Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to describe the patterns and physical characteristics of major rivers and water systems. The museum offers accounts of the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris from medieval sources; your class adds lakes, oceans and drainage basins from other regions. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- A3.4 describe patterns and physical characteristics of some major water bodies and systems around the world […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What does a river's level tell you?
Notice how each account measures a river: in cubits, by season, against what came before. Ask what you would need to draw the river's yearly pattern as a graph.
Go deeper
In 329 the Euphrates rose eleven cubits and burst out by Anbar, sweeping villages under. The water poured through al-Sarat toward Baghdad into the western quarter's streets until Bab al-Anbar street was submerged and not a house of it left standing. Buildings collapsed onto al-Sarat, the iron bridge of al-Sarat fell, part of the Daylij canal broke, and the Tigris rose eighteen cubits in May and June 2. This is the record's account from Ibn al-Jawzi's al-Muntazam, and the record cites page 608 of that book for it. Cubits are also the units on the Nilometer of Rawda: its column is divided into nineteen cubits, and the sixteenth-cubit mark stands for the ideal flood level 3. Yeomans says its readings were essential in setting irrigation policy 4.
Think about it
The Nilometer's column marks the sixteenth cubit as the ideal level of the Nile's flood, while Ibn al-Jawzi simply says the Euphrates rose eleven cubits and the Tigris eighteen. Why does a number of cubits tell you something about the Nile year but not, by itself, about the Euphrates year? What else would you need to know?
Into the museum
- The Nilometer of Rawda Island: the stone-lined pit and the column that gauged the Nile's flood.
- The Euphrates flood and the ruin of Bab al-Anbar: the account of the rivers' rise in 329.
- Baghdad: the city whose western quarter the water reached.
Try this
Read the Nilometer of Rawda and the Euphrates flood of 329 AH. Sketch a line for one year of the Nile's level, marking the ideal flood, and describe in two sentences what a flood would do to the land and what its absence would do.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Nilometer of Rawda Island, Cairo have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Measuring the Nile's flood. On Rawda Island in Cairo stands a stone-lined pit built in 862 to measure the height of the Nile waters during the annual flood; Yeomans says its readings were essential in setting irrigation policy. Its column is divided into nineteen cubits, and the sixteenth-cubit mark stands for the ideal flood level. What does a river's yearly rise and fall mean to people who farm beside it?
In your own words: what does The Euphrates flood and the ruin of Bab al-Anbar have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
When the Euphrates rose. Ibn al-Jawzi records that in 329 AH the Euphrates rose eleven cubits and burst out by Anbar, sweeping villages under. The water poured toward Baghdad until Bab al-Anbar street was submerged, and the Tigris rose eighteen cubits in May and June. What does this account show about how a river in flood reaches a city?
I can now
Notes
- 1. The Ontario Curriculum: Social Studies, Grades 1 to 6; History and Geography, Grades 7 and 8 (2023)
- 2. al-Muntazam fi Tarikh al-Muluk wa'l-Umam — Ibn al-Jawzi, p. 608
- 3. Richard Yeomans, The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo (2006), p.30
- 4. Richard Yeomans, The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo (2006), p.29