Day 22 – Haifa, Akko

This morning we take the train to Akko, a small coastal town 15 km or so north of Haifa.

 

At its centre fortified Old Akko is a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site. Until 1948 the city relied on the northern springs of Calibri 14 km away for fresh water. The Ottoman aqueduct from the early 19th century, the last in a series constructed over 2,000 years, incorporated siphon towers to regulate the flow, and still survives in part.

In 1994 a complaint about a blocked sewer in Old Akko led to the chance discovery of the Templars Tunnel, a strategic subterranean passage, 350 m long, which connected the port and palace.

 

Back at the station, on the platform waiting for the return train to Haifa, there are hundreds of teenage soldiers each with a machine gun casually slung over a shoulder.

We return to the hostel to collect our backpacks and walk to the port in plenty of time for the two-hour check-in, which we have been advised is to suit Israeli security working hours.

We pass the first security checkpoint. At the second the officer calls the main terminal to notify them of our departure. We are then allowed to proceed to the departure terminal. Upon entering we are confronted and told to sit and wait. After 10-15 minutes a security officer comes over and interrogates us separately, one after the other. The line of questioning includes: how long we have been in Israel; where we stayed; what we did; how we booked our accommodation and travel; what we do for a living and how we got in to it; and where we went to university. (When I tell him I went to Liverpool he asks me which football team I support but rapidly loses interest when I tell him Colchester United.)  He then disappears to do a “security check”. We compare notes; we don’t think we have contradicted one another.

After a while we query what’s happening and are told he will return with the ferry company representative at 1830. At about 1840 our backpacks are scanned and then the rep arrives. The lack of other passengers and all of this personal treatment for an international ferry journey has left us a little puzzled. It transpires we are joining the return leg of a two-night, one-day excursion from Limassol to Jerusalem operated by the ferry company.

The rep takes us to passport control, where our passports are checked for the fifth time, through the duty-free shop, and on to the the ship. Everyone else is on the bus back from Jerusalem so we have it to ourselves, which confuses the predominantly Ukrainian crew.

Just as we start to relax, and realise we have not been charged the exit tax, I am called to reception over the tannoy to be told that the Israeli authorities want to see me. Apparently it is just a routine procedure, nothing to worry about. After a few minutes a friendly, casually dressed guy asks for our passports, gives them a cursory glance and says thanks. I ask him what the check is for and he tells me it is for Cypriot immigration.

Soon after we set sail. Dinner is included in the price, which we weren’t expecting, so we take our place in the drab restaurant at a rectangular table with two middle-aged Cypriot women, one of whom has a well-behaved daughter. Part way through the predictably bland meal I am again summoned to reception over the tannoy. I attempt to ignore the request while finishing the course but am pressed by a waiter, so I grumpily return to reception, bread roll and glass of wine in hand, to have our passports checked by the two disinterested, uniformed Cypriot women.

Overall we are a little disappointed that we have been unable to visit any Israeli projects or specialists, particularly given the political situation, as it leaves us open to criticism of bias. In our defence it has been difficult to make arrangements for various reasons: bad luck; Israel being a late addition to the itinerary; and, since we are travelling on a tourist visa, our own uncertainty of how the Israeli security forces might judge research activity.

Nonetheless my preparatory research unearthed some interesting people and developments to follow up when I am preparing the research paper.

Day 18 – Jerusalem

We are staying at the excellent Lutheran Guest House in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. We spend the morning exploiting the free internet connection and then visit the New City, stopping for a good lunch at a vegetarian cafe. on a quiet square just off Jaffa Road.

After lunch and in to the evening we wander the narrow souqs and streets of the Old City before returning to the New City for Israeli beer and wine, followed by bagels.

Although Jerusalem was naturally defensible its major fresh water source ,the Gihon spring, lay beyond the city walls. Hezekiah’s Tunnel, or the Siloam Tunnel , was dug in about when the city came under siege from the Assyrians. It leads from the spring to the Pool of Siloam, curving through 533 m at a gradient of 0.6 %.

According to the Siloam inscription found within the tunnel, it was excavated by two teams, one starting at each end of the tunnel and then meeting in the middle, though it is apparent from that several directional errors were made during its construction. Recent discoveries concerning a related tunnel, Warren’s Shaft, have suggested that the tunnel may have been formed by substantially widening a pre-existing natural karst (dissolution of layer(s) of bedrock).

   

 

  

Day 15 – Amman, Petra, Wadi Musa

We set off from Amman on the 0630 JETT bus and arrive at Petra at 1030. After checking in to a hotel in Wadi Musa, the adjacent town, we return to explore Petra, the amazing Nabataean city built in the 3rd century BC by carving buildings in to the sandstone rock. It is approached through a 1.2 km long Siq that is not a canyon but rock pulled apart by tectonic forces.

   

There is plenty of evidence of the Nabataeans mastery of hydraulic engineering.

