Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 45

of abas, so called because it was repaired
in the afawid period, presumably by · āh
Abbās I or · āh Abbās II, and the
Kurīt dam, to the south of abas. The
latter is remarkable for its height of some
120 ft. Another dam, a large gravity dam
at Sāwa, was also built in the Īl ¶ ān
period. amd Allāh Mustawfī states that
it was constructed on the orders of · ams
al-Dīn Muammad āhib-Dīwān. It was
situated in a valley south-east of Sāwa
and east of the point where the arāčāy
(Gāvmāha) joins two streams from Sāwa
and Āwa respectively. Although the lime-
stone rock at the side of the valley was
sound (as far as is known), the base of the
dam was built on river alluvium consisting
of sands and gravel, which go down 90 ft,
before bed-rock is reached. Consequently,
as soon as the reservoir began to fill, the
pressure above the foundations drove the
water through the alluvium and the water
established a permanent outlet for itself.
The dam was abandoned, but the struc-
ture survived. It is not without interest that
a number of dams and irrigation works
were constructed about the same time in
Yünnan by Saīd A ¡ all, who apparently
became governor of Yünnan in A.D. 1274.
The dating of the gravity dams at
uhrūd and amar near Kā ª ān and
at Farīmān and urū in ‡ urāsān is
uncertain. The uhrūd dam is attributed
to · āh Abbās and the amar dam to
⁄ alāl Dīn b. Muammad ‡ w ārazm-
· āh. The Gulistān dam in ‡ urāsān
was made by the Tīmūrid Abū Saīd
Mīrzā (855-72/1452-67). The Salāmī
Dam in ‡ urāsān was constructed by
fi iyā º al-Dīn Kurt (706-25/1306-24).
These dams were still in use in the 1960s,
but most of them furnished very little
water because their reservoirs were heav-
ily silted up.
Under the afawids, there was renewed
activity in dam-building and other con-
structions for irrigation. · āh ahmāsp

(930-84/1524-76) attempted to divert
the water of the Kārūn into the Zāyanda
Rūd by a connecting tunnel through the
mountain ridge which separates them.
The work was abandoned owing, it was
said, to the foul atmosphere of the work-
ings. · āh Abbās I (996-1038/1587-
1629) revived the project, but abandoned
the idea of a tunnel in favour of an open
cutting. It is reported that at times he
employed 100,000 men on this under-
taking, but the scheme came to naught.
· āh Abbās II (1052-77/1642-67) made
another attempt, in which he was advised
by a French engineer named Genest. A
dam, 300 ft. long and about 100 ft. high
was built across the Kārūn to divert the
water of the river while the channel was
cut. Smith thinks that Genest may have
had in mind more than a mere diver-
sion of the river and that he may have
hoped to reduce the amount of excava-
tion through the mountains by raising the
level of the river. The scheme, however,
was also abandoned after 100 ft. of the
connecting channel between the two riv-
ers had been cut. The idea was revived
during the reign of Riā · āh Pahlawī.
Work was begun on the cutting of a tun-
nel connecting the two rivers. Known as
the Kūhrang tunnel, it was finished in
1953. The increase in the flow of water
in the Zāyanda Rūd which resulted has
enabled more land to be cultivated in the
districts through which the river flows.
· āh Abbās II also built, on the foun-
dations of an earlier weir, the ‡ w ā ¡ ū
Bridge over the Zāyanda Rūd in Ifahān.
It is a combination of a weir with sluice
gates and flood arches above these, with a
permanent roadway on the top.

(ii) Wells and lifting devices
A variety of lifting devices operated by
men and animals to raise water from riv-
ers, streams and wells have been widely
used in the past, especially in ‡ ūzistān,