{"id":7031,"date":"2024-01-19T09:51:51","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T09:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grupo.us.es\/hac\/presa-andalusi-proyecto-segura\/"},"modified":"2024-05-12T10:27:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-12T10:27:47","slug":"andalusi-dam-proyecto-segura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grupo.us.es\/hac\/en\/andalusi-dam-proyecto-segura\/","title":{"rendered":"OUR RESEARCHERS DATE AN ANDALUSI DAM FROM THE 12TH CENTURY"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEVILLE \u00a0\/ January 17, 2024<\/span><\/p>\n

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A team led by the University of Seville and coordinated by Professor Santiago Quesada<\/strong> <\/a>has scientifically mapped, characterised, and dated this mediaeval Muslim hydraulic infrastructure. The findings obtained have allowed us to know what this dam was for, what the water diversion and storage system was like, calculate the capacity of the reservoir, the surface of the irrigated lands, or the causes of the collapse of the dam. Essential knowledge is needed to understand what this work meant and what the landscapes associated with these artificial sheets of water in al-Andalus were like<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The well-known Andalusi poet and chess player Abenamar<\/strong> or Ibn ‘Ammar<\/strong>, lover and minister of al-Mu’tamid<\/strong>, had a hectic and intense life that he spent plotting and intriguing for various taifas of al-Andalus. In one of them, he wrote an elegy to the poet king of Seville in which he asked for forgiveness for his multiple betrayals and crimes. In poetry, he remembers, with nostalgia, the nights they both spent during their youth in a reservoir, next to a dam or weir in Silves<\/strong>. After a long journey through different territories, Abenamar was deceived and captured, around the year 1084, in the city of Segura (Ja\u00e9n). From there, he is transferred to C\u00f3rdoba, where he was acquired at auction by al-Mu’tamid. Abenamar committed a further act of treason after receiving his pardon, which led to the emir ultimately executing him with his own hands.<\/p>\n

In Silves, there are no traces of the hydraulic work that Abenamar mentions in his poetry, so it is not possible to know what the aquatic place evoked in the poem was like. However, in the territory of Segura, in the current Cazorla, Segura, and Las Villas Natural Park in the northeast of the province of Ja\u00e9n, there are still vestiges of an Andalusi dam that transformed rural land into an albuhera, or small sea<\/strong>. This river barrier blocked the bed of the Trujala River at its entrance into a gorge that Arab sources call the strait or Garganta del Ciervo. This ancient construction is an important source of primary information, useful for knowing how the Andalusian containment dams designed to store water resources worked. However, until now, it had not been the subject of structural studies, paramental analyses, or rigorous and detailed surveys.<\/p>\n

The work of data collection, analysis of sources, and laboratory tests, both in the Albuhera reservoir and in the Garganta del Ciervo dam, began in the summer of 2020 and ended in 2023. Activities that have been the last stage of the<\/strong> #ProyectoSegura<\/strong><\/a>, financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation within the State Research, Development, and Innovation Programme. This work includes, in its entirety, the exhaustive architectural research that this team has carried out uninterruptedly since 2003 on the system of infrastructure, towers, and rural castles existing in the Sierra de Segura.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For this purpose, a method based on means such as drones and digital techniques such as GIS georeferencing, point clouds, and topographic or photogrammetric surveys<\/strong> has been used. The innovative use of these tools and technologies means a total transformation in the acquisition of sources of knowledge about the numerous dispersed rural heritages that are still preserved in Andalusia. Above all, when there are no possibilities or economic viability to carry out archaeological excavations.<\/p>\n

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