[HN Gopher] The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains
___________________________________________________________________
The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains
Author : mjul
Score : 121 points
Date : 2022-10-16 06:53 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| bell-cot wrote:
| The article is about some low-tech but historically effective
| water-management techniques, brought to Spain by the Muslim
| conquest (711-721). It walks back very quickly on the headline's
| claim of "invention". And mentions that similar techniques were
| independently invented in other parts of the world.
|
| Note: "Moor" is both a wretchedly vague exonym, and often a mild
| ethnic slur.
| usrusr wrote:
| I only know the region as a repeat tourist (just came back from
| my second visit this year), but my impression from this is that
| locals are quite proud of their cosmopolitan past and "moro" is
| the simply term they use for their melting pot ancestors of
| that era. Nothing negative about it at all.
| justnah wrote:
| >but my impression from this is that locals are quite proud
| of their cosmopolitan past and "moro"
|
| Literally no one is.
|
| There is a vast difference between giving credit for a given
| concept/tool/technique because it's useful, and thinking the
| locals have sort of ancestral connection with a foreign
| invader.
| jvican wrote:
| Don't speak for a whole country. There are people that are
| proud of this heritage, like me, and many more, especially
| in the places where Moorish culture had a stronghold (e.g.
| Andalusia, C. Valenciana, Murcia, etc.)
| elnatro wrote:
| There is only Muslim/Moor heritage in Architecture and
| language.
|
| There is no "heritage" in customs ir culture.
| asabil wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that there would be no cultural
| heritage after ~700 years.
|
| What I think you want to say is that the "identity" of
| modern Spain and Portugal has been shaped and defined by
| its opposition to the moor/muslim/north-african identity.
| spookie wrote:
| I do disagree with your last sentence, a lot of
| Portuguese are proud of their north-african connections.
| Most families come from "newly-christians" after all (and
| you gotta blame Spain's Phillips for that one).
| asabil wrote:
| I have to admit that I included Portugal without giving
| it much thought.
|
| I was honestly mostly thinking about Spain and added
| Portugal assuming they would be the same from the
| perspective of identity. I stand corrected.
| elnatro wrote:
| Granada was dominated by the Moors for 700 years. The
| rest of the Spain (and Portugal) wasn't.
|
| Later Medieval-era Spanish identity was anti-Moor but not
| always was the case. Keep in mind that the country of
| Spain did not exit until the 1500s.
| throwawaybutwhy wrote:
| Last name of Matamoros (kills moors) is a thing, and the
| banner of Santiago defined the nation for centuries.
| [deleted]
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| The Native Americans in Arizona had developed something similar,
| long before Europeans showed up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_bajada_canals
| drooopy wrote:
| *Moopish invention
| yucky wrote:
| ^Came here for this, so thank you ;)
|
| For anybody that wants to go down a very interesting rabbit
| hole start here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorish_Science_Temple_of_Amer...
| and wander as needed. Would also recommend the related mystery
| of this man:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Fard_Muhammad.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Is this more similar to the spring-flow tunnel, or the Persian
| qanat?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat#Qanat_vs._spring-flow_tu...
| noduerme wrote:
| These are cool. One of these gravity-driven miniature aqueducts
| still flows from the Sierra Nevada directly between Plaza Larga
| and las Pesas at one of the highest points in the Albaycin in
| Granada, and (I've heard) is accessible through the basements of
| the buildings there. It's extremely impressive that someone
| engineered running water to a hill that high from an even higher
| source miles away across deep ravines, and that it still flows.
| [deleted]
| zeristor wrote:
| I don't know why I find water harvesting so fascinating, nifty
| use of aquifers.
|
| There was a civilisation in the Sahara that had tunnels in the
| mountain that provided water, I imagine they ran dry.
|
| Persia had (has?) underground tunnels that convey water to
| farmland.
|
| With the increasing amount of heavy rain fall I'm not sure how
| much of that can be caught and sequestered.
|
| This was made all the more apparent when there was a sudden
| downpour in London some years back and the river Fleet, sewer as
| it is now backed up into the office's canteen.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It wasn't in the Sahara, but the civilization at Petra (in what
| is now SW Jordan) was built around sophisticated hydraulic
| engineering.
