
How do you go fishing under the desert?
The ancient Iranians who tamed this desert figured that out long ago-perhaps as much as 6,000 years ago. It was a side benefit of the ingenious technology that drew water out of the ground to make the impossible possible: farming and permanent habitation in the desert.
The Persians developed this technology and passed it to others, to as far as Morocco and China.
Here’s how they did it:
First they dug a deep well on higher, less dry ground and in the bottom hollowed out reservoirs that collected both surface and underground water.
Then they dug other wells and reservoirs in 30-meter intervals, all the while making sure that the reservoirs were all on the same horizontal plane.

Then they dug horizontally undergraound to connect each reservoir to the next one. The diggers—men known as “moghani”—descended without ever turning around lest they lost their orientation and ended up digging past the target.
The resulting underground structure, known as qanat, was how they brought water to towns and farms, sometimes over hundreds of kilometers. The water eventually came
Then in the populated areas, structures known as “paw-yaab” were built for people to walk down steps and harvest the water and escape the desert heat. There are plenty of tails of the rich and the royalty who partied down there with wine, women and opium.
The water temperature always is the opposite the temperature above. In the winter, it is warm. In the summer, it is cold and I mean freezing cold. It streams underground until it gushes above ground and into cannels that feed farmland.
Now here’s the fishy part:
The qanat stream continues to gain water from other sources as it travels underground. But the sediments in the main passageway can over time block the smaller tributaries that pour into it.
That’s where “mahi-sia”—or black fish—comes in. The fish, which can grow to as much as 10 centimeters long, cause waves in the water that keep the tributaries from being blocked.
They also taste great and the flesh is so soft that it can be eaten raw, the locals say. They catch the fish with a small net with a long handle.
Today, qanat water keeps alive countless farms and villages all over Iran. With modern wells having been banned in some parts of the country, qanats’ value is immeasurable. People die fighting over its clean, cold water, which is also bottled for retail sales. Water contracts—the right to direct the water into one’s property for so many hours, minutes and seconds per a given period—are traded and speculated on just like real-estate. The contracts hold their value into perpetuity. In one town, I heard of 800-year-old contracts still being honored.
It’s yet another priceless gift from the ancient Iranians who conquered the desert through sheer ingenuity.
“It was the pure instinct for survival that drove them to figure this out,” says Hassan Abdullahzadeh, archeologist at the Cultural Heritage office in Sabzevar.
Abdullahzadeh and I descended down the brick steps into the paw-yaab in the village of Bashteem, 40 kms west of Sabzevar.
This paw-yaab was first built some 600 years ago to harvest qanat water streaming from mountains 40 kms away, Abdullahzadeh explained. The ornate brick ceiling, perhaps ten meters above us, is nearly flat. It is holding up the ground above us, yet no beams were used; just bricks and mortar.
“Existence of water meant the difference between life and death. Without water, the desert not only kills, it grows and swallows what’s around it.
“Now imagine what it’s like to dig deep underground with medieval tools and under constant threat of oxygen deprivation and being buried under a landslide. People constantly died doing this.
“And then add to that having to work in freezing cold water; they had to wade in water when they were expanding the reservoirs.
“No one in their right mind would do this for a living. The men who did this didn’t do it for a living. They did it for spiritual reasons. They felt by drawing life out of the ground they were getting closer to God.
“They wore white clothes as a sign of their spirituality. But they had to constantly change their clothes. They had to get out of the water, take off the wet clothes and warm up under blankets.
“They lived underground for months, even a year, without surfacing, eating and sleeping down there. This was their mission. They put their lives on the line as a spiritual offering.
“By taming the desert we are combating the leprosy that is spreading throughout the world,” Abdullahzadeh says, referring to the worldwide water shortage that some expect to lead to a crisis far worse than the current energy shortage.