Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 52

Maūm Beg, the mutawallī , had been
called in to regulate their shares, and
if they were afawid awāf , this would
explain why a royal farmān was issued to
decide a dispute between two small and
unimportant villages. In the case of the
great rivers, the decision of water disputes
was in the hands of mīrāb , who was an offi-
cial of the state and those of the ummāl-i
urf (see below).

plans to restore prosperity in Harāt in
653/1237-8 after the depredations of the
Mongols, he held a meeting in the Friday
mosque and assembled the men of Harāt
to work in corvées ( a ª ar ) on the irriga-
tion channels which had silted up. Some
centuries later, Fal Allāh b. Rūzbihān
‡ un ¡ ī (d. 927/1521), while still taking
the view that expenditure on irrigation
works came under the heading of maāli
al-muslimīn and was therefore a legitimate
charge on ¶ arā ¡ revenue, nevertheless
sought to legitimise the raising of spe-
cial taxes ( nawāib ) for such expenditure.
He writes, “What is taken in ‡ w ārazm
from the generality of men for the repair
of dams on the Oxus or for the building
of walls round the kingdom or other such
matters of public interest is a debt which
must be paid and a claim which is rightly
due, and refusal to pay is not permissible;
such taxes are not unjust”.
There are from time to time references
to special departments in charge of irriga-
tion, but, on the whole, it would seem that
their existence was the exception rather
than the rule. In western Persia, there
appears to have been a dīwān-i āb in the
4th/10th century at the time of the rise
of the Būyids. The Tārī ¶ -i umm states
that when the Gīlānīs and Daylamīs con-
quered umm they abolished the diwān-i
āb . The only Būyid who appears to have
been concerned to foster agricultural pros-
perity and hence to have paid attention to
the upkeep of irrigation works was Aud
al-Dawla (d. 372/982), the builder of the
Band-i Amīr. Ibn Miskawayh states that he
cleaned canals which were silted up, built
mills on them, and mended dams. About
the same time, there was in the eastern
provinces an extensive water administra-
tion for the Mur ∞ āb River, which was
under the jurisdiction of the rulers of
fi ar ¡ istān. A specially appointed amīr
was in charge of the upkeep of dykes on

The upkeep of rivers
The mīrāb. The responsibility for the
upkeep of the great rivers was vested in
the imām. Cleaning or dredging and repair
of their banks was carried out by the
imām and paid for by the public treasury.
If there were no funds available for such
work, he could compel the Muslims to give
their services for the purpose. The clean-
ing and repair of canals from the great
rivers leading water to individual villages
was the responsibility of the owners of the
canals. If they refused to carry out the
necessary work, they could be compelled
to undertake it, since neglect of their duty
might result in injury to the community
and might diminish the supply of water to
those who had a right to it. In the prov-
inces, responsibility for the control of the
waters of the great rivers was in practice
delegated to the provincial governor. With
the fragmentation of the caliphate and the
rise of local dynasties, this responsibility
passed to those who held power locally.
There was, therefore, no uniformity of
system and information concerning water
control and irrigation is patchy. It was
presumably the theory that the imām had
the right to compel the Muslims to give
their services for the repair and cleaning
of the great rivers which gave sanction to
the practice of levying corvées for irriga-
tion works, either of a seasonal nature,
as in Sīstān, or of an occasional nature.
Thus when Izz al-Dīn Muaddam made