Among the many scientific and technological accomplishments of ancient Arabia, dams and irrigation systems stand out as a remarkable testament to advanced skills in hydrological engineering. Arabia’s ancient inhabitants developed sophisticated means of capturing and diverting water that not only involved detailed knowledge of water flows, but also required coordination of considerable labor for construction, operation, and maintenance. Although sometimes overshadowed by better-known Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and South Asian irrigation systems that supported some of the world’s earliest and most influential civilizations, the remains of advanced water control systems have also been found throughout Arabia. Some of the ancient world’s largest dams and most advanced flash-floodwater systems were constructed in Southwest Arabia (Yemen) during the late first millennium BCE. Southwest Arabian floodwater (spate) systems irrigated thousands of hectares and supported ancient states that gained...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adams, R. M. (1965). Land behind Baghdad: A history of settlement on the Diyala Plains. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Akasheh, T. (2002). Ancient and modern watershed management in Petra. Near Eastern Archaeology, 65(4), 220–224.
Arnaud, J. T. (1874). Plan de la Digue et de la Ville dex Mareb. Journal Asiatique serie, 7(3), 1–16.
Bar-Yosef, O. (1986). The walls of Jericho: An alternative interpretation. Current Anthropology, 27(2), 157–162.
Betts, A., & Helms, S. W. (1989). A water harvesting and storage system at Ibn El-Ghazzi in Eastern Jordan: A preliminary report. Levant, 21, 3–11.
Bowen, R. L. (1958). Irrigation in ancient Qataban (Beihan). In R. L. Bowen & F. P. Albright (Eds.), Archaeological discoveries in South Arabia (pp. 43–89). Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press.
Brunner, U. (1997a). Geography and human settlements in ancient Southern Arabia. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, 8, 190–202.
Brunner, U. (1997b). The history of irrigation in Wadi Marhah. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 27, 75–85.
Brunner, U. (2000). The great dam and the Sabean Oasis of Ma˒rib. Irrigation and Drainage Systems, 14, 167–182.
Brunner, U., & Haefner, H. (1986). The successful floodwater farming system of the Sabeans: Yemen Arab Republic. Applied Geography, 6, 77–86.
Butzer, K. (1976). Early hydraulic civilization in Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Darles, C. (2000). Les Structures d’irrigation du Wadi Surban au Yemen. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 30, 87–97.
Downing, T. E., & Gibson, M. (Eds.). (1974). Irrigation’s impact on society. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.
Faris, N. A. (1938). The antiquities of South Arabia, being a translation from the Arabic with linguistic, geographic, and historic notes, of the eighth book of Al-Hamdani’s Al-Iklil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press [945].
Francaviglia, V. M. (2000). Dating the ancient dam of Ma˒rib (Yemen). Journal of Archaeological Science, 27, 645–653.
Francaviglia, V. M. (2002). Some remarks on the irrigation systems of ancient Yemen. In S. Cleuziou, M. Tosi, & J. Zarins (Eds.), Essays on the late prehistory of the Arabian Peninsula (pp. 111–144). Roma, Italy: Istituto Italiano per L’Africa e l’Oriente.
Gentelle, P. (1991). Les Irrigations Antiques à Shabwa. Syria, 68, 5–54.
Gentelle, P., & Coque-Delhuille, B. (1998). La Nature et l’irrigation. In J.-. F. Breton et al. (Eds.), Une Vallee Aride Du Yemen Antique – Le Wadi Bayhan (pp. 75–125). Paris: Editions Recherche et Civilizations.
Ghaleb, A. O. (1990). Agricultural practices in ancient Radman and Wadi Al-Jubah (Yemen). Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Glaser, E. (1913). Edward Glaser’s Reise Nach Marib; Herausgegeben Von D. H. Von Muller and N. Rhodokanakis. Wien, Austria: Alfred Holder.
Harrower, M. (2006). Environmental versus social parameters, landscape, and the origins of irrigation in Southwest Arabia (Yemen). Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University.
