[175] The Arab conquests of the eighth century initiated a great era of agricultural revival resulting in an intensification of irrigation practice throughout the Islamic world. Technologically, the civilization of Islam was a synthesizing one. The Arabs may have invented little themselves, but they preserved, refined, developed, and intensified the technological practices of the ancient world. The spread of Greek scientific ideas to the West through the medium of the Arabic language is well known, and a parallel process can be described in the preservation and extension of ancient Iranian, Babylonian, and Nabatean agricultural techniques. ⁽¹⁾ The westward spread of irrigation technology across the Mediterranean followed a distinct pattern, one which might also serve to illustrate the diffusion of eastern concepts of water distribution and measurement.
 
 

In order to evaluate the role of the Arabs, and later the Spaniards, in the diffusion of irrigation technology, techniques must be studied individually. In the present study, the diffusion of three devices and one crop associated with irrigation are analyzed: 1) the dam as a method of raising water for diversion into irrigation canals; 2) the noria, or Persian wheel, a device for lifting water; 3) the qanat, or horizontal well, a method of concentrating groundwater and bringing it to the surface by gravity flow; and 4) the cultivation of oranges as an example of the spread of a domesticated plant that requires artificial irrigation. In each case the pattern of diffusion is the same, or strikingly [176] similar, and can be summarized in the following chronological scheme:

1) the locus of invention is the ancient Near East, particularly Persia; then
2) a stage of limited diffusion through the Mediterranean in classical times, most typically under Roman aegis; next,
3) an intensification of use and perfection of the technique by the Muslims, eighth to tenth centuries;
4) a particularly dramatic intensity of use in Al-Andalus, which in turn becomes
5) a new center of diffusion back to North Africa and, later, to the New World.

Diversion Dams. The history of the invention and early spread of diversion dams is problematical. Most probably it is a case of independent invention and homologous development in various localities. Henri Goblot nevertheless sees a certain Iranian influence in this hydraulic device, as in others, more easily traced, that date to the Achaemenian era. ⁽³⁾

The crucial distinction in the history of dams is between storage dams, a late invention, and diversion dams, which have a long history in antiquity. The azuds of eastern and southern Spain are part of this tradition, and the word (as well as the Arabic sudd, from which it is derived) has always had the connotation of diversion, never of storage. The word sudd or sadd (from sadda, to close) is most typically associated with South Arabia. ⁽⁴⁾ The most famous diversion dam in history was the Marib dam (sudd Mrib) in the Yemen. Its date of construction is not clear, although Goblot believes it could be as early as the fifth century B.C. (in which case Iranian influence in its building would be more probable than for a later date of foundation). ⁽⁵⁾ The destruction of the dam in the sixth century A.D. was immortalized in the Koran. The Marib dam was not designed for [177] storage, but purely for diverison of the water of the Wadi Dhâna into two canal distribution systems. ⁽⁶⁾ Like all diversion dams its purpose was, first, to slow down water -- a matter of importance in diversion from intermittent streams that flow with great velocity during flash floods -- and, second, to raise it to a level suitable for diversion. The technique is similar, whether used in run-off systems as in ancient South Arabia, Roman North Africa, or Umayyad Syria, or in irrigation from perennial streams as in Spain. It was a technique well known to the Arabs and particularly to the Yemenites, who settled in eastern Al-Andalus. ⁽⁷⁾

The fifteenth-century author al-Himyar (probably a native of Ceuta in spite of his South Arabian name), gives an excellent description of the raising function of diversion dams near Lorca:

Lorca is located on a river which flows eastward . . . and whose water is used for irrigation in the same way as in Egypt. This river, in the region of Lorca, has two different beds, ⁽⁸⁾ one higher than the other. When there is need to irrigate the high ground, the level of the river is raised by means of dams (bi'l-sadâd) until it reaches the higher channel. Then it can be used for irrigation. At several places on the river there are norias for the irrigation of gardens. It also feeds some important canals (jadâwal), each of which permits the irrigation of ten parasangs of land, or more. ⁽⁹⁾

Norias. The origin of the noria, a wheel fitted with buckets for lifting water, is most likely to have been in Persia, as the generic term "Persian wheel" indicates. ⁽¹¹⁾ The Persian wheel was known in the Mediterranean in late antiquity; Vitruvius (circa 30 B.C.) clearly described a current-driven noria. ⁽¹²⁾ This distribution of water-lifting devices, as well as qanats and other such hydraulic apparatus, is directly contingent upon the economic [178] return promised relative to their cost. The wheel moved by stream current was large and expensive and was confined to the zone between the twentieth and fortieth parallels. It was almost wholly associated with irrigation, the high return which irrigated crops bring in arid lands more than sufficing to offset the initial investment. ⁽¹³⁾

The wheel moved by animals or men (called sâqiya in Egypt, sâniya in North Africa, and, hence, aceña and sinia in Spain ⁽¹⁴⁾) requires gearing and therefore was probably invented later than the current wheel, which does not. Nevertheless it enjoys a much wider distribution, having diffused not only along the Mediterranean coast from Greece to Spain but also to the north of the irrigated zones (as in France) where it is applied to nonagricultural uses. ⁽¹⁵⁾ The inexpensive and simple shadûf, or balanced bucket with counterweight (Latin ciconia, as in the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville; Castilian cigueñal) has an extremely wide distribution, even in northern lands (Scandinavia, Poland, Canada) where norias are not found. ⁽¹⁶⁾

The diffusion of the noria is typically associated with the Arabs as agents of diffusion. In North Africa the noria is found in the coastal zones of Morocco and, in less dense concentration, along the northern edge of the Sahara from the Tafilalet to Tripolitania, but not farther south. ⁽¹⁷⁾ The distribution of the current wheel in the Iberian peninsula conforms to the area of stabilized Islamic settlement (below the line of the Duero and Ebro rivers; see Map 4), although in Portugal there is some diffusion north of the Duero. In Spain the large current wheels are particularly characteristic of Andalusia and Murcia; in Andalusia they were used to take water directly from large streams (the Guadalquivir and its tributaries, for example), whereas in Murcia they were generally located on large irrigation canals. The famous wheel at La Ñora, driven by the current of the Aijufia Canal, is the prime example of the Murcian style. ⁽¹⁸⁾

There are several references in the Repartimiento of Murcia to the association of wheels and irrigation canals, for example, "la açenna que tira agua de la açequia." ⁽²¹⁾ In 1271, after the council of Orihuela had sought the King's aid in regard to "the norias and the sinias which cost them much to make and keep in repair," Alfonso X of Castile agreed to cede certain dues "to all those who have their estates and who irrigate with añoras or with acenyas, or who build them from now on." ⁽²²⁾ The Repartimiento of Valencia also refers to a wheel: a grant to the Dominicans in 1239 provides for "one wheel only in that canal which goes to the mill of B. de Turol, and they might raise it so that it could draw out a good irrigation of water, by day and night, continuously and always; and [they must contribute] something to the maintenance and cleaning of the canal." ⁽²³⁾ Nevertheless, hydraulic wheels did not play much of a role in the Valencian huerta. ⁽²⁴⁾ They seem to have been employed only extraordinarily, as in the plans of the officials of the city to build a sinia to irrigate the garden of the Lonja, in 1529 (Appendix 7).

