What it means
قنات (qanât) refers to a gently sloping underground channel, dug by hand, that carries groundwater from an upland aquifer to villages and fields on lower ground without any pumping. The word comes from Arabic قناة (qanât, channel or pipe), but the technology itself was developed in ancient Iran and spread from there across the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. The native Persian name for the same system is کاریز (kâriz), still used in parts of Iran and Afghanistan. A qanat can stretch for dozens of kilometers and sustain an entire agricultural community in an otherwise arid landscape.
How to use it
- قنات آب رو از کوه تا روستا میرسونه. (qanât âb ro az kuh tâ rustâ mi-resune.) “The qanat brings water from the mountain all the way to the village.”
- این قنات چند صد ساله. (in qanât chand sad sâle.) “This qanat is several hundred years old.”
- بدون قنات زندگی تو کویر ممکن نبود. (bedun-e qanât zendegi tu-ye kavir momken nabud.) “Without the qanat, life in the desert would not have been possible.”
- مقنی کسیه که قنات میسازه. (moqanni kasie ke qanât mi-sâze.) “A moqanni is someone who builds qanats.”
Cultural note
Iran’s qanats were inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, recognizing both the engineering achievement and the living knowledge of the craftsmen, called مقنی (moqanni), who still build and maintain them. Over 37,000 qanats remain active in Iran today, some more than 2,000 years old. The city of Yazd, deep in the central Iranian desert, owes its survival entirely to its qanat network. The Persian synonym کاریز is preferred in some dialects and in classical texts, while قنات is the standard term in modern formal usage.