“Writing in the first century BC, the ancient geographer Strabo described Petra as "having springs in abundance, both for domestic purposes and for watering gardens." Indeed, the Nabataeans chose this location not only for its fortress of rock cliffs, but also for its available water supply: this part of the desert saw a mere 15 centimeters (six inches) of rain per year. Petra’s local springs flowed enough for some families to fetch water daily, but these alone streams could not support a population of around 20,000 in and around the city.

The Nabataeans developed a sophisticated public waterworks fed by three larger springs located several miles from Petra. Systems of strategically placed rock-cut gutters lined with watertight plaster, combined with terracotta pipelines, followed the natural landscape to feed nearly 200 cistern tanks, many reservoirs and a nymphaeum, or public fountain house. Water was also diverted for agricultural use to support crops and herds, and the Nabataeans developed rules for water allocation to govern its consumption. According to a recent calculation, Petra’s aqueduct system carried about 40 million liters (12 million gallons) of fresh spring water per day—enough to sustain a modern-day American population of more than 100,000.”

Excerpt from http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/petra/stone/water.php 

The technical expertise is described further in C. R. Ortloff’s Petra Water Systems:

“Analysis of Nabataean piping networks indicates that design criteria are employed that promote stable flows within piping, use sequential particle settling basins to purify potable water supplies, promote open channel flows within piping at near critical (maximum) flow rates that avoid leakage associated with pressurized systems and are designed to match the spring supply rate to the maximum carrying capacity of a pipeline…New discoveries related to maximizing water flow rates by internal piping wall surface roughness patterns appear to predate later discoveries in western science by some 20 centuries. This, and other demonstrations of engineering capability in hydraulic system design indicates a high degree of skill in solving complex hydraulics problems to ensure a stable water supply and may be posited as a key reason behind the many centuries of flourishing city life.”

 

Day 10 – Hama, Homs, Crac des Chevaliers, Damascus

En route from Hama to Damascus, we visit Crac des Chevaliers. Our impressions of the remarkable location and castle ruins are somewhat tempered by the development of the adjacent village, the hawkers on the entrance ramp inside the castle and the refuse strewn around the talus (fortification).

The castle was designed to accommodate a besieged army of 2,000 – 4,000 men for five years. To maintain a water supply for this long it relied on:

• One very deep well;
• Nine covered cisterns collecting water from flat roof;
• One Berquilla (an uncovered cistern, from the Arabic birkah), unusually located between the inner and outer walls.

The aqueducts also supplied the moat.

According to Hugh Kennedy, in his book Crusader Castles, “there does not seem to be a single recorded example of a Crusader castle falling through lack of water.”

 

 

Trains from Aleppo to Damascus (via Hama and Homs) run intermittently to say the least (departing Aleppo daily at 0010, 0350, 0540, 1010 and 1645), so we take the road to Damascus, literally rather than metaphorically, although after hearing that Colchester are 5-0 up at Norwich at half-time on the opening day of the season I begin to wonder.

After being subjected to a ridiculous Arabic version of James Bond for the duration of the bus journey we are pleased to arrive in Damascus. After checking in to the Old Damascus Hotel in the Christian Quarter of the Old City we go to the agreeable Art Cafe Ninar for some Syrian beer, Lebanese wine and supposedly Italian food, and I catch the final score (7-1).

Day 9 – Hama

We took a five minute taxi ride to the Baghdad station, Aleppo, at the rip-off price of S£ 300 (£ 3.85) because the driver has no change. The tickets for the 1 h 29 m journey to Hama, first class (air conditioned), cost S£ 100 (£ 1.30) each.

There were no taxis at the station so we started to walk the 2.5 km to the centre of town. We had only got a few hundred metres when a minibus drew up alongside and its occupants insisted we join them. We weren’t sure exactly where we were going to end up but the driver asked where we were staying and took us to the front door. There was no fare to pay!

Hama has a population of about 1.2 million and feels considerably smaller and less dense than Aleppo. It is also hotter though it is dry and there is a continuous gentle breeze.

The reason for stopping here is Hama’s famous norias (water wheels), which are up to 20 m in diameter and, being made entirely of timber (including the bearing), make a strange, unremitting, groaning noise.

There have been norias in Hama since at least the 4th century AD. The present wheels date from at least the 13th century and 17 of around 30 survive. In each case the Orontes River is contained by a small dam and the natural flow forced through a narrow channel which turns the wheel.

Although the wheels continue to turn they are no longer functional, raising water to high level aqueducts, which survive in part.

    

The Four Norias of Bechriyyat have become a water theme park with local boys swimming upstream, climbing on the wheels and jumping and diving from the stone piers.

Despite the reputed culture of water conservation this is one example of wastage that appears to go unnoticed.

We end the day with a stroll on to the citadel, now home to a rather ramshackle but well-used park, and a trip to the local internet cafe.