Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 37

In mediaeval Egypt, there were two
words used to denote wooden water-
wheels, i.e. the sawāī (sing. sāiya ) and the
maāl (sing. maāla ). al-Nābulusī mentions
that some villages in the Fayyūm prov-
ince had sawāī to raise irrigation water.
In Bā ¡ a, for example, he states that there
were sawāī which were running day and
night. Al-Nābulusī warns the Ayyūbid
Sultan al-Malik al-āli Ayyūb of the
negligence and dishonesty of officials with
which his own long experience in the
work of offices had made him conversant.
Specifically, he reports that acacia trees,
which were a state monopoly, have been
illegally cut down to construct sawāī ,
presses and other instruments.
Al-Nuwayrī, writing in the Mamlūk
period, states that wells were dug in the
land, apparently supplied by water from
the underground bed of the Nile. At the
mouth of these wells the sawāī , made
from acacia or other trees, were installed.
Al-Nuwayrī also states that these irriga-
tion wheels were called al-maāl in Egypt,
while at Hamā in Syria they were called
al-nawāīr (sing. nāūra ). He differentiates,
as does al-ala ª andī in a later period,
between the two kinds, by stating that the
nawāīr were run by water current, while
the maāl by oxen.
The Arabic word maāl (sing. maāla )
denotes the huge pulley which is used
for raising water from wells. However,
al-Marīzī uses it to refer to the water-
wheel. When discussing the irrigation of
sugar-cane when the Nile water is low,
al-Marīzī says that each of these maāl
can raise the water to irrigate eight faddāns
of sugar-cane, providing that the water-
wheel is installed close to the Nile and
that eight excellent beasts are available to
work it. When the wells are established at
a distance from the Nile, each of the maāl
cannot irrigate more than 4 to 6 faddān s.
Al-Marīzī also refers to the ādūs , which

al-Muaddasī earlier explained as the
bucket of the water-wheel.
It is apparent that the ordinary, contem-
porary Egyptian water-wheel is more or
less the same as the mediaeval one, since
it does not differ appreciably from the
one depicted in the Description de l'Égypte,
État moderne . The flat horizontal wheel
of the sāiya is turned counter-clockwise
by a single beast or pair of oxen. The
flat wheel's rough cogs engage a verti-
cal wheel which carries a long chain of
earthen pots ( awādīs ). These clay pots are
suspended from ropes and are lowered,
mouthdownward, into the water. Follow-
ing the path of the wheel, the pots scoop
up water which they spill out into the irri-
gation channel as they arrive at the top of
the wheel on their circular journey. The
work of the peasant or his son is to goad
the beast, to watch the turning wheel, and
to avoid wasting water on the way to the
field.
As for the tābūt (water-screw), it was
apparently invented by the Greek math-
ematician and inventor Archimedes ( ca.
287-212 B.C.) while studying in Egypt.
Observing the difficulty in raising water
from the Nile, he is said to have designed
this screw to facilitate the irrigation of the
fields.
The water-screw has been continuously
in use in Egypt when the level of water
is not very low, from the times of the
Ptolemys until the present. It consists of a
wooden cylinder (about 6-9 feet in length)
hooped with iron. While the spiral pipe is
fixed between the inside wall of the tābūt
and an iron axis, its upper extremity is
bent into a crank and its lower end turns
on a stake set under the water. One or
two peasants crouch at the water's edge,
endlessly turning the crank handle. The
water rises from bend to bend in the spi-
ral pipe until it flows out at the mouth of
the canal.