Norias of Orontes River in the Historical Arabic Texts

(Salam M. Bishr Jijakli and Abir M. Wahid Arkawi)

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Abstract

Ancient most-known wooden waterwheels (Norias) are located on the banks of the Orontes River. They have served the task of lifting and carrying water to urban areas. Many Arabic and non-Arabic literatures searched for its origin and the evolution of their design. In fact, the historical Arabic texts answered many questions about the ancient design of the Norias, their components and action of mechanism. Most of these texts are often neglected in non-Arabic literatures as a result of the difficulty of translating and collecting them and because most of them are not well indexed. This research aims to find similarities between ancient and nowadays Norias’ design evolution and mechanism of action by studying the historical texts and searching through ancient Arabic poetry, literature and the Ottoman court records. The research recommends that more attention should be paid for collecting and translating these texts to become accessible to interested researchers in order to get best results based on tangible evidence, rather than relying on the conclusions that may not always be accurate. KEYWORDS Hama, history, noria, Orontes River, poetry, Waterwheel
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