Qanats. A qanat is an underground conduit for tapping groundwater made by sinking a series of wells and connecting them underground; hence, they are sometimes called "chain-wells," Only the first well (the "Mother Well") is a true well, the rest serving as sources of air and points of entry for maintenance workers (see Figure 6). ⁽²⁷⁾ The history of the qanat closely parallels that of the noria. It was first used in western Persia, northern Mesopotamia, and eastern Turkey about twenty-five hundred years ago. ⁽²⁸⁾ The technique for its use was widely diffused under the Achaemenian and Assyrian empires, and both archeological remains and literary references -- Herodotus described them -- are abundant. Qanats had the advantage of using less slope than surface canals, of preventing loss by evaporation, and of avoiding the construction of lifting devices.

The qanat antedated the use of aqueducts and was associated with their development. The Romans put qanat technology to two uses. First, as a device for tapping groundwater and conducting it from its source they often preferred qanats to wells, which would have necessitated large and costly lifting devices; such a system was constructed near Tunis on the plain of La Soukra. Second, the subterranean parts of aqueducts were often supplied with the breathing wells characteristic of qanats. Roman aqueducts in Tunisia and Lyons (France) survive as examples. ⁽²⁹⁾

Spain served as a new nucleus of diffusion. It is probable that 'Abd Allâh ibn Yûnus al-Muhandis ("the engineer"), who executed the qanat system of Marrakesh during the reign (1107-1143) of 'Ali ibn Yûsuf ibn Tâshufin, was of Andalusí origin.⁽³⁵⁾ The Spaniards, having obtained the technique from the Arabs, were themselves authors of qanat works in the New World. The systems of Tehuacan and Parras in Mexico are almost certainly of Spanish origin. Similar works in Peru and Chile, however, appear to be pre-Columbian. It will not be possible to resolve definitively the origins of these putatively Inca systems without documental evidence, or without comparing the institutions of qanat management and water distribution with those of the Madrid and other Old-World systems. ⁽³⁶⁾

The pattern of the diffusion of qanat technology (Map 6) is paradigmatic of many irrigation techniques: a Persian core area with successive diffusions outward -- east to Central Asia, south to South Arabia, and west across the Mediterranean. The Atlantic acted as both a conduit of and a barrier to diffusion, producing a highly selective patterning in the distribution of Spanish cultural elements in the New World.

The agents of diffusion were, first, the irrigators themselves. The process of colonization in the Mediterranean world, as Fernand Braudel characterized it, meant "to plant the same trees, the same plants, to have before one's eyes the same landscapes and to place the same foods on the table . . . to live beneath the same sky and to watch the familiar succession of the seasons" as in the land of one's origin. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ The Arabs were particularly conscious of the deliberate recreation of eastern landscapes in the West. Under the rule of the displaced Syrian Umayyad dynasty, the Arabs of Valencia and Córdoba strove to duplicate the environment of Damascus and its lush, irrigated Ghûta. They did so with the same techniques and institutions as those they had perfected in the old country. The same was true of the Yemenites who settled the huertas of Alicante, Elche, and Novelda. Simple cultivators could transmit customary arrangements regarding water distribution and knowledge of the more simple hydraulic techniques. A relatively untrained man could build a simple hydraulic wheel. Sophisticated devices such as large current wheels must have been built by professionals such as Muhammad ibn al-Hajj. Qanats must not only be built by professionals (ibn Yûnus is an example), but must be carefully planned inasmuch [187] as it takes years to build one. This would indicate the need for some formal direction by an administrative or political agency.
 
 

The "hydraulic" approach to irrigation is from the top; it concentrates on the centralized administrative direction of hydraulic works. Yet, if examined from another point of view, irrigation systems in the ancient Near East and in the classical and postclassical Mediterranean worlds reveal institutional patterns of a local nature which exist wherever irrigation agriculture is practiced and which are ecologically, more than culturally, derived.

Similar arrangements dictated by the necessity for fair distribution of water and the avoidance of conflict have been elaborated in quite different cultures. Mediterranean peoples have consistently adopted certain principles reflecting the need for cooperation. These concepts are found not only in the Code of Hammurabi (Middle Assyrian Laws), but are also characteristic of the medieval Valencian system. Three such principles follow.

1) The concept of proportional distribution: the cultivator receives water in proportion to the amount of land he works.

2) The concept of the individual's responsibility to the whole community of irrigators: each irrigator has specific responsibilities for the upkeep of canals (he is usually responsible for maintaining those sections of public canals on which his property borders). The individual irrigator accepts certain responsibilities in water use, such as willingness to submit to a turn, and he is liable for damages caused to neighbors (especially those downstream) owing to his negligence or malice.

3) The idea that apportionment of water and policing of irrigation arrangements within a given system are the responsibility of the irrigators collectively. Local irrigation authorities are usually members of the community of irrigators and are rarely appointed from outside. Ordinary justice in irrigation is of a local nature, with recourse to higher organs of justice only in the case of appeal. Justice in irrigation must be local because first, owing [188] to the exigencies of cultivation it must be speedy, and second, only local men know the local custom (that is, the traditional arrangements for distribution based on the local topography and settlement pattern). Day-to-day control of irrigation matters is most typically invested in a council of local elders, irrigators themselves, with intervention by the central authority only in extraordinary circumstances. Irrigation systems, therefore, tend to be politically autonomous units which elaborate their own institutions of self-government.

Most of these elements are present in the Code of Hammurabi (even though only four terse paragraphs of it are specifically devoted to irrigation) and in some pertinent letters of the same ruler. Two provisions of the Code are devoted to the responsibilities of the irrigator for keeping his bank of the canal in repair; if he fails to do so, and a breach is opened which floods the fields of others, the delinquent must make restitution for the lost crops. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ The remaining paragraphs deal with negligence in the act of irrigating, by which water floods the fields of neighbors. These concerns are evident in medieval Valencian ordinances defining the duties of riparian cultivators (frontalers) and in prohibitions against "over-irrigating" (sorregar) the crops, fields, or roads adjoining one's own field.

