How people get water

This lesson asks you to name basic human needs and to describe ways people in communities around the world meet them. The museum offers two historical ways of bringing water to people: the sabil and the underground tunnel called a qanat. Your class adds the other needs and how communities meet them today. ¹

Choose a need such as water. List the ways you know of meeting it: a tap, a well, a river, a public fountain.

The record on the sabil says that sabils received great care in their siting, building and decoration, and in the many endowments that kept them working ². A qanat is a gently sloping underground tunnel that brings water out by gravity ³. The record on al-Karaji's methods says his manual follows water from exploration to maintenance and handover ⁴. It links measurement to making the route, maintenance, clearing blockages and handing over the work ⁵.

Think of the water you use at home or at school. Who keeps it flowing, and what would go wrong for the people who use it if that work stopped, and why would that matter to them?

• The sabil: a water building with many endowments to keep it working.
• Al-Karaji's levelling and tunnel-alignment methods: a manual that follows water from searching for it to handing over the work.
• Shirb, water rights: how the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia treats shared water.

Read Sabil and al-Karaji's levelling and tunnel-alignment methods. Draw how water travels in each case, from where it starts to where people use it.