Dark Side History: Drinkable Water in the Pre-modern Middle East!

Drinkable water is the source of life and thus has been of vital importance historically & North-Africa and the Middle East are some of the most water scarce regions of the world in terms of drinkable fresh water and thus it might be interesting to know how people in the pre-modern past managed to get purified drinkable fresh water to satisfy their needs. And, would you know, this video is about how people in the pre-modern Middle East historically managed to get fresh purified drinkable water from various sources.
Please don't be afraid to comment or voice any questions as I love interacting with you my dear viewers and I will try to respond as quickly as possible to you. Also, please like, subscribe & click the bell icon as those actions helps this channel grow!
This video is part of the dark side history series: • Dark Side History
And can also be seen in the all history playlist: • All history
Also, this video is part of the videos connected to Middle Eastern, North African and "Islamic" history • Middle Eastern & "Isla...
Sources and further reading:
A. Kamarulzaman, S.M. Saifuddeen. Islam and harm reduction. International Journal of Drug Policy 21 (2010) 115-118
Ahmed, A.T.; El Gohary, F.; Tzanakakis, V.; Angelakis, A.N. Egyptian and Greek Water Cultures and Hydro-technologies in Ancient Times. Sustainability 2020, 12, 9760
Angelakis, A.N.; Valipour, M.; Choo, K.-H.; Ahmed, A.T.; Baba, A.; Kumar, R.; Toor, G.S.; Wang, Z. Desalination: From Ancient to Present and Future. Water 2021, 13, 2222. Al-Tamīmī (d. 864 AD), Maddat Al-Baqa’,
Baker, Moses Nelson, 1981, The quest for pure water, volume 1,
Birkett, J.D. A brief illustrated history of desalination: From the bible to 1940. Desalination 1984, 50, 17-52
Campo, Juan Eduardo(2009). "Dietary Rules". In John L. Esposito (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Goitein, Shelomo Dov; Sanders, Paula (1967). A Mediterranean Society: Daily life. University of California Press. p. 405
Hajjar, Salwa, 2006, Treatment of drinking water, Aleppo University publications, Faculty of Civil Engineering
Ibn Al-Baītar, Dīa’ Al-Dīn al-’Andaluī, (died 646 H/1248A.D), Al-Jamio Limufradat Al-’Adwī w Al-’Arxīh, Al- Muthanna library, Baghdad, Vol. III
Ibn Rubn & Al-Tatari, Firdaws Al-Hikmah
Jahn, Samia Al Azharia. “From Clarifying Pearls and Gems to Water Coagulation with Alum. History, Surviving Practices, and Technical Assessment.” Anthropos, vol. 94, no. 4/6, 1999, pp. 419-30.
Karnena, Manoj Kumar & Vara, Saritha. (2022). Contemplations and investigations on green coagulants in treatment of surface water: a critical review. Applied Water Science. 12. Salzman, James. (2012). Drinking water: a history. London: Duckworth Overlook
UNICEF, Water in the Middle , www.unicef.org... 2023-10-27
Williams, John Alden (2010). The Word of Islam. University of Texas Press.
World Health Organization (2002-????). Guidelines for drinking-water quality: Addendum, Microbiological agents in drinking water.. 2nd ed. Geneva: World Health Organization
#History #water #MiddleEast #Middleeastern #premodern #pre-modern #Pre_modern #freshwater #northAfrica

[@theculturedjinni]

I hope you liked this video about how you could get drinkable water in the pre-modern Middle East. Please, don't be afraid to comment or voice any questions as I love interacting with you my dear viewers and I will try to respond as quickly as possible to you (though currently due to internet issues this might take a while). Also, please like, subscribe & push the bell icon as those actions do help this channel to grow!

[@beepboop204]

it is common to hear the idea about fresh-water sources being an issue for the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Europeans, so they consumed a lot of watered-down alcohol, either some sort of beer or wine. this always made me wonder about how people who didnt use alcohol would manage

[@theculturedjinni]

@@beepboop204 Well they had other tricks as I mentioned here or they also used alcohol despite the rulings against it.

[@beepboop204]

@@theculturedjinni i must admit, id never thought about the non-alcoholic options before lol i have watched some survival shows, but then that really brought to mind how the geography of the middle east is very different than europe or north america. it is interesting and somewhat hopeful to see how humans can survive and thrive because of their ingenuity and craftiness.

[@theculturedjinni]

@@beepboop204 Yes, what really surprised me is how relatively modern some of the methods seem, using poison (plants and metals such as copper/silver) to kill germs & using chemical reactions with certain minerals to purify the water and so on, but in fact are quite the opposite and have been in use for a long time.

[@SamBroadway]

Very interesting in educational. Once again learning something new everyday from the cultured Jinni

[@theculturedjinni]

👍 I aim to be interesting and educational and I am glad I am!😊

[@beepboop204]

tis interesting to me how many alcohols are called "THE WATER OF LIFE" as opposed to, you know, fresh water 😉

[@theculturedjinni]

Yes, it also was preferable to drink in a lot of cases.

