A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

“Indian Agriculture”

In the same period, the Indian so-called style of agriculture (filaha hindiyya) diffused from India westward. This movement included a distinctive roster of monsoon crops – rice, sugar cane, Old World cotton, watermelon, and citrus of all kinds, to which the artichoke and eggplant were added in Persia – that could only be grown under irrigation in the Mediterranean basin where the growing season was plagued by drought. Therefore, along with the crops came techniques required to irrigate them, most of which were seemingly of Persian origin: the qanat (filtration gallery) and the noria, generically called the Persian Wheel, although it is improbable that it was invented there. Both techniques had begun their diffusion before the Arab conquests: the Romans knew about qanats and built galleries all over North Africa. The Arabs vastly intensified the use of the technique: eastern Spain is emblematic by virtue of a profusion of very small qanats, some as short as 3 meters – backyard irrigation systems that any peasant could build.

There are two types of noria (from Arabic na’ura, “to groan”). The first is the current wheel that lifts water from rivers or irrigation canals by the force of the water alone. They were large in size and required no gearing. It is the first known self-acting machine. The second is the short-shafted, geared wheel, moved by animal power. In design it is an inverted Vitruvian wheel, which converts the horizontal motion of a wheel rotated ...