#qanats

I am 15 meters below ground, inside one of the world’s oldest qanats – the system of underground canals Persians invented to transport water from the mountains to the desert.

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Entrance to the Pawyab at the Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

The Ghasabe (a.k.a.Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, in northeast Iran, are some of the oldest and largest qanats in the world, built between 700 BC to 500 BC by Cyrus the Great and other kings. Last year the qanats were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site called the “The Persian Qanat“.

This is one of the privileges of travelling in Iran: in a tiny dusty town, far from hustle and bustle of touristy and overcrowded Isfahan and Shiraz, I get to take my clothes off and take a dip in an ancient museum piece that elsewhere might be off-limits to even foot traffic.

Once waist deep inside the cool water, I turn on a flashlight and start walking in the channel that snakes under the desert for more than 33 km with the aid of 472 access shafts. At its beginning the channel is 300 meters under the ground! Somehow – and no one’s entirely sure how they managed this with the technology of 2,500 years ago – the shaft remains nearly level its entire length, as it transports 150 liters of water per second to this location, and from here to locations in and around Gonabad (go-NAW-bawd).

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

I walk the channel about 50 meters, sloshing over soft moss, before Saeideh gets nervous and begs me back. I turn off the flashlight. It’s pitch dark. There’s a deep hum in the background. I am reminded of the spaceship air shafts in the movie Alien (1979), where the creature hunted the captain.

A local tells us every summer Europeans visit to walk the qanat. “They seem to know more about how the qanat works than us Iranians,” he says. “Once I saw a Frenchman on TV explaining it for an entire hour.”

Later, at the Gonabad Museum of Anthropology we find out qanat-related jobs are common in this part of the country because qanats are so commonplace.

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Qanat workers depicted at the Gonabad Museum of Anthropology, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Ghasabe (Qasabeh) Qanats of Gonabad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

What we didn’t see were the much larger and taller tunnels further out, which are open to the public only on special occasions.  The photos are breathtaking. We have to come back.

Qanat Gonabad UNESCO Site, Photo by by Morteza Lal, through Wikipedia.

On the margins of the Sahara Desert, the isolated oases of the Draa River valley and Tafilalt have relied on qanat (locally khettara) water for irrigation since the late 14th century. In Marrakech and the Haouz plain, the qanats have been abandoned since the early 1970s, having dried up. In the Tafilaft area, half of the 400 khettaras are still in use. The Hassan Adahkil Dam’s impact on local water tables is said to be one of the many reasons for the loss of half of the khettara.[25]

Jorf, Morocco, near Erfoud. Underground canals. 1993. Photo by Bruno Barbey. http://www.MagnumPhotos.com

The black berbers (haratin) of the south were the hereditary class of qanat diggers in Morocco who build and repair these systems. Their work was hazardous.[8]

— Source Wikipedia

On the way to Jorf, also known as El Jorf by some mapping software, one can see kilometer after kilometer of strange mounds in the desert. I’d driven by them several times and had always wondered what they were. On one trip, my Moroccan friend, Slimane, told me they were water canals, but I was skeptical. How did canals equal mounds? Weren’t canals above ground? I was baffled.

Weeks later, while traveling with some friends via grand taxi, we convinced the driver to stop for a few minutes so we could take a look. The man attending the site explained that the mounds were created from the dirt lifted up via foot-driven pulley, then dumped to the side. Workers would dig straight down, creating a ventilation tube,

Qanat cross section

then continue the underground canal. Ventilation tubes are dug about every ten meters or so. (See the diagram to the right for a more details.) One such canal in the area, he said, extends 45 kilometers from the base of nearby mountains to the city.

The taxi driver needed to keep going, so we finished our short visit, but just a few days ago I made it back for a more detailed visit. This time, we went down into the canals (qanats) guided by another local man. The one we visited this time was about 20 kilometers, he said, but was now dry.

Below are more images of our exploration.

Lockheed, L-188 Electra & L-1049G Constellation

VH-ECA - Pacific Electra

The first of four Electra’s ordered new by Qantas, this aircraft arriving in Sydney at the end of its delivery flight, on November the 8th, 1959. In 1967 it was withdrawn form service with Qantas and put up for sale. It was listed with many people and companies in the following years, and also reconfigured into a freighter. In 1996, flying with TNT, its final operator, it suffered an explosive decompression whilst in the climb out phase over Berlin. A door and damaged area were repaired and the aircraft entered back into service for two years. At this time, she was having a major overhaul when corrosion was found in the air frame. It was deemed uneconomical to repair in 1998, and she was stripped for any re-usable parts and completely broken up in 2002. She is now a can of Coke.

VH-EAP - Southern Zephyr