A STUDY ON CISTERNS IN THE HERAT OLD CITY, AFGHANISTAN

Abstract

 Water supply cisterns have historically been an important element of Herat Old City, an oasis city on the ancient trade route in Afghanistan. This paper is intended to reproduce the distribution of water supply cisterns based on the existing literature and interviews with local residents, and to understand how the cisterns and their network developed within the city. Each of the eleven existing cisterns are measured and the typologies of their architectural forms are analyzed in order to clarify their historical development. The data used for the research includes Dari (Persian) documents, historical maps and satellite photographs, and field surveys.