[@beepboop204]

@@theculturedjinni could you perhaps touch on some of the recreational drugs that were available in the Islamic World? hash and khat come to mind. i once took a botany course called "Medicinal and Hallucinogenic Plants" and it was very interesting how a small dose of X can be therapeutic or serve a cultural purpose, but a large dose of X could be anything from poisonous, to psychedelic, to an effective appetite suppressant.

[@theculturedjinni]

@@beepboop204 Sure thing, I have actually considered doing something about the use of psychedelic mushrooms that were used in a lot of mystical Sufi practices and this could be an extension of this.

[@beepboop204]

@@theculturedjinni my best friend in high school was an Algerian dude whose last name was "Sufi" and i must admit that since then i have been very much fascinated by Sufi mysticism and practices. 😅

[@theculturedjinni]

@@beepboop204 Funny namings! Sufism has not been my main focus generally, but I do have some videos planned associated with sufism that hopefully you will find interesting.

[@islamfragenundantworten4655]

6:50 no that is not correct. All islamic school of jurispudence have a consencus that drinks which are intoxicating are forbidden. The difference lies in some methods of producing a special type of juice from fruits (nabidh), but again if it is intoxicating it is clearly forbidden and there is no disagreement in that and if someone would allow the consumption of wine he would become a kafir beside that nice video, but you should correct your pronounciation of the word germ

[@theculturedjinni]

The early (and arguably the later ones too) Islamic schools of jurisprudence were not in consensus regarding the definition and use of intoxicants under the term kahmr, some Hanafi jurists for example restricted the term to a narrower range of beverages and did have allowances for alcoholic beverages made from honey, barley, wheat and millet for example but not for beverages made from grape or dates, and also with exceptions such as long as you were not intoxicated to the degree you could not function , and in the early Hanbali school you had allowances for drinks not made by yeast fermentation (there exist other types of methods to produce alcohol too). You also had allowances among certain thinkers in the other schools for when alcohol was okay due to necessity. Early Muslim fiqh regarding alcohol was rather diverse and I can recommend this article in regards to some of the discussions in connection to it: Haider, Najam (2013). "Contesting Intoxication: Early Juristic Debates on the Lawfulness of Alcoholic Beverages". Islamic Law and Society. 20 (1): 48-89. Regarding my germ pronunciation with hard g instead of a j, I am not a native English speaker, so mistakes like that do unfortunately happen.😅

[@unbelievableHoruz]

@@theculturedjinni That is definetly false. While some hanafi jourists allow those drinks, they clearly state in the sources they are not to be drunk if they are intoxicaring, and then they list some signs when a drink is likely intoxicating, for example letting it rest for some days or the formation of foam and so on. So no, no islamic jurist allows drinks which are intoxicating. And also non-muslim views on islamic jurispudence have absolutely zero value.

[@theculturedjinni]

@unbelievableHoruz I am sorry for this late reply as I was busy with IRL stuff and had also other more pressing priorities that had to be addressed & I kind of forgot to go back to your comment, but anyway: The early hanafis did argue for certain types of alcohol being allowed, see for example with Abu Hanif's views in al-Shaybānī, al-Āthār, 1:182-5 that defined the prohibition of khamr to be the forbidding of major intoxication rather than intoxicants, they furthermore have also considerations if the drink is based upon grape juice or not, with non-grape intoxicants/alcohol being allowed. Similar can also be seen in al-Ṭaḥāwī, Mukhtaṣar, ed. Abū al-Wafāʾ al-Afghānī (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-‘Arabī,1951), 1:277-81 & al-Marghīnānī, al-Hidāya, 4:1528.. Where similar arguments are proposed. As for the counter arguments that were developed in for example the Maliki school it was done for example in Ibn Abī Zayd, Kitāb al-nawādir wa’l-ziyādāt, ed. ‘Abd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥulw,15 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1999), 14:282-95 where you can see that this was a contested topic in the fiqh. And this does not even go into the considerations of those that thought that alcohol was forbidden, but allowable under various circumstances where the need for something to drink or use in medicine makes it permissible by sheer necessity. I hope this clarified matters!👍

[@arsalanshaikh3763]

Very informative video Sir, and thanks for sharing those references you have put a lot of hard work in this video, really appreciate your efforts, lots of love from India and you mentioned Neem leaves and Tulsi leaves they are very highly held in our culture.

[@theculturedjinni]

👍 I am glad you appreciate my efforts! And I did not know that those plants were also so highly held over in India, though it makes sense as they were imported from there and only grown in a limited fashion in for example southern Arabia.

[@thehistoriographer]

10:15 nice fact

[@theculturedjinni]

👍

[@Ushmadand]

5:23 Libanon, is this a typo or did you type in your native language?

[@theculturedjinni]

Probably a typo, but it could also just have been me mistyping it into Swedish (where it is Libanon rather than Lebanon) and/or autocorrect in the titlefile (which is used for creating text in the video editing software) miss-correcting it into Swedish.😅 But, yes that was very much not intended and I meant Lebanon.

[@radish_irrational]

​@theculturedjinni I mean in arabic its also an "I" sound, there is no e in arabic (there is e in urdu and farsi tho ے)

[@theculturedjinni]

@@radish_irrational Yes, though it is pronounced as Libnaan in Arabic so it was probably me writing the Swedish version due to a mistaken in writing or due to auto-correct being set to Swedish.