Page 203 - UAE Truncal States
P. 203

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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