|
| It eventually collapsed when earthquakes damaged the system
| beyond their capacity to repair. Being subjugated by Rome
| didn't help.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSfFq02pK4s
| User23 wrote:
| > There was a civilisation in the Sahara that had tunnels in
| the mountain that provided water, I imagine they ran dry.
|
| Was that the Garamantes?[1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garamantes
| zeristor wrote:
| There must be hundreds of places around the world who could make
| use of this.
|
| How many other ones in Spain have been abandoned?
|
| If this was established by the Moors then I would guess other ex-
| Moor states would have a similar setup.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The same system exists across parts of the north American
| southwest colonized/taken over by the Spanish. New Mexico still
| has many acqueias, though like Span, less and less each year as
| the skills and desire to manage them, uhm, dries up.
| asabil wrote:
| Yes, throughout Morocco's south east you will find what's
| called khettaras (khTr@). They are underground irrigation
| network that was used to transport water from the Atlas
| Mountains to regions about 300km away.They were in used until
| the late 80s as far as I know.
| tough wrote:
| Wow fascinating, do you have any idea why they stopped being
| used? Cynical me says to earn some kickback money for
| building new industrial pipes..
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| You mean like this?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River
| zeristor wrote:
| No like this, Qanat:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I answered to the "cynincal me" part of tough
| (industrial, kickback, etc) ;-)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| It seems to me that the acequia are an _open and
| distributed_ technology, so even when the central authority
| collapsed, each individual community was able to keep the
| services running based on that technology, for over a
| thousand years.
|
| Modern irrigation is incredible, modern cities are amazing,
| modern software connects most humans on the planet. But ...
| we can learn.
| asabil wrote:
| That was the exact same with the khettaras, they were
| built and Maintained by the communities.
|
| Talking about notion of a central authority that provides
| governance is an anachronism in the context of North
| Africa. But that's a separate discussion.
| asabil wrote:
| Droughts, there is simply not as much water as there used
| to be :(
| krisoft wrote:
| > If this was established by the Moors then I would guess other
| ex-Moor states would have a similar setup.
|
| Sure thing! In Madeira they have many ancient aquaducts
| originally estabilished by the Moors:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levada
|
| Ancient water management is a fascinating topic.
|
| The qanats in the middle-east, and north africa are
| particularly interesting. They are underground water conduits
| and sources dug by human muscles alone.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
| jdasdf wrote:
| The moors were never in madeira.
|
| The island chain was empty by the time the portuguese
| arrived.
| spookie wrote:
| I really need to comment, even if others said the same thing.
|
| There were no moors in Madeira.
| rodelrod wrote:
| Madeira was initially settled by the Portuguese in the 15th
| century, 200 years after the end of the Portuguese
| Reconquista, so it's quite a stretch to claim that the
| "levadas" were "established by the Moors", even if they
| initially brought the technology to Iberia.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were
| able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years
| after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia,
| https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-...).
| All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than
| others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain, they destroyed much
| of the Roman infrastructure in a fit of religious fanaticism so a
| great deal of it has been lost.
| zymhan wrote:
| This is specifically about channeling and storing water _in_
| the ground, not piping it above the ground.
|
| This also requires far less resources than building an
| aqueduct.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Much to your dismay, Arabs never destroyed things with
| religious fanaticism. They were mostly hands free and laid back
| with the fewest rules for non-ruling communities, especially in
| the early years of the expansion.
|
| Instead what they did was build on top of existing stuff. The
| Arabs didn't invent aqua ducts. They got it from other
| civilizations. What Arabs did do was connect ideas from the
| Greeks, Romans, Indians, North Africa, and sub sahara Africa.
| And because they were laid back with the fewest rules, lot more
| innovation and mashing of ideas occurred during this period.
|
| this was in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church which was
| more domineering and controlling to a fault.
|
| Search youtube for "how Islam saved western civilization" for a
| rundown. The library in Spain was a collection of all the great
| European works until Europe awokened in the Renaissance which
| was built off of the works Arabs had continued.
| Daishiman wrote:
| I'm not sure why you doing a whatabout to the Romans
| contributes to the conversation.
| dsmnd wrote:
| are theses acequias roman in origin as well?