In regard to local justice, Hammurabi ordered an official to investigate a matter of irrigation and to see that "the elders of the city [and] the tenants of the waterlands hold a court." ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Implicit in this order is the recognition that irrigation can be controlled only through cooperation of the irrigators according to custom as interpreted by a body of elders. Even though the Babylonian despots may at times have directed large-scale building and overhauls of canals and other hydraulic works with the use of corvée labor, ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Hammurabi himself nevertheless sought to ensure the autonomy of everyday local institutions of control.
 
 

Irrigation was widely known in classical Europe, but it was not essential to agricultural practice. "In the classical world," [189] R. J. Forbes comments, "irrigation was not a complement but rather a supplement of farming." ⁽⁴⁸⁾ In Greece ⁽⁴⁹⁾ and Italy economy was the keynote of agricultural use of water. Cross-plowing and other techniques designed to conserve water in the soil from the winter rains were generally appreciated, and most plants were watered sparingly. Exotic fruit trees were planted in places where more than average moisture accumulated, at the base of mountains, for example, and their introduction from the East did not lead -- at least, not immediately -- to any intensification of the practice of irrigation. The prime locus of irrigation in classical times was the vegetable garden. ⁽⁵⁰⁾

Classical irrigation was highly developed only where climatic conditions were severe. In the provinces of Numidia and Mauretania, which owed their well-known prosperity in Roman times to intensive irrigation, diversion dams were placed at the mouths of wadis to catch run-off and hold it for a short period so that it could be distributed through a network of branch canals. ⁽⁵¹⁾

Roman irrigation in Iberia was probably quite similar to that of the North African provinces, which Iberia generally resembled in topography and climate although it was much better endowed with perennial water sources. But irrigation on the peninsula was mentioned only infrequently by classical writers. A few scattered notes in Strabo and Pliny ⁽⁵²⁾ confirm the archeological findings that irrigation was confined largely to the coastal areas of Phoenician and Greek settlement.

The Valencian region is comparatively rich in evidence of Roman hydraulic engineering, the visible remains of which have long been noted by local scholars. Interest in their origin and use has been consistent since Antonio José Cavanilles studied the aqueduct of Chelva at the end of the eighteenth century. ⁽⁵³⁾ Studies by Francisco Jaldero, Rafael Valls David, and Domingo Fletcher Valls describe an extensive canal network irrigating the Plain of Quart between the present sites of Vilamarxant and Pedralba and then following the Turia downstream to the site of the present city of Valencia. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ The dating and function of these conduits raise questions not yet answered satisfactorily. Valls David thought the works described by Jaldero and himself [190] were pre-Roman; but once the aqueduct traces entered the urbanized area served by the modern canals, he could not distinguish the ruins from the operative canals -- which, in part at least, had been built from the remains of the older system. Nicolau Primitiu studied a section of this network within the city, in conjunction with the Roman sewage system and the canal of Rovella. The aqueduct described by Valls, he found, must have supplied water to the city in Roman times. But Rovella was found to be of definite Islamic construction, "simply because the said canal is found at a higher level than the sewers and, therefore, quite a bit higher than the Roman floor." (see Figure 7). ⁽⁵⁵⁾ Unless archeological levels are clearly delineated, it is difficult to judge the age of surviving hydraulic works. It is hard, for one thing, to tell the difference between Roman and Arab construction simply by looking at it. Many hydraulic works in North Africa thought once to be Roman remains have now been proven Islamic. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ The only sure way of proof is by chemical analysis of the mortar, and this has not yet been done in Valencia.

It would be difficult to tell by physical appearance alone whether the Quart network was used for irrigation of crops, for drainage, primarily for household uses of the owners of latifundia, or for milling. ⁽⁵⁷⁾ If irrigation was indeed the prime function, one must still ask how intensive the cultivation was and how the water was distributed. Miquel Tarradell believes that the remains of rural dwellings are too dense for a latifundia agrarian structure and that, therefore, small- and medium-sized rural property must have predominated. The network of canals was capable of sustaining a relatively numerous population, on land (the Plain of Quart) that is today practically deserted. ⁽⁵⁸⁾

The physical means of distributing water must have been similar to those described by La Blanchére in North Africa -- notably the use of masonry barrages -- adapted to stream irrigation. A recent archeological find proves a striking continuity in distribution devices from Roman times to the present: this was the discovery in 1948 of five masonry sluice gates or turn-out partitions (talladoras, tablachos) from the third or fourth centuries A.D. that closely resemble their modern counterparts. ⁽⁵⁹⁾

[192] Finally, the history of alluviation at the mouth of the Turia makes it extremely improbable that there was much intensive irrigation in Valencia before the Middle Ages. J. M. Houston points out that "the coastline has been extended seaward over two and a half miles since the first century A.D. Evidence from the fourth century A.D. shows that the coastline has advanced only half a mile since then. This demonstrates that alluviation was much more rapid when the river was unchecked by the complicated pattern of irrigation canals over the coastal plain, developed chiefly during the Moorish occupation." ⁽⁶⁰⁾ If the huerta could be excavated now and Roman vestigial canals found, the likelihood is that they would be remains of drainage, not irrigation, canals.

These problems -- economic, archeological, and geographical -- could not, even were our knowledge of them ten times more perfect, yield any information at all about the institutional mechanisms of distribution employed by the Romans. Yet we must attempt to form some opinion about what these institutions might have been: without knowledge of them we should be able to say very little indeed about the place of the Romans in the history of irrigation institutions.

The Roman Law of Water was a compilation based upon the customs of many peoples living and irrigating within the Empire. Its basic doctrine, that of "riparian right," asserted the right of a man living on the bank of a stream to divert water for his own use, so long as he did not cause damage to those living downstream from him. Many concepts of the Roman water law were in evidence in medieval Valencia, whether as a result of continuity of practice or through reintroduction during the Roman legal revival fathered by James I. Evidence concerning specific customs for water distribution can only be deduced from the general propositions of the Corpus. Nevertheless specific concepts underlying the Valencian system of turns are present in the provisions of the Digest: 1) recognition of the effects on irrigation [193] of the variability of temperature and water supply; 2) the concept of priority in usage; 3) the notion that rights must often be allotted for restricted periods only in order to achieve both equity and efficiency in the distribution of a limited supply of water.

