Chapter 12 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

system, the size of the canal and its place in the hierarchical network from main canal down to field,
and the function of the system, whether for delivery or drainage. (7)
A similar pattern is evident in the words used to describe hydraulic wheels. Strictly speaking, a noria is
a wheel moved by the force of the current alone, while a sinia is one moved by human or animal
power: but only in Murcian usage is this distinction correctly made. In Catalonia and Valencia sinia
displaced noria completely and was used to describe all hydraulic [219] wheels. In other parts of Spain
the common word for diversion dam, azud (and its variant azuda), came to be applied to the current
wheel. (8)
At the base of this fluidity is regional variation in irrigation customs along ethnic lines. Terminology
varied principally as the ethnic composition of the original Muslim irrigators and the Christian settlers
varied. The place of arabisms in the picture is crucial. The fact that there were not enough terms in the
Romance tongues of the conquerors to replace the multiplicity of definitions in a highly developed
irrigation system made this sector of the lexicon particularly susceptible to linguistic borrowing; the
fact that Arabic was unintelligible to most of the new settlers ensured that the borrowing would be
loosely structured. Thus many areas of human thought and industry were described by two sets of
terms. The Romance tongue of the Christians, together with Latin expressions of long acceptance in
Catalonia and Castile, coexisted with words acquired from the Arabs. Irrigation was one of those areas
of culture (warfare was another) where the arabisms tended to predominate.
That many of the concepts of irrigation were new to the Christians is indicated by the intrusion of
vernacular arabisms into Latin documents in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This
phenomenon is indicative of the lack of consensus concerning a given term (evidence of entrenched
regional variation, in other words), and the lack of a Latin or Romance tradition to guide the scribe. (9)
REGIONAL AND LOCAL VARIATION
Most of the arabisms common throughout eastern Spain were present either in Castilian or Catalan by
the thirteenth century. Sinia and safareig, both specialized hydraulic devices, were among the earliest
peninsular arabisms, dating from the epoch of Islamic expansion (711 to the mid-eleventh century).
Cequia and açut, the most common and typical of Valencian irrigation arabisms, date from the epoch of
the great Christian conquests (mid-[220]eleventh to the end of the twelfth century) and were therefore
already in the language when the Valencian region was taken from the Muslims. Alcaduf, aljub,
azumbre, çabacequies, and marjal are arabisms which passed into the Romance vernaculars in the
course of the thirteenth century. (10) Most of the localized arabisms as well must have passed into the
Christian vernacular in the late thirteenth century during the post-Conquest process of learning local
customs from Muslim irrigators.
The lists that follow include all the important regional arabisms and most of the significant local ones;
the contents of the lists are summarized in Tables 22 and 23.
Regional Irrigation Arabisms
1) açut (çut, azut), "diversion dam," Arabic al-sudd; the most common and widest spread arabism
besides cequia. The Romance equivalent, resclosa, retains the sense of the original Arabic sadda, to
close. The word has been used consistently throughout eastern Spain from the Reconquest to the
present, and the Castilian form, azud, dates from the period of the great Christian conquests (1050 to
the end of the twelfth century). Both the word sudd and the technology are typical of southern Arabia.
(11)