Qanat
Qanat (galería subterránea de captación de agua)
- Date
- c. 800 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Gonabad, Khorasan, Iran
- Credited to
- Iranian peoples (Medes and Persians)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A gently sloping tunnel dug from a piedmont aquifer with vertical access shafts, carrying water by gravity for kilometres without evaporation or pumping. Hydraulic technology that made Iran's arid plateaus habitable.
The Gonabad qanat (possibly 2,700 years old) and 8th-century-BCE Urartian galleries compete for priority.
What it led to
- Oases and cities in deserts (Yazd, Kerman) and Persian agriculture
- Expansion of the Achaemenid Empire with tax exemptions for building qanats
- Diffusion to Egypt, Arabia, the Maghreb, al-Andalus and as far as Mexico (filtration galleries)
- A precedent for Roman underground aqueducts and the tunnel of Eupalinos
Built on
- Gravity dam and water harvesting systemc. 3500 BCE
- Urban drainage and brick-lined wellsc. 2600 BCE
- Underground mining
- Water levelling
Made possible
- Aflaj (falaj) irrigation systems of Omanc. 1000 BCE
- Persian four-part garden (Pasargadae)c. 546 BCE
- Roman aqueduct312 BCE
- Garamantian foggarasc. century I
- Shushtar hydraulic systemc. 260
- Arab agricultural revolutionc. 800
- Badgir windcatcherc. 1000
- Khettaras of Moroccoc. century XI-XII
- Yakhchal ice houses. XVII (tradición anterior)
- Roman aqueduct
- Filtering galleries of al-Andalus
- Tunnel of Eupalinos