That turns were basic to the Roman concept of water distribution is proven by references to the right to use water daily, every other day, every third day, and so forth. ⁽⁶¹⁾ The law recognized that rights could be granted to varying quantities of water expressed in specific and measurable time units, providing thereby a means for the control of limited resources. ⁽⁶²⁾ The basic principle of allocation was that each irrigator was entitled to water in proportion to the size of his holding; ⁽⁶³⁾ priority according to use, however, could take precedence over that of size. ⁽⁶⁴⁾

A few surviving literary references and inscriptions confirm that the principles of law represented actual practice. Frontinus described an orderly regimen of distribution to landowners drawing water from a brook near Rome "by turns on fixed days and in determined quantities." ⁽⁶⁵⁾ Pliny, in the Natural History, describes irrigation of crops in North Africa: "There is a city-state of Africa called Tacape, in the middle of the desert on the route to the Syrtes and Great Leptis, which has the exceptionally marvelous blessing of a well-watered soil. There is a spring that distributes water over a space of about three miles in every direction, giving a generous supply, but nevertheless it is distributed among the population only at special fixed periods of the day." ⁽⁶⁶⁾ The most perfect description extant of a Roman irrigation system is preserved in a lengthy inscription found at Lamasba, in southern Numidia (now Algeria, near Batna). ⁽⁶⁷⁾ The inscription documents in detail the distribution of water in turns among a group of fifty-two irrigating proprietors during the reign of the emperor Elagabalus (A.D. 200-222). The order of turns regulated water flowing from a spring called Claudiana and was established by a decree of the local senate and settlers ("ex decreto ordinis et colonorum"). That is to say, the irrigators themselves established the regulations by which they used the water. The water flowed [194] down from its source into a main canal, "ad matriceriganda." The parcels were arranged in rows, probably along branch canals, some of which were above and some below the level of the main canal (the water is said to flow up to some and down to others).

The description of the turn begins: "Scala I. Ex VII Kal. Octob. primo mane quo Claudiana descendit ad matriceriganda h. I.." That is, the water of the Claudiana flowed down to the main canal at sunrise, September 24. It is striking that the turn should be tied to specific dates rather than that it be variable, the cycle beginning again at whatever time everyone has had water. The significance of the September starting date -- the equinox -- is doubtless that it was a convenient date to assign as the customary beginning for the sowing of winter wheat. ⁽⁶⁸⁾ There is further significance in beginning the turn at sunrise. The Romans usually computed the day from midnight to the following midnight, but in this case the custom was altered and the day reckoned from sunrise to sunrise, a change dictated by the practice of irrigators (as those of Valencia, who irrigated from "sun to sun").

Each proprietor is then listed by name, along with his rights to a certain amount of water:
 

MATTIVS FORTIS	K CCCVIII (69)	EX. H. I.. D. VII KAL. OCTOBR IN H VS. D. EIVSDEM .P .P. S .H .IIIIS
FLAVIVS ADIVTOR VET	K CCCL	Ex. H .VS .D .VII .KAL .OCTOBR IN .H .XS .D EIVSDEM P P .S H V

The main problem of interpretation is the meaning of "K." Most probably it is a measure of land -- capite, capitationis, as a synonym of iugo, iugationis. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ This makes sense because water was granted in proportion to the amount of land to be watered, and in this inscription the ratio of K numbers to hours is constant.

Mattius Fortis had a field of 308 units, and he received water from dawn, ("ex hora prima") on September 24 ("diei VII Kal. Oct.") up to the fifth hour and a half of the same day ("in horam [195] V semis, diei eiusdem"): that is, for his share, "pro parte sua," four and one-half hours. Flavius Adiutor, the veteran, who was next in order, had 350 units. This was 42 more that Mattius Fortis' units; so he received five hours of water, from when Mattius' turn ended at the fifth hour and a half up to the tenth hour and a half. The turn continued up to the Kalends of December. During that time only four names are repeated, but probably with reference to different holdings, inasmuch as in each case the figures for the value of K differ. Each parcel apparently received only one watering during the autumn season (although, clearly, most would have received their water well after the actual sowing).

The many problems of interpretation aside, this fascinating inscription makes clear that communities of irrigators were formally constituted (Heitland refers to the "water-leet" of aqua Claudiana) and that they regulated by the imposition of a system of turns what probably was a modest supply of water in an intensively cultivated area.

Thus most of the basic elements of Valencia irrigation institutions were present in Roman law and practice. But the most significant evidence is from North Africa, and any claim concerning institutional continuity between Roman and medieval Spain would be conjecture.
 
 

In reply to an inquiry of Caliph al-Walîd, Musa ibn Nusayr, one of the conquerors of Visigothic Spain, was said to have answered: "There is not a single canal in this country." ⁽⁷¹⁾ Musa had strategic rather than economic considerations in mind, and, it is true, he did not campaign in the Valencian region. Nevertheless, this doubtlessly apocryphal anecdote serves to underscore the general impression that the Iberia which fell to the Muslim troops was not intensively irrigated. How different were the recorded impressions of the Christian conquerors centuries later who referred pointedly to the difficulty of campaigning in irrigated country!

[196] Andalusí Muslims did, however, have some appreciation of Roman hydraulic remains. In the Rawd al-mi'târ there is a passage curiously reminiscent of late medieval Christian attitudes toward the Islamic past:

A canal flows from the river of Murcia near the bridge called Kantarat Ashkbo, and it follows a conduit dug by the ancients (al-'ûwal) across the rock of the mountain, which they drilled for about a mile. This is the canal which irrigates the lands to the south of Murcia. The ancients likewise have dug another canalization across the mountain facing the preceding one, over a distance of about two miles, for the passage of water. This is the one which irrigates the lands to the north of Murcia. These two subterranean canals (jadwalain) are equipped with air wells (manâfis), which communicate with the crest of the mountain, and with sluice-gates (manâhid) cut in the direction of the river. . . . ⁽⁷²⁾

Al-Andalus, under Arab rule, experienced the full impact of the diffusion of irrigation technology from the East. But students of Islamic Spain (following Ribera's lead) have been reluctant to devote their energies to an aspect of social life almost ignored by Arabic writers. The dearth of Arabic source material has limited most writers to a repetition of the few allusions to irrigation in Al-Andalus known to all, most of which are found in the works of the famous geographers, such as Idrisi, and in poetic descriptions of the Spanish countryside. ⁽⁷⁴⁾ Medieval Arab historians all but ignored irrigation, and even the writers of agricultural treatises restricted their comments on water to generalities concerning its properties and horticultural uses. ⁽⁷⁵⁾ The kinds of documents which interest social and institutional historians -- notarial records, contracts, bills of sale, records of litigation and arbitration, which supply the details of the daily practice of [197] irrigation -- have perished almost totally. Scarcely half a dozen have been found, ⁽⁷⁶⁾ and these alone, while helpful, cannot fill such an immense void.

