Chapter 12 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

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This is highly dubious reasoning, and the Arabic etymology gains further support from the presence of the form Favara in the Repartimiento and from the appearance of the primitive Arabic article Alfavara in a document of 1430. (58) Rascanya is also an arabism, from râs, "head," and canya (from canna, canal). Here, though, the canal takes its name from the place it irrigates, called Rascayna (cayna, the diminutive of canna) in the Repartimiento. (59) A repeated canal name in the Valencian region is Algirós (also spelled Aljiros, Algeros, Algiroz). It is the name of one of the three major branches of the Mestalla system in Valencia and of [229] an important canal near Alcira. Perhaps, too, the canal in Elche called Algorós is related etymologically. (60) The derivation is from al-zurûb, the plural of zarb (from zariba, to flow). But in spite of the plural form it has a singular meaning, "the canal," just as almenara is derived from the plural form almanâhir, "the canals." Even though the canals in question are not now drainage channels, they are related etymologically to azarbe (from al-zarb) and may originally have served that purpose. (61) Canals also take their names from other hydraulic expressions. One canal in Gandia is called Ador (turn), and a secondary channel of the Aljufia system in Murcia is called Zarahiche (cistern). (62) Similarly named are the divisors of Elche called Aljupet (little cistern) and El Albellon (drain). (63) Mills, too, frequently bear hydraulic names. The mill of Calduf (from alcaduf, by metathesis) on the Vernisa Canal in Gandia derived its name from the buckets of a water wheel. (64) The Murcian mill called Tarquin (65) must have been so named for good hydraulic reasons. Mills create backwaters, causing a silt deposit through a lowering in the velocity of the current. The diversion dam and the canal -- the two most important visible symbols of irrigation -- lent their names to toponyms. Thus a place near Cullera was called El Azut, and the village of Burjassot (tower of the dam) in the Valencian huerta on the Moncada Canal similarly took its name from a dam. (66) The canal lent its name to a river, the Guadasequies (river of the canals). (67) The river Cenia, the northern boundary of the kingdom of Valencia, took its name from the sâniya, always a popular device in the province of Castellón. (68) Numerous other hydraulic arabisms, notably those derived from springs ('ayn, al-hama) and wells (b'ir) dot the Spanish countryside. (69) One such, of more than passing interest, is Titaguas, a Valencian village near Chelva that takes its name from the Berber tit, "spring," plural titduàn or titaguan, easily becoming confused with aguas, which was added as a reinforcement. (70) Notes for Chapter Twelve 1. See Caro Baroja, "Norias, azudas, aceñas," pp. 60-61. 2. Neuvonen, Arabismos, p. 85. Ramifications of the multiplicity of channel terms are endless: Neuvonen quotes a line of Arabic which mentions a "canal which is called sâniya and which in Romance is called calicin [i.e., cauces]." He lists reguera, regadera, and aguaducho as additional synonyms. 3. Rossi, "Irrigazione nel Yemen," p 356. 4. Jaume Roig, Spill, 11. 14779-14782. 5. José Latour Brotons, Antecedentes de la primitiva Ley de Aguas (Madrid, 1955), p. 45. 6. Ibid., p. 45; Ruiz-Funes, Derecho consuetudinario de Murcia, p. 140; Diaz Cassou, Ordenanzas y costumbres, p. 63. 7. The assigning of a different name to each gradation of canal in a hierarchical distributory system has
