In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia

by C. J. Wills

We went as far as Kangawar upon the post-road towards Hamadan, and then turned off on a less-known route to Ispahan, viâ Khonsar and Gūlpigon.

Nothing particularly noticeable occurred till we got to a large village called Gougas, where we had to make a day’s halt to rest the mules. The spring was well advanced, and the whole plain showed heavy crops. What, however, interested us was the quantity of ruined kanaats, or underground watercourses, these teemed with pigeons; some of them were of a depth of seventy feet.

The greater part of the irrigation of Persia is carried on by systems of underground tunnelling, called “kanaats.” A well is dug, generally on the slope of a range of hills, until water is reached; then, a few feet above the bottom of this well, a tunnel is made some four feet high and two wide, having its outlet in a second well, and so constructed as to have a very slight fall towards well No. 2. Should the ground be soft these tunnels are lined by large oval hoops of baked pottery, two inches thick and a foot wide. By placing these continuously the prime cost of the tunnel is much increased, but the expense for repairs is very much less; the great charge being the annual clearing out that the tunnels, unless lined, require, the soil falling in and blocking them, and the fall of water being lost by accumulations of the settlings of mud and sand.

Sometimes the wells of the kanaats are not more than twenty yards apart; sometimes as far off as fifty or even eighty. As each well is dug, the “mokennis,” or tunnellers, draw up from it all the earth, which they carefully place round it in a circle. As they come to water, the mud which is drawn up is poured on the earth, and as it hardens in the sun, a number of crater-like mounds are formed; these mark the lines of kanaats, which may be distinguished running across barren plains for many miles, or even farsakhs. They are often dry, and disused ones are rather dangerous.

I once, when riding, went into an old one, horse and all, but managed to scramble out as my horse struggled; he plugged the well, and had to be, with some difficulty, dug and drawn out.

A very curious accident happened to Mr. H⸺, of the Department, when coursing at Teheran. Fair coursing was obtained in the immediate vicinity of the capital, but the kanaat-holes rendered it somewhat dangerous. A run took place, and Mr. H⸺ was missed. His horse, riderless, joined the others, and the only conclusion was that he must have tumbled down a well-hole, which occur here in tens of thousands, and in every direction. After a long search his hat was discovered at the margin of one of the innumerable well-holes. That saved his life; for had his hat not been found, he would still be in the kanaat, as his voice would never have reached the surface. Stirrup-leathers were joined, and he was drawn out not much the worse, strange to say, though his face and hands were badly cut. To construct a kanaat is the highest benefit a rich man can confer upon a village; it at once becomes a flourishing place. Sometimes a long series of tunnels and wells are dug, and by some error in calculation there is no supply of water; but this is very rare. The great advantage of these subterranean channels is, that loss by evaporation is reduced to a minimum, and water cannot be stolen; of course the cost of making is very great; but if successful it is a very profitable transaction, for the ryots have to buy the water, and at a high price.

Most of the kanaats are full of fish: where they come from is a puzzle, as the water is lost in the ground at one end and rises subterraneously at the other. I believe it has been shown by Darwin that fish-spawn is carried on the feet of frogs: this at times accounts for it. The larger kanaat fish are not very nice, having a sodden muddy taste—they are like tench; but the smaller ones, when fried, resemble much the “Friture de la Seine” sold at the restaurants at Asnières. We often, when marching, amused ourselves by obtaining a good friture from the openings of the kanaats in the villages, in rather an unsportsmanlike manner. Cocculus Indicus (some ten beans) was pounded and mixed with dough, and cast down one of the wells; in an hour, at least a half-bushel of fish were always caught. The fish poison imparted no poisonous effects to the flesh of the fish, probably because so small a portion was taken. The fish, if allowed to remain in the water, generally recovered; the large ones always did. This mode of getting a dish of fish would have been hardly excusable; but in a country where the only food on the road is fowls or eggs, a change is of great importance. These kanaat-fish will not take bait as a rule, though I have known them to be voracious and easily taken by paste.

The ruined and dry kanaats are much more numerous than those in working order, and form a secure asylum for jackals and porcupines. Three very good bull-terriers I had, once went down a kanaat near Shiraz after a porcupine; two were badly wounded from the quills, and the third, a very old and decrepit dog, was lost, probably drowned. I fancy from their muzzles that they must have killed the beast, but the dogs did not recover from the effects of the quill wounds for a fortnight; and one had a piece of quill lodged in her thigh that I did not detect till she showed it me and almost asked me to extract it a month after. In the unsuccessful search we made for the decrepit dog in the kanaat, we nearly came to grief ourselves, for as I was creeping along with a lantern in my hand, up to my knees in mud and water, a quantity of earth and stones fell from the roof, separating me from my man who followed. I rushed for the well in front, and was drawn out by servants who were awaiting me, while my man made for the one we had descended by; we were equally glad to see each other. It was the first time I had been in a kanaat—I mean it to be the last.

Pigeons may generally be shot for the pot from these kanaats, and afford very good practice; the pigeons are similar to our blue rocks. One simply follows a line of wells, and just before you reach a well, a servant throws a stone into that behind; if there be any pigeons they usually rise and give a fair chance, returning to the kanaat by a neighbouring well. Considerable amusement may be got out of this. Gougas was full of pigeons, and here we first saw the pigeon towers so common in Ispahan. A description of one will serve for all, for they differ merely in size. The towers are constructed simply for the collection of pigeons’ dung, which commands a high price as a manure for the raising of melons, and, in fact, is a kind of guano. The pigeon when living in the kanaats is liable to the depredations of jackals, foxes, etc., so the Ispahanis, the most careful and calculating of the Persian nation, build these towers for the pigeons. They are circular, and vary in height, from twenty to seventy feet, and are sometimes as much as sixty feet in diameter. The door, which is merely an opening in the wall half-way up, is only opened once a year for the collection of the guano, the remainder of the time it is plastered like the rest of the building, which is composed of mud bricks and ornamented with a ring of plaster painted with scrolls or figures in red ochre. These bricks are made on the spot, and cost from one keran to two kerans a thousand. The whole surface of the inside of the circular outer wall is covered with small cells open to one side about twelve inches in size; in these the pigeons build. In the centre of the circle are two walls cutting each other at a right angle, and so forming a cross; the sides and ends of these walls are also covered with cells.

I have counted cells for seven thousand one hundred pairs in a large pigeon tower; there were five thousand five hundred in the outer wall, and sixteen hundred in the cruciform wall occupying the centre. Most of those near Ispahan are now in ruins, for as it is no longer the capital, an excessive price cannot be obtained for early melons, and so pigeon-keeping is not so profitable. In no case did the proprietor of the tower feed the birds; they picked up a living from the fields of the neighbours.