National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

ridge and quite distinct from any changes relative to the sea have taken
place within historical times was clearly shown by what I was able to observe
within and along the deeply eroded drainage bed stretching south of Sabzābād
towards the hamlet of Halīleh.

Following the western edge of the gradually widening nullah in which this
bed lies, I came, at a direct distance of 1,700 yards from the Residency, upon the
unmistakable traces of an old qanāt cut through the top layer of cretaceous sand-
stone and ending on the edge of an eroded ravine draining into the nullah.
Square shafts descending into the underground channel mark its course for about
60 yards. About 1,000 yards farther to the south there is the channel of another
qanāt, about 2 feet wide, with its bottom, which is now exposed, lying at a depth
of some 4 feet from the surface of the ground. The traces of this qanāt, and
of another visible about 400 yards farther on, become lost amidst the masses of
fallen rock crust marking the western edge of the nullah. It is quite obvious
that these canals, leading eastwards from the plateau, now much reduced in
width, which skirts the nullah at an elevation of some 40 to 50 feet above its
bed, were intended to carry water for irrigating ground which lay either where
the wildly fissured nullah now extends, with an average width of between 1,300
and 1,700 yards, or else to a cultivable area beyond it.⁸ The formation of this
nullah must have taken place since these underground canals were constructed,
and there can be no possible doubt about its having been caused by the eroding
action of rain-water.

The above observations were completely confirmed by what the inspection of
another old qanāt on the opposite (eastern) side of the nullah showed. There,
at a distance of close on 1¾ miles south-east of Sabzābād and close to the road
running along the top of a narrow plateau tongue, the line of a canal can be
followed for more than 300 feet in the direction of a terrace above the date-palm
grove of Bulbulī village to the south-east. At the start near the road the canal is
represented by a surface channel, cut into the rock to a depth of half a foot and 1½
feet wide. This leads to an oblong shaft, 4½ feet long and 2 feet wide, cut into
the rock to a depth of 5 feet. From here onwards the qanāt ran underground,
marked by similar shafts on the surface at short intervals, or else, where the rock
above the canal has given way and collapsed, by a line of hollows. Finally,