qanat

I somehow managed to read most of Children of Dune without looking up what a qanat is.

Gonabad qanat network, reputedly the world’s largest, extends for more than 20 miles beneath the Barakuh Mountains of northeast Iran.

Everyone still just calls it Qanat because it's such a cool word, with an interesting history!

That seems like a great idea if you happen to build near a functional qanat.

The qanat system was effectively destroyed by the Mongols when they invaded Iran centuries ago.

When I first read the article I thought a qanat was a type of stepwell[0].

A qanat can be little more than a shaded pond.

Back when I read Dune as a teenager I didn't know what a qanat was and I didn't bother looking it up.

A nearby shopping center used to be called Qanat until it got bought out and renamed to the very generic (Corporation) Square a few years ago.

I learned about Qanat reading Desmond Bagley airport thrillers written in the 60s.

And so I'd guess the Arabic 'qanat' either from either Akkadian or from its own Semitic vocabulary or was borrowed back in from Greek.

After that it's always been engineering: after the first water clocks and the qanat hydraulics seemed a good explanation of everything.

A little side note, the original name of Qanat in Persian is “Kariz”.

"Qanat" might even be a code word for terrorist hideout and underground infrastructure.

Qanat’s are not magical water making devices, they are just a long tunnel which leads the water already in the ground to the surface.

But I see your point in that, resistance to earthquakes or adversities are not what Qanat/Kariz were famous for (as far as we know).

My favourite is the Zarch Qanat, which is about 3000 years old and has a tunnel into the water table which is about 71 kilometres long with over 2000 vertical shafts into the tunnel.