Taken as a whole, Arabic references to water -- scant though they are -- reinforce the image of a land where irrigation agriculture was taken for granted as part of the life of an urban society, where all cities of economic, cultural, and administrative importance were surrounded by irrigated "gardens." In the characterization of Leopoldo Torres Balbás, the cities of Al-Andalus were extroverted, opening outward to the lush gardens of flowers, trees, and vegetables which surrounded them. ⁽⁷⁷⁾

Geographers, in describing irrigated areas, were interested in the physical attributes of the system rather than institutional peculiarities. Al-'Udhrî's description of the Murcian system described above is typical:

Its land is irrigated from a river like the Nile of Egypt which flows eastward and has its origin in the spring called Mulnabasha. . . . On the river of Tudmir [the Segura] are the norias (nawa'îr) which irrigate its crops. The irrigation canal (sâqiya) extracted from it starts at Alcantarilla ⁽⁷⁸⁾ and arrives at the estates of the people of the city of Murcia at the edge of the village of Taws, which is one of the villages of Orihuela. Then the people of Orihuela begin to draw a canal from this river through its district until it comes to an end in a place called Catrál. The length of this canal. . .is twenty-eight miles. ⁽⁷⁹⁾

For want of further detail, we can only reread the elegy of Ibn al-Abbar, with its nostalgia for the verdant huerta, ⁽⁸¹⁾ or the plaintive lyric of the eleventh-century poet al-Waqâshî, who lamented the destruction of the noble and lush huerta by the ravages of war. ⁽⁸²⁾

1. In the spread of technology from the ancient Near East both eastward and westward, Islamic culture has a focal character. See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. I (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1954), pp. 220-223. In the spread of technologies westward North Africa had a particularly focal role. First, the southern coast of the Mediterranean was the route by which Islam spread from the East to Morocco and Spain in the West; second, northern Africa acted as a great storehouse of pre-Islamic agricultural techniques upon which the Muslims later drew, using them to maximum advantage (see Houston, Western Mediterranean World, p. 118).

2. For the history of the sinking bowl, a device used for measuring irrigation time, see Thomas F. Glick, "Medieval Irrigation Clocks," Technology and Culture, 10 (1969), p. 425.

3. Henri Goblot, "Dans l'ancien Iran: les techniques de l'eau et la grande histoire," Annales, 18 (1963), 514-516. Goblot, however, is more interested in the antecedents of storage dams.

4. On the sudds of South Arabia, see Adam Mez, The Renaissance of Islam (Patna, 1937), p. 451: "in S. Arabia, where the object was to collect running water for use, they had pools (masani') bordered with pebbles; but farther up the mountains (as in San'a) they had dams (sadd), with openings below; the water was distributed by means of canals. This method was such a specialty of S. Arabia that ibn Rustah finds it necessary to explain the word." Ibn Rustah's definition of sudd can be found in Les atours précieux, trans. Gaston Weit (Cairo, 1955), p. 126: "Cette digue consiste en un barrage établi au débouché des montagnes en tourant le périmétre de ces domaines, et en has duquel on a ménagé des orifices." See also al-Hamdanî, The Antiquities of South Arabia (al-Iklîl), trans. Nabih Amin Fans (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1938), pp. 67--69: "Of the dams of al-Yaman which are of ~imyarite origin." For modern diversion dams in South Arabia see Etore Rossi, "Note sull'irrigazione, l'agricoltura e le stagioni nel Yemen," Oriente moderno, 33 (1953), 349, and R. B. Serjeant, "Some Irrigation Systems in Hadramawt," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (London), 27 (1964), 54.

5. Goblot, "Techniques de l'eau," p. 515. Concerning the Marib dam see Adolf Grohmann, "Ma'rib," in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed., 4 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1913-1934), III, 286-291.

6. Richard LeBaron Bowen takes great pains to show that Marib was a purely diversionary dam which could not have been used for storage: "Irrigation in ancient Qatabn (Beihân)," in R. L. Bowen, Jr., and Frank P. Albright, Archaeological Discoveries in South Arabia (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1958), p. 72. A typical Islamic way of storing water was in cisterns, which supplied qanats, wells, or sudd-canal systems; see Marcel Solignac, "Recherches sur les installations hydrauliques de Kairouan et des steppes tunisiennes du VIIe au XIe siècle," Annales de l'Institut des Etudes Orientales (Algiers), 10 (1952), 168.

7. Solignac, "Recherches," 11 (1953), 61.

8. The two tributaries of the Guadaletin -- the Luchena and the Velez-- run parallel for about 8 km.

9. Le péninsule ibérique au moyen-áge d'après le Kitâb ar-Rawd al-mi'târ fi habar al-aktâr d'Ibn 'Abd al Munc'im al-Himyarî, ed and trans E. Lévi Provençal (Leiden, 1938), pp. 172 (Arabic), 207 (trans), hereafter cited Rawd al-mi'târ. The Hispano-Arab writer al-'Udhrî also mentions the raising function of diversion dams, Fragmentos geográfico-históricos de al-Masâlik al gamî' al-Mamâlik (Madrid, 1965), p. 2.

10. John Q Ressler, "Indian and Spanish Water-Control on New Spain's Northwest Frontier," Journal of the West, 7 (1968), 13-14; Wells A. Hutchins, "The Community Acequsa: Its Origin and Development," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 31 (1927-1928), 275; N. J. Schnitter, "A Short History of Dam Engineering," reprinted from Water Power, April 1967, p. 6.

11. B. Laufer, "The Noria or Persian Wheel," in Oriental Studies in Honour of Gursetji Erachji Pavry (London, 1933), p. 250. Laufer thought the original engineer an Iranian, "probably a Sogdian. The designation 'Persian wheel' is valid. It cannot be fortuitous that this name appears in Europe, in Bukhara, as well as in India." But Joseph Needham prefers an Indian origin, Science and Civilisation, vol, IV, pt. 2 (Cambridge, 1965), p. 861

12. Needham, Science and Civilisation, IV, pt. 2, 360, Julio Caro Baroja, "Norias, azudas, aceñas," RDTP, 10 (1954), 35-36 (citing Strabo and Pliny).