Hehmeyer, I. (1989). Irrigation farming in the ancient Oasis of Marib. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 19, 33–44.
Hunt, R. C., & Hunt, E. (1976). Canal irrigation and local social organization. Current Anthropology, 17(3), 389–411.
Kelly, W. W. (1983). Concepts in the anthropological study of irrigation. American Anthropologist, 85(4), 880–886.
Lightfoot, D. L. (2000). The origin and diffusion of Qanats in Arabia: New evidence from the Northern and Southern Peninsula. The Geographical Journal, 166(3), 215–226.
Mabry, J. B. (Ed.). (1996). Canals and communities: Small-scale irrigation systems. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Mabry, J. B. (Ed.). (2000). Wittfogel was half right: The ethnology of consensual and nonconsensual hierarchies in irrigation management. In M. W. Diehl (Ed.). Hierarchies in action (pp. 284–294). Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University.
Maisels, C. K. (1999). Early civilizations of the old world: The formative histories of Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India and China. London: Routledge.
McCorriston, J., & Oches, E. (2001). Two early Holocene check dams from Southern Arabia. Antiquity, 75, 675–676.
Miller, R. (1980). Water use in Syria and Palestine from the neolithic to the bronze age. World Archaeology, 11(3), 331–341.
Millon, R. (1962). Variations in social responses to the practice of irrigation agriculture. In R. B. Woodbury (Ed.), Civilizations in desert lands. Salt Lake City, UT: Department of Anthropolgy, University of Utah.
Oates, D., & Oates, J. (1976). Early irrigation agriculture in Mesopotamia. In I. H. Longworth (Ed.), Problems in economic and social archaeology (pp. 109–135). London: Duckworth.
Ortloff, C. R. (2005). The water supply and distribution system of the Nabataean City of Petra (Jordan), 300 BCE-AD 300. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 15(1), 93–109.
Postgate, J. N., & Powell, M. A. (Eds.). (1988). Irrigation and cultivation in Mesopotamia, Part I. Cambridge: Sumerian Agriculture Group.
Scarborough, V. L. (2003). The flow of power: Ancient water systems and landscapes. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
Steward, J. H. (1949). Cultural causality and law: A trial formulation of the development of early civilizations. American Anthropologist, 51(1), 1–27.
Steward, J. H. (1955). Introduction: The irrigation civilizations a symposium on method and result in cross cultural regularities. In Irrigation civilizations: A comparative study. Social science monographs I (pp. 1–5). Washington, DC: Pan American Union.
Sumner, W. (1994). The evolution of tribal society in the Southern Zagros Mountains, Iran. In M. S. Rothman (Ed.), Chiefdoms and early states in the near East: The organizational dynamics of complexity (Monographs in world archaeology no. 18, pp. 47–65). Madison, WI: Prehistory Press.
Vogt, B. (2004). Towards a new dating of the great dam of Marib: Preliminary results of the 2002 fieldwork of the German institute of archaeology. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 34(2004), 377–388.
Vogt, B, Buffa, V. & Brunner, U. (2002). Ma’layba and the Bronze age irrigation in coastal Yemen. Archaologische Berichte aus dem Yemen Band, 9.
Wilkinson, J. C. (1977). Water and tribal settlement in South East Arabia: A study of the Aflaj of Oman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilkinson, J. C. (1983). Origins of the Aflaj in Oman. Journal of Oman Studies, 6(1), 177–194.
Wilkinson, T. J. (1999). Settlement, soil erosion and terraced agriculture in highland Yemen: A preliminary statement. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 29, 183–191.
Wilkinson, T. J. (2003). Archaeological landscapes of the near East. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Wittfogel, K. A. (1957). Oriental despotism: A comparative study of total power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Harrower, M.J. (2016). Dams and Irrigation in Ancient Arabia. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9119
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9119
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7746-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7747-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities