Yazd Water Museum

Yazd Province is located in one of the driest places in Iran, almost all of its territory is occupied by deserts and semi-deserts. In the province of Yazd (along with the provinces of Khorasan-Rezavi , Kerman and Isfahan ) there are Persian kyarises dating back to three millennia BC. The entire complex of Persian kyariz in 2016 was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site ^[2] (according to two criteria: a unique object of cultural tradition and an outstanding example of a technological ensemble).

The main goal of the water museum is to explain the meaning and principle of the kyariz (canals).

Kyariz ( Pers. کاریز ) or rope ( Pers. قنات ) is a traditional hydraulic system located underground. Combines irrigation system and plumbing. Over the entire history, about 50 thousand kyariz were built in Iran, of which 37 thousand remain in operation today. The principle of Iranian kyariz was invented even before the Romans came up with aqueducts.

Yazd Province has one of the largest kyariz systems in Iran. Almost all Yazd ropes are very large - they can fit an adult of average build.

The uniqueness of the kyariz system is that with the help of such a facility, clean water is extracted from great depths. This happens with the help of a complex system of underground galleries and vertical wells that bring water to the surface of the earth ^[3] .

This method of obtaining water was subsequently borrowed by many peoples - at the moment, kyariz also exist in Afghanistan , Azerbaijan , Turkmenistan , Algeria and Libya .

In Iran, karizs were built mainly with the money of urban residents. Wealthy people ordered the construction of kyariz only for themselves and their family. Ordinary people calculated the necessary amount of money and decided who needed how much water - the amount that each family member had to pay depended on it.

The Water Museum was created in 2000 after the first international conference in Yazd dedicated to the topic of kyariz ^[4] .

The exhibits of the water museum in paints illustrate the complex kyariz system used to produce pure groundwater. Water from kyariz is stored in special storage facilities ( Pers. انبار آب ), which are usually located next to a structure resembling a windmill ( Pers. بادگیر ) so that the water is kept cold.

In the permanent exhibition of the museum there are a huge number of tools necessary for the construction and cleaning of kyariz: picks, shovels, lamps, headdresses of workers, bags, special collars for lowering and lifting builders and soil. Some of these devices are already more than four thousand years old ^[5] . There are also many documents about water ownership: some kyariz were the property of wealthy people or their families; ordinary people raised money for others: special lists were created in which it was said who and how much money was contributed - it depended on how much water a person could use from this kyariz.

Directly below the museum is one of the largest kyariz in Yazd and one of a standard size. They can be accessed by a special staircase ^[6] .