13. Caro Baroja, "Norias, azudas, aceñas," p. 554.

14. For a typology of lifting devices, see the helpful table in Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, II, 38-39. Strictly speaking, a noria is moved "by the force of the river alone." The wheel powered by animals is the sâniya, but in Spanish usage (both medieval and modern) the two are confused; in the Catalan zone sinia became a general term, referring to all hydraulic wheels used for irrigation.

15. Caro Baroja, "Sobre la historia de la noria de tiro," RDTP, 11 (1955), 53.

16. Caro Baroja, "Sobre cigüeñales y otros ingenios para elevar agua," Revista de Guimarães, 65 (1955), 162. This primitive device was doubtless known in pre-Roman Spain; see Jorge Dias and Fernando Gaihano, Aparelhos de elevar a água de rega (Porto, 1953), p 231.

17. R. Capot-Rey, Le Sahara Erançais (Paris, 1953), pp. 323--324 and map 7; G. S. Cohn, "La noria marocaine," Hespéris, 14 (1932), 23. The desert environment, lacking in wood and other materials necessary to the construction of water wheels, was an effective barrier limiting the noria to north Saharan and pre-Saharan regions.

18. Caro Baroja, "Norias, azudas, aceñas," p. 119; Leopoldo Torres Balbás, "Las norias fluviales en España," Al-Andalus, 5 (1940), 206.

19. Caro Baroja, "Noria de tiro," p. 179, some of Caro's arguments were anticipated by Bellver and Cacho (Influencia, p 53) and Jaubert de Passa (Canales de riego, chap. iii, "Norias de la alta Cataluña," I, 28-31).

20. See Dan Stanislawski, Portugal's Other Kingdom: The Algarve (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1963), pp. 59-61; Dias and Gaihano, Aparelhos, pp. 168-169. Compare map 5 (ibid., p. 168, desenho 70) with that showing the more northerly concentration of the shadûf (Portuguese picota, cegonho) in Portugal (ibid., p. 173, fig. 71).

21. Juan Torres Fontes, ed., Repartimiento de Murcia (Madrid, 1960), p. 202. Some grants cite the land as having "riego de acenia" (pp. 189, 202). Others indicate irrigation with a shadûf ("se riega de çegunnal," p. 197) and with a dâliya, a scoop balanced by the human body ("la açequia que se riega de alhataras," p 202). For definitions of these devices, see Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, II, 39.

22. Martínez Morellá, Cartas de los reyes de Castilla a Orihuela, p. 50.

23. "Repartimiento de Valencia," p 326: "Predicatores: I rotam tantum in illa cequia que vadit ad molendina 13. de Turolio et possint eam tantum elevare ita ut possint abstrahere unum bonum riguarium de aqua de die et nocte continue et semper et [. . .] aliquid in aptanda vel mudanda cequia."

24. See Casas Torres, Huerta de Valencia, pp. 95-98 and figs. 8-9; Fontavella, Huerta de Gandia, p. 92 and photo 24.

25. Georges S Cohn, "L'origine des norias de Fés," Hespéris, 16 (1933), 156-157. Concerning the great noria of Toledo see Leopoldo Torres Balbás, "La Albolafia de Córdoba y la gran noria toledana," Al-Andalus, 7 (1942), 464-465.

26. Only a few Ibero-American norias have been described, but these are found in such widely separated places as the lower part of the Sao Francisco River (Pernambuco, Brazil) and the Mexican state of Zacatecas; Caro Baroja, "Norias, azudas, aceñas," p 149 n. 295, George M. Foster, Culture and Conquest (Chicago: Quadraisgle, 1960), pp. 63-69 n. 9. There is a reconstructed noria at Mission San Antonio de Padua, Jolon, California (Ressler, "Indian and Spanish Water-Control," p. 17 n. 17)

The distribution of noria place names (La Noria, Las Norias, Noria) in Latin America makes clear the diffusion of the technique in Spanish colonial times, The U.S. Board on Geographic Names gazeteers yield 5 such names in Chile, 1 in El Salvador, 2 in the Dominican Republic, and 143 in Mexico (as compared with 16 in Spain and 8 in Portugal). Whether all these names actually correspond to noria sites is doubtful. Further study is needed and is no easy task, inasmuch as electrification has put an end to many norias (in many parts of Latin America the term has passed into local speech as a synonym of "well"). From La Noria Street in Acapulco to Norias in Kenedy County, Texas, and Noria, New Mexico, however, the place names bear witness to the device's wide diffusion in colonial Mexico, Names such as La Noria del Burro (24 02' north, 103 28' west) leave no doubt as to their origin, and Professor Angel Palerm has told me that he has observed wells in El Bajío which could only have served for norias (personal communication, Apr. 30, 1968) Humboldt and other travelers commented on their frequent use.

27. The qanat literature is extensive; for works that primarily discuss diffusion, see Paul Ward English, "Qanats in the Old World," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 112 (1968), 170-181; Goblot, "Techniques de l'eau;" J. Humlum, "Underjordiske vandingskanaler: kareze, qanat, foggara," Kulturgeografi, 90 (1965), 81-131, and an earlier version, "Karezes: su construcción, funcionamiento y extensión en el viejo mundo," 20th International Geological Congress, Mexico, 1956, Publicaciones, 4 (Mexico, 1957), pp 155-171; Carl Troll, "Qanat-Bewässerung in der alten und neuen Welt," Mitteilungen der osterreichischen geographischen Gessellschaft, 105 (1963), 314-330.

28. English, "Qanats in the Old World," p 175, Goblot, "Techniques de l'eau," p. 501; Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, 1, 154; II, 11-12.

29. Sohignac, "Recherclses," 10 (1952), 60, C. Germain de Montauzan, Les aqueducs antiques de Lyon (Paris, 1908), pp. 284-290.

30. English, "Qanats in the Old World." p. 177; Goblot, "Techniques de l'eau," p. 513; Solignac, "Travaux hydrauhiques hafsides de Tunis," Revue africaine, 79 (1936), 556, 561; Jaime Oliver Asín, Historia del nombre "Madrid" (Madrid, 1959), pp 85-86 (foggaras in Algeria), 86-89 (hattaras in the Tafilalet and in Marrakesh), 359-367 (summarizing Sohignac plus additional data on Ifni): Cohn. "La noria marocaine." pp. 37-40.

