Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 53

the river and the regulation of the water
supply. He had 10,000 workmen and horse
guards under him. Al-Ia ¶ rī states that
he enjoyed greater respect than the wālī .
Under Yaūb b. Lay º in Sīstān, there
appears to have been a mīrāb , who was a
government official. Cases against him, in
the event of his abusing his power, were
heard in the dīwān-i maālim . Under later
dynasties, such as the Sal ¡ ūs, ‡ w ārazm-
· āhs, Īl ¶ āns and Tīmūrids, control was,
no doubt, exercised over the great rivers
by the government, though the sources
contain very little information on this sub-
ject. So far, however, as agriculture was
fostered by individual rulers, this implied
some degree of water control.
Information on the division of the
Harī Rūd in the 10th/16th century is
contained in an essay written by āsim
b. Yūsuf al-Harawī, who wrote the Ir ª ād
al-zirāa in 921/1515-16. He mentions
in this essay an earlier division of part of
the river made by the · ay ¶ al-Islām
Niām Dīn Abd al-Raīm ‡ w āfī, who
had been entrusted with this matter after
complaints of alleged inequalities and
illicit diversions of the water were made to
Muizz al-Dīn usayn b. fi iyāth al-Dīn
Muammad Kart (d. 771/1369), the local
ruler of Harāt. This division was appar-
ently revised about one hundred years
later in the reign of the Tīmūrid Abū
Saīd Mīrzā, and it seems that it is this
revision which was followed by the mīrābs
when āsim b. Yūsuf was writing and
which he describes in his essay. He gives
the regulation of the water in each bulūk
or district, and the water rights of the vil-
lages and gardens watered by the canals
of the bulūk and the dues of the mīrāb. He
also records the number of men ( nafar ) to
be provided by each bulūk , presumably for
work on the upkeep of the canals.
Thanks to two late afawid admin-
istrative handbooks and a tūmār on the

regulation of the water of the Zāyanda
Rūd, attributed to · ay ¶ Bahāī (Bahā
al-Dīn Muammad al-Āmilī), who died
in 1031/1622, we know something of
the irrigation system of the Zāyanda Rūd
and the work of the mīrāb in afawid
and post-afawid times. As in the case
of other rivers, the division is based on
ancient custom. Traditionally, the water
of the Zāyanda Rūd is supposed to have
been regulated by Arda ª īr b. Bābak and
there were also, no doubt, various later
divisions. · ay ¶ Bahāī's tūmār mentions
an earlier allocation of the water. The
tūmār was in force until 1936, though it is
doubtful whether it was in uninterrupted
operation from afawid times onwards.
Under the tūmār , the water was allocated
to the bulūk s or districts watered by the
river according to a fixed rotation, which
varied at different periods of the year, hav-
ing regard to the cropping needs of each
bulūk . Within the bulūk s, the water was
led off in canals to the villages and lands
in the bulūk , each portion of the village
lands having the right to the water for a
fixed period of time within the rotation
period. The mīrāb in charge of the water
was an important official, ranking among
the higher officials of the bureaucracy
and the court. That he enjoyed such pre-
eminence was due in part to the fact that
Ifahān was the capital of the empire and
the land watered by the Zāyanda Rūd, or
most of it, came under the ¶ āa adminis-
tration, which was in charge of the maāll ,
those districts round Ifahān which were
directly administered by the central gov-
ernment and in which were to be found
also land and water resources which had
been constituted into awāf or which were
the private property ( ¶ ālia ) of the shah.
The duty of this mīrāb was to order the
peasants, on the eve of the Naw Rūz, to
clean the mādī s (as the major canals in
Ifahān were called), lesser canals ( anhār )