The hydrological networks of the Balkh Oasis after the arrival of Islam: a landscape archaeological perspective

This article seeks to evaluate the development of the Balkh Oasis in Northern Afghanistan, from the perspective of hydrological management. The concept of ‘oasis cities’ has been applied to several lowland settlement systems in Central Asia, characterised as fertile river deltas surrounded by deserts. Of these, the oasis surrounding the city of Balkh remains the least well archaeologically explored, in spite of the fact that it represents possibly the best preserved of similar hydrological systems. As new archaeological ground survey in the Balkh region remains challenging, the discussion here compares existing archaeological records and historical accounts of water management throughout the medieval and early modern period, combining them with evidence traced from high-resolution satellite imagery. The picture that emerges is a complex constellation of substantial settlements among agricultural lands beyond the core city, watered by tiers of divergent channels. Several key changes in the physical and political landscape necessitated the reorganisation of this hydrological network, and over time these shifts can be traced by contrasting the abandonment of some regions with the notable expansion of others.

The Field of In Between

In the spring of 1902, Miryam bint Lalu Partush appealed to military representatives in Ghardaïa, in the Mzab Valley (a valley of five fortified oasis cities in the northern Algerian Sahara, six hundred kilometers south of Algiers), for the paperwork that would allow her to undertake a six-month pilgrimage to Jerusalem with her husband, the wealthy merchant Musa (Moshe) bin Ibrahim Partush. Miryam Partush was unusual in possessing the means for such a rare, costly voyage; but notwithstanding her class, Partush's legal status was typical of most Muslims and southern Algerian Jews in Algeria. She was not a citizen, nor did she hold official papers of any kind. When Miryam Partush appealed to the military authorities in Ghardaïa, then, she was appealing for many things: for the right to leave her native valley and travel to the port of Algiers; for the papers that would allow her to cross colonial boundaries; and for the documentation that would register her liminal legal identity. Authorizing her travel, Algeria's governor-general named Partush a “non-naturalized Jew from the Mzab.” Thus did Partush embark on her six-month journey with a negative legal identity: this Jewish woman was definable, in the eyes of the law, only by what she did not possess.