| https://www.uv.es/cuadernosgeo/CG15_001_024.pdf
| ghostDancer wrote:
| They solve different problems. And every culture usually builds
| over the ones before them. And the Romans were gone several
| hundreds of years before the Moors conquered Spain and their
| infrastructures were already decaying or had disappeared, no
| religious fanaticism there.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _in a fit of religious fanaticism_
|
| Umayyids (the "Syrians" who conquered Spain) and _religious
| fanaticism_ don 't go hand in hand: Most Umayyid rulers were
| political nihilists at best.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate#Legacy
| contingencies wrote:
| Furthermore my understanding is they ushered in an amazing
| era of translation and learning where great state resources
| were directed to supporting linguistic, cultural and
| pedagogical achievement and were explicitly pluralistic in
| terms of state policy on the religions of their subjects.
| (Source: BBC video series on the Moorish period)
|
| Compare Spain today; you can barely get around without being
| fed _jamon_. My understanding is that historically there was
| actually a purposeful, vindictive re-introduction of pork in
| to (nearly all) Spanish food to "flush out" any Muslims in
| hiding after the Moorish period and this culture of ham-in-
| everything has basically continued to the present. (Source:
| Traveling with a Muslim in Spain)
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Wow, I'd love to read more about this if you have any
| sources.
|
| I visited Spain as a vegetarian a few years ago and I found
| the pork thing so weird. I'd go into a random bar and ask
| for a beer then they'd give it to me with a plate of
| sausages on the side without mentioning it or asking first!
| sobkas wrote:
| > Furthermore my understanding is they ushered in an
| amazing era of translation and learning where great state
| resources were directed to supporting linguistic, cultural
| and pedagogical achievement and were explicitly pluralistic
| in terms of state policy on the religions of their
| subjects. (Source: BBC video series on the Moorish period)
|
| > Compare Spain today; you can barely get around without
| being fed jamon. My understanding is that historically
| there was actually a purposeful, vindictive re-introduction
| of pork in to (nearly all) Spanish food to "flush out" any
| Muslims in hiding after the Moorish period and this culture
| of ham-in-everything has basically continued to the
| present. (Source: Traveling with a Muslim in Spain)
|
| Jews were also victims of such dietary inquisition
| (sometimes literally).
| Maursault wrote:
| > I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors
| were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500
| years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in
| Spain
|
| I'm not sure why many think it is so fascinating the Romans
| built aqueducts. The Etruscans built hydraulic works as
| irrigation channels, drainage systems, dams, etc., while the
| Greeks had also built similar hydraulic structures long before
| Roman influence. And the Romans neither invented aqueducts nor
| built the first aqueducts. The first sophisticated long-
| distance raised conduit canal systems were constructed in the
| Assyrian empire in the 9th century BCE, half a millennium
| before the earliest Roman aqueducts.
| fatherzine wrote:
| > Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/
|
| There were highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/ long before
| the Moors came along.
| Maursault wrote:
| > There were highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/ long
| before the Moors came along.
|
| It is the _fallacy of simple location_ to try to pinpoint
| concrete details in explicit segments of space and time. It
| does not matter to Leibniz _where_ Newton discovered
| calculus, only whether Newton did so _first_ by up to a
| decade. It would be fallacy of simple location for Leibniz
| to claim, "but that was at Cambridge, not Paris." The
| Romans can no more claim validly they were first in Spain
| with the aqueduct than Leibniz can claim validly he was
| first in Paris with the calculus.
| throwawaygal7 wrote:
| The romans used these systems extensively as well...
| oa335 wrote:
| Invading Muslim armies of that era typically left the major
| infrastructure and economies, and even the lower levels of
| political bureaucracies relatively intact. I'm interested in
| the claim that "when the Moors invaded Spain, they destroyed
| much of the Roman infrastructure in a fit of religious
| fanaticism so a great deal of it has been lost," do you have
| any sources for that?
| cm2187 wrote:
| How does that differ from ancien Rome's aqueducts?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| They're canals which feed into underground aquifers which then
| feed streams somewhere else.
| alephxyz wrote:
| Different time scales. Aqueducts are (mainly) used for
| transporting water. These things are used to store springwater
| in aquifers so that it slowly trickles out or can be pumped
| during the dry season.
| midislack wrote:
| Kind of a low-tech or primative aquaduct.
| narag wrote:
| OK, I have nothing bad to say about acequias or irrigation.
