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Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"

Customs and water culture

The culture of water has had many different manifestations that have evolved over the ages and expressed themselves in many different ways. It has been a vehicle for the dissemination of technology, behaviour, refinements of taste, and has provided the means for central power to manifest its authority.

Historian Georges Vigarello showed how "the attitude to water" altered in France around the 15th century, particularly in the wake of the great epidemics; there emerged the concept of "hostile water" which led to a rejection of "the washing of bodies" in water, to be replaced by simply "wiping" using little or even no water. The only custom that persisted was the washing of hands on rising in the morning and before meals, a "purification rite" that harks back to the sacred nature of the meal. Vigarello illustrates the new roles society attributed to water. Referring to the construction of the Château de Versailles, he speaks of the "theatrification of the water fountains" to the glory of the Sun King: "the bathroom and marble bath installed in Versailles by Louis XIV as an ostentatious gesture... give way... to the apartments of the Comte de Toulouse... After passing through various avatars, the bath becomes... a garden pond. The object becomes part of another water circuit, developed solely for the eye... Water, so costly and whose machinery dictates the order of the gardens, is in the 17th century destined primarily for cascades and fountains. It must charm the eye. Its delicate ballet is a symbol of profusion and power. It is a sign of sovereign dominion over a largely capricious element(109)".

In India, the Mauryan Empire (300 to 400 years BC) developed along the middle course of the Ganges. The famous text known as the Arthashastra (Science of Wealth), possibly written by the Emperor, notably discusses tax exemptions on hydraulic works: "For reservoirs and dykes newly built, a tax exemption is granted for five years; for the restoration of those in ruins or abandoned, exemption for four years; for the cleaning of those overgrown with weeds, three years... The owner has the right to sell or mortgage the installations. He may grant use of the water in return for a share in the profit from the fields, enclosures and gardens irrigated by his canals and ponds... Should anyone abandon a collective irrigation project, his workers... must nonetheless finish the work and he shall share in the costs without sharing in the advantages...". The text codifies the sale of water, imposes penalties on those who neglect the maintenance of irrigation systems and exempts from taxation those regions that provide extensive manpower for construction, of dykes in particular(110).

Claude Cahen, the great historian of Islam, writes on the issue of water in the classical period (up to the 11th century), emphasising Islam's contributions to hydraulic techniques and to agricultural irrigation, "The problem of water was acute almost everywhere, and land was differentiated basically according to whether or not it needed to be artificially irrigated, and whether or not this was feasible.Thus, since ancient times, many types of machines for raising water were developed in the East, from the shaduf, a counterweighted pole or pulley raising a meagre bucket of water from the bottom of a well, to the waterwheel or noria which raised water from rivers and canals to the banks. It was Islam that introduced these devices to the West." Karl Marx even went so far as to say: "Channelling water was the secret behind the flourishing of industry in Spain and Sicily under Arab domination(111)". Cahen emphasises the wealth of treatises dealing with irrigation -which assumes "a vigilant administration"- that Muslims were to write for the use of conquered lands and which covered laying out the lines of the system, maintenance, water supply... stressing that "the Umayyads and Abassids paid great attention to this in both Syria and Iraq, sometimes at the cost of complaints from the peasants drafted in to provide the labour." The eminent historian adds: "The lands of Central Asia... were especially reputed for the quality of their irrigation system; but as much could be said for many regions of Iran, Iraq and Mesopotamia, of Syria, Ifrikiya (Tunisia), of the huertas (gardens) of Andalusia. Both Iran and the Maghreb had underground canals to prevent water from evaporating, and Iran possibly had actual reservoir-dams."Writing of the particular instance of Egypt with the periodic flooding of the Nile and the role of the famous nilometer at Fustat(112) which every year measured the height of the flood "according to which the administration regulated the use of riverside basins, the planting of irrigated land and, naturally, the resulting taxes", Cahen shows that, wherever it went, Islam established "simple but precise provisions for an equitable distribution of water quotas between those entitled to them". "Naturally, " he adds, "maintaining an irrigation system supposes public order, since even local neglect can lead to disasters that take a long time to repair; all in all, there were no such disasters... and general opinion severely condemned any warriors who damaged this vital infrastructure... Water, along with the need for safety, explains why human dwellings were almost everywhere grouped together, rather than being scattered and close to their farm lands(113)". Jacques Berque, in his studies of the central Maghreb between the 15th and 20th century, notes that the cadis (judges) called upon to hear agricultural disputes condemned communities unable to repair the irrigation sluice-gates and writes: "The construction and maintenance of infrastructure suppose a regular tax system and the maintenance of public order". The author further notes that in the event of a division of plots of land or of an inheritance, judges called upon to try such cases often left the well, reservoirs and cisterns undivided in order to "preserve the existenceof the orchard as a whole."

