Yazd Water Museum Keynote

Yazd is one of the desert cities of Iran with a dry climate and low rainfall in which life is highly dependent on the supply of underground water resources. Therefore, from the very distant past, the people of this land have invented ways to transfer water so that this valuable resource can be transferred with the highest efficiency and the least amount of wastage.

The Yazd Water Museum is a manifestation of the efforts of the desert people over several centuries to access valuable water resources. This museum, which is located in the north of the historical square of Amirchakhmaq, was established in 2000 in the house of Kolahdouzha.

The House of Kolahdouzha, where the Yazd Water Museum is located, was constructed in the late Qajar era (19th century AD) by one of the famous merchants of this city named Haj Akbar Kolahdouz. From the point of view of architecture, this house is considered as one of the veiled houses, and with 720 square meters, it has indoor and outdoor and it is built on five floors.

Each of the floors of this building has special uses and features as follows:

• First floor: A branch of the two streams of Rahimabad and Zarch passes through this floor of this building. Zarch Qanat is one of the oldest qanats in Yazd, which was founded two thousand years ago, and with a length of 75 meters, it is still functional.

• Second floor: This floor is located 10 meters under the ground level and is built with an octagonal structure. The temperature of this floor is 20 degrees lower than the ambient temperature, and for this reason, it is considered a place for food storage. There is a pond on this floor that is always filled with cool water from the qanat. In fact, this pond is a place with a small depth from which water can be taken.

There is a wooden basket hanging from the ceiling of the second floor of the Yazd Water Museum, which was used in the past to place food items such as cheese and oil. There are several other hooks hanging from the ceiling from which meat joints were hung.

• Third floor: There are several corridors and rooms on this basement floor of the House of Kolahdouzha, which the people of the house used in summer.

• Fourth floor: This floor is the ground floor of the house and it has a five-door room, a wind room, a hall, sash windows (with beautiful colored window panes), a kitchen, a water tank, and a place for the servants of the house. There are two ponds on the ground floor and the walls are decorated with muqarnas stucco and mirrors. This type of decoration in which images of plants and birds have been used is very remarkable from an artistic point of view.

• Fifth floor: There is a well with a wheel, which was used to extract water for drinking and cleaning purposes.

The idea of creating a museum as the Yazd Water Museum was first proposed in 1999 AD and a year later, the House of Kolahdouzha was turned into a water museum to display various objects related to water extraction and transportation.

The selection of the House of Kolahdouzha as the place to create the Yazd Water Museum was due to several special advantages of this place:

1 - The House of Kolahdouzha was located near Amirchakhmaq Square, one of the main tourist centers of Yazd, and had beautiful architecture and unique decorations.

2 - There were many water installations in this building, such as a riffle, a cellar, a well, a water well wheel, and a qanat.

The Yazd Water Museum contains about 200 objects related to different stages of water extraction and transportation. Tools for digging qanats, documents related to qanats, tools for providing lighting and transporting the water qanats, including jugs, jars, well wheels, waterskins, water distribution tools, and tools for using water energy are some of the objects exhibited in this museum. These objects are made of such materials as copper, brass, glass, clay, and wood.

Among all the objects in the Yazd Water Museum, oil lamps are the oldest. Of course, there are other lamps called carbide lamps in this museum, which are made of a white stone similar to limestone, which is called carbide stone.

A water clock is also on display in the museum, which was called Sabukshi in the old days. This watch had been a time-measuring device. Sabukshi consists of a copper container with a small hole in the bottom, which was placed in a larger container of water and gradually filled with water. The full bowl was considered a unit called “Sabu” and was used to measure the time of water allocation to different users.