Saqiyah

[8][9] In the Maghreb and Morocco, the related word saqqaya (Arabic: سقاية) also denotes a public fountain where residents could take water (similar in function to a sabil).

The noria consists of a large undershot water-wheel whose rim is made up of a series of containers which lift water from the river to an aqueduct at the top of the wheel.

[16] However, the names of traditional water-raising devices used in the Middle East, India, Spain and other areas are often used loosely and overlappingly, or vary depending on region.

One type has its clay pots or buckets attached directly to the periphery of the wheel, which limits the depth it can scoop water from to less than half its diameter.

[19] The historical Middle-Eastern device known in Arabic as saqiya usually had its buckets attached to a double chain, creating a so-called "pot garland".

In Spanish an animal-driven saqiya is named aceña, with the exception of the Cartagena area, where it is called a noria de sangre, or "waterwheel of blood".

The introduction of this machine had a decisive influence on agriculture as this wheel lifted water 3 to 8 metres with much less labour force and time than the Shaduf, which was the previous irrigation device in the Kingdom.

[20] The sāqiyah might, according to Ananda Coomaraswamy, have been invented in India, where the earliest reference to it is found in the Panchatantra (c. 3rd century BCE), where it was known as an araghaṭṭa;[21] which is a combination or the words ara (speedy or a spoked[wheel]) and ghaṭṭa "pot"[22] in Sanskrit.

[23] In Ranjit Sitaram Pandit's translation of Kalhana's 12th century chronicle Rajatarangini, this mechanism is alluded to when describing a yantra used for drawing water from a well.

A papyrus dating to the 2nd century BCE also found in Faiyum mentions a water wheel used for irrigation, a 2nd-century BC fresco found at Alexandria depicts a compartmented saqiya, and the writings of Callixenus of Rhodes mention the use of a saqiya in the Ptolemaic Kingdom during the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator in the late 3rd century BCE.

The saqiya gear system is already shown fully developed to the point that "modern Egyptian devices are virtually identical".

[38] The mechanical flywheel, used to smooth out the delivery of power from a driving device to a driven machine and, essentially, to allow lifting water from far greater depths (up to 200 metres), was employed by ibn Bassal (fl.

Animal-powered saqiyas and water-powered norias similar to the ones he described have been supplying water in Damascus since the 13th century,[41] and were in everyday use throughout the medieval Islamic world.