Norias of Hama
They are notable for their medieval origins, for their large number and for the enormous size of two of them - for nearly 500 years the tallest waterwheels in the world.
An obvious reason for building norias at Hama is the Orontes’ lack of gradient combined with the height of its banks, which make this the most practical option for drawing irrigation water from the river.
The massive axles and bearings are walnut wood, while poplar was widely used for other parts of the wheel and pine and oak have also been mentioned.
They are like boxes with half of one side open and with a spout whereby the water pours out at the highest point of rotation (see close-up photo below).
There are often additional channels in these weirs and sluice gates to fine tune river pressure on the water wheel and hence the speed with which a noria turns.
When the norias were being used for irrigation, the aqueducts eventually fed into water channels which each supplied multiple fruit and vegetable gardens.
Motorised pumps offered entrepreneurial farmers a means to get extra water to grow more food for expanding populations.
This reduced water levels in the Orontes so that for several months of the year Hama's norias could no longer operate and motorised pumps became the only means for continuous irrigation.
[9] In February 1982 the army of Syria's first Baathist dictator, Hafez al-Assad, launched a massive attack on Hama to crush an armed uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood.
[25] For three weeks the city was bombed by aeroplanes, shelled by artillery and tanks, and finally large areas were demolished with dynamite and bulldozers.
[26] Concerning impact on Hama's norias, information is scarce because the Assad government firmly discouraged mention of the 1982 events.
[27] An important unanswered question is whether it was in 1982 that the norias’ stone aqueducts suffered the extensive demolition which now precludes any useful delivery of water.
The Assad government selectively rebuilt a limited part of historic Hama, like the Great Mosque, and landscaped or redeveloped the rest.
They function as a popular heritage attraction, floodlit during events like the Hama Spring Festival when the Orontes flows well and the norias can turn.
By day or night they can be visually spectacular, catching light in the curtains of spray dripping from their water-boxes or casting huge rotating shadows.
[29] A time-honoured sport among Hama youths is to ride on moving norias, sometimes diving into the river from the top, as displayed in an on-line video from 2005.
Since Hama was famous as a conservative and militant Sunni Muslim city, where hatred of the secular Baathist dictatorship had been intensified by the 1982 massacre, it was an expected focal point for rebellion.
[28] Accordingly, the dictatorship of Bashar Assad made strenuous efforts to retain control of Hama from the outset.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science compared pre-war satellite photos of 10 noria sites in Hama with those from 2014 and concluded that no major damage had occurred.
This 11-page English language booklet, full text available on the internet, summarises key facts about the Hama norias, drawing on the book by Delpech et al.