Jean Weurlesse, working on the Al Ghutah oasis(114) near Damascus with its complex water cycles, describes all the contrivances deployed by society to capture the precious liquid: "The appropriation of land and water has always aroused ambitions, passions and conflicts and sanctioned the dominance of one social class or another. The Huerta, like El Haouz in Marrakech or Al Ghutah in Damascus, bears witness to "the thousand scars left by individual passions...; each turn of a channel, each detour, each halting in the water that hesitates, flees, all but runs back upon itself, represents a personal desire, an ambition realised or an effort disappointed."

The Arabs themselves, not being farmers, contributed little in technical terms to either irrigation or to agriculture; but the power structure they were to establish, once they became Muslims, was to spread the techniques of raising water and of irrigation - and also, notably, of mills floating on rivers to provide power for sugar or oil presses - and to establish in the lands they conquered a "hydraulic" authority and administration governed by the principles of the new faith thatwould assimilate the native knowledge of Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians, etc., from which would arise the Arab-Muslim civilisation of water. It remains the case that, in matters of law in Islam, all acts must be guided by the rules of sharia, which are commandments of divine origin interpreted by men.

Fernand Braudel demonstrates that this state of affairs persisted when he writes, stressing the role of Islam "which surrounds the city with" oases" and "huertas": "From Damascus to Valencia, from the Yemen to Elche and Alicante, it is possible to follow, behind the similarity of irrigation techniques, the pathway of two traditions that govern the sharing of water and found two types of society, one aristocratic, the other more egalitarian. In one, the ownership of water, distinct from the ownership of land, ensures the power of those that own it and can sell the use of it, over the farmers. In the second, water is a free right for the owners of irrigated land, who come together in communities capable of ensuring the maintenance of the dams and canals and of settling their own disputes... (115)".

Thus in Central Morocco, even today, water is subject to ownership in the same way as a house or livestock. One heir may inherit a field but not its irrigation water, which is bequeathed to another.Land rights and water rights are dissociated. It is possible to hire water rights or even to borrow or lend the water belonging to a particular plot. A highly complex body of common law -despite the technical simplicity of the issuegoverns every aspect of this ownership of water(116).

Similar situations, with local variants, are also to be found in the oases of Algeria and in those of Tunisia's Jerid (Tozeur, Nefta, Degache, etc.): around 1890, after a lengthy study of the oasis of Tozeur, Abbé Bauron writes "trunks of palm trees lying across the canals allow water to pass only through notches cut into them, and thus distribute the irrigation water automatically. A keeper is responsible for opening the notches or blocking them with clay according to whether it is necessary to fill the seguias [irrigation canals] or to halt the flow". Nowadays, the work is done by motor pumps but the plots are often abandoned, especially since there is great demand for the water of the oasis from other users: hotels, industry, etc. And yet the words of the poet still ring in the oasis, calling for the fair distribution of its water:

"...There is one thing you must

Never steal, not even in your dreams,

Nor even to save a man,

And that is water, the sacred water of my springs,

The water that the sages of the djemma(117)

Distribute to each according to the number

Of his palm trees and his beasts(118)".

In any case, water scarcity in the Maghreb and in the Middle East is an undeniable fact. The rallying cry of Nasser's revolution in 1952, of "Clean drinking water for all the people" is, unfortunately, far from being a reality, either in Egypt or anywhere else in the region.

Yet in the past these societies employed an extraordinarily rich palette of hydraulic techniques for managing this resource, as well as a "dazzling social virtuosity" (Jean-Jacques Perennès). This was not necessarily on an egalitarian basis since, as a local adage has it, water is often "the friend of the rich" and the fellah was often obliged to put himself under the protection of the marabout (witch doctor) and of his zaouia (religious school)."Water, in these regions, " writes Bedoucha Albergoni, "recounts the history of society." But as Jean-Jacques Perennès concludes, "this older order has had its day, crushed by the combined onslaught of the colonial and post-colonial periods. Everywhere in the Maghreb there now prevails a mining approach to water. It is now up to the state to establish the rules and set a price that will hasten awareness thatwater is a rare and precious resource that is under threat(119)."

(109) Ref.4

(110) Marinette Dambuyant, "Un Etat à haut commandement économique:l'Inde de Kautilya", La Pensée, no.151, June 1970.

(111) Karl Marx, "Le Capital", La Pléiade, Gallimard, Paris, 1963.

(112) Name given by the Arabs to Cairo on its founding.

(113) Claude Cahen, "L'Islam.Des origines au début de l'Empire ottoman", Hachette Littérature, 1997, Paris.

(114) Oasis irrigated by the Barada River as it flows down from the Anti-Lebanon mountains.

(115) Fernand Braudel, "La Méditerranée.L'espace et l'histoire", Champs Flammarion, Paris, 1985.

(116) "La conquête de l'eau", Clifford G.Geertz, Dossier for debate no.44, Fondation pour le progrès de l'homme, Paris, 1995.

(117) Traditional assembly of the community.

(118) "Paroles de Touaregs", Texts presented by Maguy Vautier, Albin Michel, Paris, no date given, p.18-19.

(119) Jean-Jacques Perennès, "L'eau et les hommes au Maghreb. Contribution à une politique de l'eau en Méditerranée", Karthala, Paris, 1993