The Taliban are set to seize Kabul, but some expert believes they will spare the age-old Karez system of underground aqueducts in the country given its importance.

What is a Qanat / Karez?

• This system of underground vertical shafts in a gently sloping tunnel that is built from an upland aquifer to ground level.
• Some historians and archaeologists have attributed people in the southeast Arabian Peninsula as the first developers. Others, however, ascribe it to the ancient Persians.
• The Qanat / Karez system, wherever it was developed, soon spread to many Persian, Arab and Turkic lands.
• It even came to the Indian Subcontinent during the 800-year-old Islamic Period.

Karez in India

• The system was brought in the Indian Subcontinent during the Bahamani Sultanate, founded by Alaudin Bahman Shah.
• It later broke into five other Sultantates: Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar and Berar.
• The Bahamani Sultanate was Persianate in nature and encouraged many things Persian, among them, the Karez.
• They was built in the city of Bidar during the reign of Bahamani Sultan Ahmad Shah Wali (1422-1436), who shifted the capital from Gulbarga to Bidar.
• By the 15^th century, Bijapur city had a network of pipelines. Everyone got 24×7 supply of water.
• It also worked as confidence-building measure between the Sultan and his subjects since the Karez was built the state.

Try answering this PYQ:

With reference to the economic history of medieval India, the term Araghatta’ refers to:

(CSP 2016)

(a) bonded labour

(b) land grants made to military officers

(c) waterwheel used in the irrigation of land

(d) wastel and converted to cultivated land

 

Post your answers here.

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