een standard in Mediterranean irrigation systems since Akkadian and Babylonian times. See Jorgen Laessoe, "The irrigation system at Ulhu, 8th century B.C.," Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 5 (1951), 25- 26, on the variety and hierarchy of canal names: "Hirîtu seems to be a main canal from which smaller and narrower ditches branch off. iku, palgu, and atappu all seem to belong in this second category". In Babylonia, the larger canals were called narû, i.e. river, cf. Arabic nahr (R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, II, 21). In Iraq today -- to cite but one example drawn from the Islamic world -- the main canal is called jadwal; the primary and secondary feeders bada and naharân; still smaller channels 'umud; followed by the equivalent of a Valencian cequiola, the mirriyân, which runs only the length of a plot, finally there is the sharûgh, or irrigation furrow (Fernea, Shaykh and Effendi, p 122). Three thousand years of continuity in irrigations terminology indicated by Babylonian naru, Arabic nahr, naharân, and Valencian almenara, from the same root (see below, nn. 15, 54) is truly impressive. 8. Caro Baroja, "Norias, azudas, aceñas," pp. 52-59. 9. F. W. Maitland described the instability of agrarian terminology in Norman England whereby Anglo- Saxon, French, and Latin terms were "rudely intermixed" during the transitional period following the Conquest and finally emerged as an organic whole as some synonyms perished and others survived; Domesday Book and Beyond (London, 1897), pp. 8-9. A similar situation was produced in Valencia after the Reconquest, with the difference that no kingdomwide standardized irrigation terminology ever evolved. Frequently Latin documents included both the arabism and the Romance equivalent in such phrases as "azutum sive resclosa" or "cequia sive aqueductus." But in the majority of Valencian documents the arabism was preferred to the Romance form; see documents of 1270 and 1318, where açut is declined in Latin (azutorum, azulo cequiae, azuta) -- Branchat, Tratado de derechos, III, pp 196, 202. The use of arabisms to describe institutions or artifacts of long establishment in Christian Spanish culture is perplexing to Neuvonen (Arabismos, p. 307). The problem, really, is not one simply of the long existence of a given object but of the relative value ascribed to it by each culture. See Bellver and Cacho's comments on the use of "cequia" for all open water-conducting ditches beside the continued use of the Latin canalis (in the derived forms canal, canalat) but only in the restricted sense of a roof gutter (Influencia, p. 45). 10. See Neuvonen, Arabismos, esp. intro, chap summaries, and concl., pp. 28-33, 81-83, 135-137, 257- 260, 300-310. The percentage of agricultural (including irrigation) terms passing into Spanish in the three periods considered is constant: 13.2 percent (711 to mid-eleventh century), 9.6 percent (mideleventh to end of twelfth), and 10.1 percent (thirteenth century). Note also the lag between the generalization of a phenomenon in Al-Andalus and the diffusion of the arabism into the Romance vernaculars. Rice was grown in Spain from the eighth century on, but the use of the arabism arroz in Romance became commonly only after the great conquests, in the thirteenth century (ibid., p 164). 11. On açut see Neuvonen, Arabismos, pp. 132--133; Corominas, Diccionario, I, 352; Alcover, Diccionari, II, 87. Cf. the Granadan term maglaca (control gate?) from the Arabic ghalaqa, to close, cut off (Franquet y Bertrán, Ensayo, II, 178). Sadd is the common word for dam in modern Yemen (Rossi, "Irrigazione nel Yemen," p. 349). 12. On albellon, Neuvonen, Arabismos, p. 253, the Castilian form, albollón, passed into that language through Aragonese. Also see Diaz Cassou, Huerta de Murcia, p. 226 n.1, and Ordenanzas y costumbres, p. 67, n.1. For use of this word in the context of irrigation, see ARV, Gobernación. 2214, 7th hand, fol. 46v (Mar. 26, 1416): "los albellons qui de present hi son per a obs de regar les dites terres" (re. Rabana Canal, in Játiva). 13. On alcaduf, Corominas, Diccionario, 1, 250-251; Neuvonen, Arabismos, 145--146; Alcover, Diccionari, I, 437; G. S Cohn, "La noria marocaine," p. 29 n. 1; Glick, "Medieval irrigation clocks," p. 426.
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Page 3 and 4: 2) albellon, "sewer, drain," Arabic
Page 5 and 6: Arabism Meaning Major variants açu
Page 7: Outaïa a dâr is, similarly, twelv
Page 11 and 12: "Irrigazione nel Yemen," pp. 352, 3
Page 13: 1959), pp. 18--19. 57. "Molinería

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