31. There were other Iberian qanat systems in the Middle Ages (see n. 33, below). Al-Himyarî mentions two subterranean canals to the north of Murcia provided with breathing wells; Rawd al-Mi'târ, p. 220. Oliver Asín (Historia del nombre "Madrid," pp. 140-141 n 2) found vague references to probable qanat systems in the valley of Sidonia (Cádiz) and in the province of Seville. For similar works in Catalonia and the Canary Islands, see Humlum, "Kareze, qanat, foggara," pp. 166-168.

32. Oliver Asín, Historia del nombre "Madrid," passim.

33. The geographer Chris Field made a survey of Spanish irrigation sites in 1968-1969. He found the Crevillente system locked up, but the guard's description was similar to that of Cavanilles (personal communication, Apr. 22, 1969). Field also found 4 other filtration systems in the vicinity of Crevillente, and others at Rodalquihar, Puerto Lumbreras, and Huercal Overa.

34. Cavanilles, Historia natural, II, 275-276. Sir Clements Markham (Report, pp. 38--43) also described the qanats of Crevillente, comparing them to those of Peru.

35. Oliver Asín, Historia del nombre "Madrid," pp. 137--140, emending Cohn, "La noria marocaine," pp. 38-39.

36. All the New World qanat sites are problematical, however. The filtration galleries of Los Angeles are of Spanish origin, but, lacking wells, are not true qanats: George B. Cressey. "Qanats, Karez, and Foggaras," Geographical Review, 48 (1958), 44. The Tehuacan qanats of Mexico are almost certainly of Spanish origin, but Humlum believes that those of Parras (Coahuila) and Pica (Chile) may be pre-Columbian (Humlum, "Kareze, qanat, foggara," pp. 108-113). Troll, who discovered the Tehuacan system in 1954, believes that the purely Spanish vocabulary describing features of the water system indicates its Old-World origins, comment on Iwao Kobori, "Human Geography of Methods of Irrigation in the Central Andes," in The Natural Environment of the Central Andes (Paris: UNESCO, 1962), p. 137.

37. The story was originated by al-Mas'd, see S. Tolkowsky, Hesperides: A History of the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits (London: J. Bale, 1938), pp. 123--124. For a Spanish echo, see Bellver and Cacho, Influencia, pp. 80-81.

38. Tolkowsky, Hesperides, p.101.

39. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. (New York: Pantheon, 1958), II, 295.

40. Quoted by Tolkowsky, Hesperides, p. 114.

41. See above, Chap. I, nn. 58-63.

42. Tolkowsky, Hesperides, pp. 260-263.

43. "Only two percent of [today's] Spanish crop are Valencias, and perhaps only half of that comes from the groves of Valencia itself." Blood oranges and navels have now replaced the original Valencia in its native land; John McPhee, Oranges (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967), p.13.

44. El Mediterraneo y el mundo mediterraneo, I, 216.

45. C.H.W. Johns, The Oldest Code of Laws in the World (Edinburgh, 1903), p. 14. See also G. R, Driver and John C. Miles, The Babylonian Laws, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952-1955), I, 151 n. 3.

46. Driver and Miles, Laws, I, 152. Wittfogel (Oriental Despotism, pp. 268-269) treats such gatherings of elders as a civil jury, dealing with legal matters of a local nature, operating under the king's control. But insofar as implementing local irrigation procedures is concerned, the king's control would have been very indirect and indeed inconsequential regarding development of local institutions and customs of distribution and regulation.

47. The Babylonian corvée had some singularly undespotic elements: for example, 2 wage scales for canal excavation, one for the easier work near the surface and another for the harder labor of removing earth from deeper levels, O. Neugebauer and A. Sachs, Mathematical Cuneiform Texts (New Haven, 1945), p. 88.

48. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, II, 43.

49. In Greece the practice of irrigation never attained universality, although drainage waters were commonly diverted into channels and made available for cultivation and small-scale techniques were widely appreciated, as Homer's description of a peasant clearing his ditch of obstructions and watering his orchard attests (Iliad 31.257-262). A. Jardé contrasts the necessity for cooperation that irrigation imposes upon the members of a society with the spirit of independence and self-sufficiency that characterized the ancient Greeks; The Formation of the Greek People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), p. 42.

50. Ellen Churchill Semple, The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (New York: Henry Holt, 1931), pp. 434-436. Forbes (Studies in Ancient Technology, I, 162), in stressing the hygienic public and household uses of water in the classical world and, similarly, the dominance of dry-farming methods, may under-rate the role of irrigation.

51. On Roman irrigation in North Africa see Jean Baradez, Fossatum africae (Paris. 1949): J. Despois, "Development of Land Use in Northern Africa," in L. Dudley Stamp, ed., A History of Land Use in Arid Regions (Paris: UNESCO, 1961), pp. 222-224; Semple, Geography of the Mediterranean, pp. 456-457; and M.-R. de la Blanchère, "L'aménagement de l'eau et l'installation rurale dans l'Afrique ancienne," Nouvelles archives des missions scientifiques, 7 (1897), 1-109. La Blanchère believed that North Africa retained more traces of Roman irrigation than any other place in the Empire. The best summary of classical irrigation practices is his article "Fossa," in Charles Daremberg and Edmund Saghio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, 5 vols (Paris, 1877--1919), II, pt. 2, 1321-1333.

52. See Semple, Geography of the Mediterranean, pp. 463-464; Adolf Schulten, Geografia y etnografia antiguas de la peninsula ibérica, vol. II (Madrid, 1963), pp 118-120

53. Cavanilles, Historia natural, II, 8 1--83 (chap. xc) and author's drawing opp. p. 82.

54. Francisco de Paula Jaldero, Monografía y planos de los antiquísimos canales existentes en el término de Ribarroja que vienen de Villamarchante y se pierden en Manises (Valencia, 1853), and Domingo Fletcher Valls, "Acueductos romanos en término de Ribarroja del Turia (Valencia)," in Notas sobre la antigüedad . . . pp. 93-102.

55. Nicolau Primitiu, "D'arqueohogía," ACCV, 4 (1931), 156.

56. Sohignac, "Recherches," 10 (1952), 133, and 11 (1953), 134 See 10 (1952), 145, on the different placement of archstones in Roman and Islamic aqueducts.

57. In discussing the ends for which Romans built canals in Gaul, Etienne Carpentier asserts that such canals were usually the work of one man and usually for milling rather than community irrigation (Réglements et tribunaux des eaux, pp. 7, 11, 14).