| Having grown up with a big orchad at home I enjoyed watching all
| those water inventions. Not sure about "Moorish". More like
| "muslim era" heritage?
|
| "Making life possible in one of Europe's driest regions" is
| misleading though.
|
| Eastwards Sierra Nevada you find Almeria, where all the Spaghetti
| Westerns were filmed. It's indeed a desertic zone, just not a
| very big extension.
|
| The hyperbolic headline somehow implies a scale that's not real.
| In any other direction from Sierra Nevada, there's plenty of
| rain, water and woods. That system just provides the same for
| some villages on the drier zones.
|
| Edit: OK, people disagree... so be it, but before downvoting, why
| don't you take a look at Google Earth and see for yourself?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| New Mexico, one of the beneficaries of the acqueia system, is
| even more of a "true" desert than Almeria, and yet it would
| still not be wrong to say that the system helped make life
| possible here. The population density just before the Spanish
| arrived was not high, but it was lower than it was since they
| bought this water management technique to the area.
|
| Just because such a region does not have a city like Madrid or
| even Albuquerque does not mean that people do not live there,
| nor that they are not reliant to some extent on acqueias.
| gumby wrote:
| > Not sure about "Moorish".
|
| IMHO this is one of the few reasonable uses of this term (which
| has otherwise acquired a negative connotation). The Muslims who
| colonized Iberia were referred to as Moors because of their
| Maghreb origin (cf old Mauritania), which itself is the other,
| technical, use of the term.
|
| And given that it's the BBC I'd give them a pass for correct
| usage, even if it's likely few in the audience will get it,
| with many instead enjoying the derogatory implication.
| otikik wrote:
| You are simply wrong and are touching a sensitive point.
|
| I grew up in Cordoba (which is west from Sierra Nevada). It
| gets to 49 centigrades in the summer. It's not officially
| considered "a desert"... but it will soon. Temperature has been
| going up and rain went down. Fewer plants survive each summer.
|
| This is a pattern that you see through all the Spanish south.
| Desertification is a big, visible problem that should not be
| minimized. I recommend that you apply your own advice to
| yourself.
| narag wrote:
| _You are simply wrong_
|
| So the headline is precise and I'm wrong when I say those
| acequias can only provide water for small zones... and
| because it's a "sensitive point", nobody can disagree.
|
| Appaling.
| otikik wrote:
| Enjoy your orchids.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > All these customs are being lost and young people don't want to
| know about it
|
| I don't understand why this knowledge isn't being written down.
| martyvis wrote:
| It does seem like the perfect thing to be documented in a GIS.
| Presumably you could even use high resolution satellite or
| drone footage to automate much of the data collection.
| Interview the caretakers in situ recording GPS locations and
| times. Perfect project for colleges
| WalterBright wrote:
| I bought the Foxfire series of books written by students who
| went around documenting the old rural ways before that was
| all lost to time.
| zeristor wrote:
| There's a Dutch company called Groasis that had the nifty idea of
| planting a tree that goes though a bucket of water, the bucket
| slowly leaks water into the ground.
|
| Groasis:
|
| https://www.groasis.com/en/technology/how-does-the-reforesta...
|
| The mass of the water provides thermal regulation as well as a
| trickle of water, which can catch rain as well as being topped up
| manually.
|
| The overall goal is for the tree to grow down to the aquifer and
| then thrive. It helps a lot if there's work to catch storm runoff
| into the aquifer.
|
| The OP is more about conveying water through the aquifer.
|
| Edit: URL added
| [deleted]
| zeristor wrote:
| "You must plant the rain before you plant a seed or tree!"
| proclaimed rain farmer Mr. Zephaniah Phiri Maseko of Zimbabwe. By
| doing just that, he and his family turned a wasteland into an
| oasis, raised groundwater and well levels even in dry years,
| reduced flooding in wet years, and enhanced the fertility of the
| soils. This inspiring story will be shared along with the
| strategies used, and more importantly, the guiding principles
| that informed the choice, placement, and implementation of these
| strategies into a more integrated and productive system. These
| principles work in any climate experiencing a dry season or
| drought. And they help us see and act more holistically by asking
| us questions that direct our attention to important aspects of
| water and fertility systems we might otherwise overlook.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=D6_WZ789lpM
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-16 23:02 UTC)