Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 32

lined. The owner of the well has a duty to
give water to anyone suffering from thirst.
This is illustrated by a tradition which
records that Umar made some owners of
water pay the diya for a man who died
of thirst after they had refused his request
for water.

described by Vitruvius, without any claim
to originality. Vertical mill-wheels were
sometimes mounted on boats moored to
the banks of rivers. The origins of the hor-
izontal, vaned mill-wheel are still obscure:
it may have been referred to by a Greek
writer of the 1st century B.C., and it was
in use in Ireland in the 7th century A.D.
It is described in a Byzantine treatise,
probably of the 7th century A.D., extant
only in Arabic versions. Hand-operated
force pumps were used by the Greeks and
Romans; these had single vertical cylin-
ders that were placed directly in the water
without suction pipes. The problem of the
origins and diffusion of these machines is
largely unresolved, but our chief concern
here is that they were all in existence in
the 1st/7th century.
The ª ādūf is a simple machine con-
sisting of a wooden beam pivoted on a
raised fulcrum. At one end of the beam
is a bucket, at the other end a counter-
weight. The bucket is dipped into the
water, then the beam is rotated by means
of the counterweight and the contents of
the bucket are emptied into a cistern or
supply channel. The flume-beam swape
is a development of the ª ādūf . Instead of
a solid beam, a channel is connected rig-
idly to the bucket; when this is raised the
water runs through it into the outlet.
The sāiya is more complex, and indeed
has over two hundred components parts.
It consists essentially of a large vertical
wheel erected over the water supply on
a horizontal axle. This wheel carries a
chain-of-pots or a bucket chain. On the
other end of its axle is a gear-wheel that
engages a horizontal gear-wheel to which
the driving bar is attached. The animal is
harnessed to the free end of this bar, and
as it walks in a circular path, the gears
and the wheel carrying the chain-of-pots
rotate. The pots dip in succession into
the water and when they reach the top

3. Springs
(a) Natural springs: these are treated
as analogous to permanently flowing riv-
ers. If the water supply is limited, the first
person to undertake irrigation in the area
has priority; otherwise the water has to be
shared equally. (b) Springs opened up by
digging: the person who does this becomes
the owner, together with the surrounding
arīm. (c) Springs opened up by persons
on their own property. In such cases, the
only claim against the owner is that of
persons suffering from thirst. If the owner
has a surplus of water, he may be obliged
to give it gratis to other men's cattle, but
not for irrigating crops.
A person who possesses water in a ves-
sel is its sole owner, and he is not obliged
to give it to others gratis; he is, however,
obliged to relieve someone suffering from
thirst in return for a recompense.

(M.J.L. Young)

3. Hydraulic Machines
There is ample evidence from writ-
ten and archaeological sources for the
widespread use in pre-Islamic times of all
the main hydraulic machines, described
below, in all the areas that were to form
part of the Muslim world. The ª ādūf
was known in ancient times. The sāiya ,
although it did not become fully effective
before the introduction of the pawl in
the 4th or 5th century A.D., was known
in Roman times. Both machines are still
in use today. The noria ( nāūra ) and the
vertical undershot mill-wheel are both