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