58. Tarradell, in Història del País Valencià, I (Barcelona, 1965), pp. 147-156. These pages on irrigation are an excellent commentary, bringing to bear a deep knowledge of Roman civilization upon a largely undocumentable problem. I disagree only with the statement that a collective complex of canals is more proper to the Roman mentality than to the Arab. Given the tribal structure of Arab society, I should think the opposite would more nearly be true.

59. José Llorca.Rodriguez, "Romanidad de los riegos de la huerta valenciana," in Notas sobre la antigüedad ... pp 105-114; NB photos pp. 107-108.

60. Houston, "Urban geography of Valencia," p. 21.

61. Digest 43.20 1.22, "cottidie, alternis diebus . . . quinto die,"

62. See also Digest 8.6.7, 43.20.5, and 43.20.5.1 (whereby 2 parties conveying water in the same channel separately at certain hours "certis horis separatim" agreed to swap hours).

63. Digest 8.3.17.

64. Diocletian and Maximian ordered, in January 294, that "it is not acreage, but the use to which water is put, that measures the right to water" (Corpus 3.34 12). Water for household consumption has first priority, followed by use for livestock and vegetable gardens, then field crops, and finally industrial uses; Eugene F. Ware, Roman Water Law (St. Paul, Minn., 1905), p. 94n.

65. "Ea namque est quam omnes uillae tractus eius per uicem in dies modulosque certos dispendatum accipiunt," Frontinus, De aquis urbis Romae, I, 9, in Clemens Herschel, The Two Books on the Water Supply of the City of Rome of Sextus Julius Frontinus (Boston, 1899), pp. 12-13. The water rights were attached to the land, for Cicero wrote: "In my Tusculum villa I must pay a tax for the Crabran water, because I received my estate subject to this liability," De lege agraria, 3.2, Herschel, p. 168.

66. Emphasis mine. Historia naturalis, 18.188: "felix super omne miraculum riguo . . . sed certis horarum spatiis dispendatur inter incolas"; trans H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), V, 307.

67. Corpus inscriptionum latinarum (C.I.L.), VIII, doc. 18587; also Hermann Dessau, Inscriptiones latinae selectae, doc. 5793. For comments on this inscription see Semple, Geography of the Mediterranean, p. 457, and W. E. Heitland, Agricola: A Study of Agriculture and Rustic Life in the Greco-Roman World from the Point of View of Labour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), p.293.

68. For the fall equinox as the traditional time of sowing see Columella, De re rustica, 11.8.2. The equinox also divided the periods of summer water (aqua aestiva) and daily water (aqua cottidiana), Digest 43.20.1.32.

69. Dessau reads 408. but this is not in accordance with the number of hours stated.

70. C.I.L., VIII, 1781.

71. Voyage en Espagne d'un Ambassacleur Marocain(1690--91) trans. H. Sauvaire (Paris, 1884), p. 9.

72. Rawd al-mi'târ, p. 220. Medieval Muslims also thought that the agricultral development of Orihuela was a Roman legacy, E. Lévi-Provenal and E. García Gómez, Una crónica anónima de 'Abd al- Rahman III al-Nâsir, (Madrid-Granada: CSIC, 1950), Arabic p. 53, trans. 121-122.

73. The tradition of a Roman past -- curiously enough -- is as current among present-day Muslim irrigators as the Islamic past is among Spanish irrigators. Whenever one asks a resident of the Ghta of Damascus about the origin of some hydraulic work attribution is to the Romans (Tresse, "L'Irrigation," p. 472). One of the canals crossing the plain of Enfida (Algeria) was still in the last century called by the natives Saguiat-er-Roumi (i e., sâqiyat al-rûmî, irrigation canal of the Romans, or Christians; La Blanchère, "Fossa," p. 1326 n. 9).

74. See summaries based on this material by E. Lévi-Provençal, L'Espagne musulmane au Xéme siécle (Paris, 1932), pp. 166--167; Manuel Sanchis Guarner, in Història del país valencia, 1, 340-45; S. M. Imamuddin, Some Aspects of the Socioeconomic and Cultural History of Muslim Spain, 717- 1492 A.D. (Leiden, 1965), pp. 74-79, and esp Leopoldo Torres Balbás, "Los contornos de las ciudades hispanomusulmanas," Al-Andalus, 15 (1950), 437-486.

75. For example, Ibn Bassl, Libro de agricultura (Kitâb al-filâha), ed. J.M. Millás Vallicrosa (Tetuan, 1955), chap. i.

76. The most interesting surviving document is ARV, Procesos de Madrid, Letra S, no. 429, a legal instrument recording the settling of a dispute over division of water between Torres Torres and the lost village of Carcer, dating from the decade before the Reconquest (1223); the document is described by J M. Cueco Adrian in "Un documento árabe inédito," Levante (Valencia), Aug. 1, 1965. This is the only known surviving Arabic irrigation document from the Valencian area All the other Arabic material has been published by Angel González Palencia: these documents are 1) a record of a sale of water (in "eighths") from the region of Zaragoza, A.D. 1245 ("Notas sobre el régimen de riegos en la région de Veruela en los siglos XII y XIII," Al-Andalus, 10 [1945], 79-80); 2) an agreement between 2 villages near Guadix concerning division of irrigation water between them, A.D. 1187 ("Documentos árabes del Cenete," Al-Andalus, 5 [1940], 321-323), 3) rental of water belonging to Jerez by the residents of a neighboring village for 35 years, A.D 1479 (ibid, pp. 375-376); and 4) various notarial records from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII -- see summary of water material in the Volumen preliminar [Madrid, 1930], pp 289-290). Sarthou Carreres (Provincia de Castellón, p. 165) states that a grant of the next to last Muslim king of Valencia, Sîd Abû Sa'îd, concerning the waters of the Mijares, was recorded on an Arabic parchment that "perhaps is still preserved in the Archives of Villahermosa."

77. "Contornos de las ciudades hispanomusulmanas," p. 438.

78. "The bridge of Ashkbo," which Lévi-Provençal identified as Alcanrarilla (Rawd al-mi'tr, p 220 n.3).

79. Al-'Udhrî, Fragmentos geográfico-históricos, p. 1.

80. Ibni Khâqân, Qala'id al-'Iqyan (Marseilles-Paris, 1860), p. 72 "wa-fî sâqiya al-kubra dawlâb."

81. Rawd al-mi'târ, pp. 66-68.

82. Torres Balbás, "Contornos de la ciudades hispanomusulmanas," p. 464; see also Elías Terés, "Textos poéticos árabes sobre Valencia," Al-Andalus, 30 (1965), 291-307.