#yakhchal

By Unknown author - Marie-Lan Nguyen, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22761889

While the refrigerator is relatively new, storing ice in warm seasons and climates has been around since at least 1780 BCE, when cuneiform records state that Zimri-Lim, the king of Mari, a city-state that was in modern-day Syria near the Euphrates, constructed an ice house 'which never before had any king built'. In China, references suggest that ice houses go back to at least 1100 BCE, with direct evidence to the 7th century BCE.

By Pastaitaken - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4944242

By 400 BCE, the Persians had developed yakhchāls, structures that used 'evaporative cooling [cooling brought about the evaporation of water], radiative cooling [the use of materials that reflect infrared radiation, allowing cooling even in direct sunlight], solar chimney [improved natural ventilation of buildings using solar energy to improve the draw of heat out of a building], and diurnal heat reservoir [a heat sink large enough to maintain a constant temperature through the day and night]'. The combination of these techniques allowed storage of ice and cold food and sometimes the freezing of ice. By directing water from a qanat, or underground aquifer into a yakhchāl, the water could freeze, or act as a heat sink since it takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water. Such inventions allowed frozen and chilled desserts like sorbets and faloodeh, which is a traditional dessert made with thin, starch noodles blended with semi-frozen sweetened rose water, all year.

By Vicenç Salvador Torres Guerola - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100184192

Think about being in the middle of a hot dry desert, it would be a blessing to be able to drink cold beverages and eat ice cream in the middle of summer to cool off, or to keep your meat, dairy, fruits and other foods fresh for longer periods of time by cooling them.

But I am hearing you asking yourselves.. ice?? how on earth would they be able to provide ice in the middle of a hot and dry desert?

The answer to that is simple yet innovative; build a Yakhchal, this is an ancient Persian invention that literally means “ice pit”. Yakh meaning Ice and chal meaning Pit.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/494027a

Cooling, or freezing, during the winter, was an ancient seasonal practice for hunter-gatherers and early sedentary farmers, as a way of storing meat and other food stuffs through the winter, when most food would be sparse. As settled agriculture spread, people began experimenting with ways to cool beverages and store food for longer during the warmer months, such as by evaporation, as the ancient Egyptians used when they placed water in shallow dishes on their roofs at night.

Source: https://19thcenturywellington.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/serendipity-and-ice-harvesting/

Harvesting ice and storing it through the warmer months required the development of insulation of various forms, though little is known of the earliest forms of these. In the Chinese collection of lyrics, the Shijing 詩經, which was collected between the 11th and 7th centuries BCE, 'describes religious ceremonies for filling and emptying ice cellars' but not the construction or purpose of the cellars, whether it was to store food or to cool drinks.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/dsonfoodstudies/posts/torino-ancient-roman-ice-box-more-like-an-ice-house-this-one-is-under-the-curren/3264407657218911/

Around the Mediterranean, the ancient Greeks and Romans dug pits that were insulated with various plant matter, such as grass, chaff, and branches. It is known from their writings that this ice was not used as food storage, but rather as cooling for drinks and possibly to create desserts. In the Tanak book of Proverbs, one verse reads 'As the cold of snow in the tie of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them who sent him', which has led historians to interpret this as meaning 'that the Jews used ice to cool beverages rather than preserve food' at the time of its writing.

By Zereshk - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Yakhchal.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=349610

Once the water was frozen, it would be cut up into blocks so that the water could be easily transported out of the yakhchal for drinking and other purposes. In addition to storing drinking water, the yakhchal was also used to keep food such as fruit, dairy products, and probably meat cool so that it would last longer.

Many Yakhchals in Iran, Afghanistan, and other parts of west and central Asia are still standing even after thousands of years. They represent the remnants of ancient Persia and are a part of the cultural heritage of Iran.