Page 203 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Five

a string of date plantations on either side of the mountains could not
exist without this age-old system. The falaj distributes water among
various gardens along surface channels where the flow can be
directed and regulated. The water comes through a tunnel usually
several kilometres long and originating where the elevation of the
water table is higher than the ground elevation in the gardens. The
alignment of the underground channel is clearly marked above the
ground by heaps of excavated rubble dumped around the openings
of vertical shafts through which the original builders and the
maintenance teams have access to the water course. Water for
domestic use is taken upstream at convenient points, preferably
before the water comes into the open; the tunnel is reached by a flight
of stairs. Further downstream bath houses are built over the stream.
The aflaj in Trucial Oman are not as long, deep or elaborate as some
in Inner Oman, but they function everywhere in Eastern Arabia in
the same way.25
Very few if any new aflaj have been built within living memory;
indeed most aflaj in all of Eastern Arabia were probably constructed
in pre-Islamic times. The maintenance and restoration of existing
aflaj is a specialised and dangerous technique practised by a few
people in the oases.20
Over the last century and a half about a dozen ciflaj have been in
use within the Buraimi oasis; some were from time to time damaged
by flash floods or destroyed in wars, but most were in due course re­
activated. During the 1950s a special effort was made by the Ruler of
Abu Dhabi’s representative in the oasis to restore a number of
dilapidated aflaj; by the end of the 1960s seven were used to irrigate
gardens in Abu Dhabi territory and two in Omani territory. At that
time an area of about 280 hectares was cultivated with the waters
from these aflaj, which delivered about 16.6 million cubic metres of
water per year.27 The average falaj in the Buraimi oasis is about seven
kilometres long. The more compact oasis of Daid has only one falaj; it
is, however, an exceptionally good one. It comes from some wadis to
the south-east of Daid. Where the stream runs in the open in a lined
channel it is about one metre wide and over half a metre deep, and
has a strong flow before being divided up into various channels for
irrigation. Before entering the oasis the falaj passes through the
precincts of the Ruler of Sharjah’s fort in Daid. The falaj used to
irrigate all the date gardens in the oasis, which formed a circle of
about one and a half kilometres in diameter, before the introduction

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