Qasabeh Aqueduct

If you have ever traveled to Gonabad or searched about it, you must have heard the story of Qasabeh Gonabad aqueduct. This aqueduct is a huge, labyrinthine, dark and dreadful structure. This very old building in the heart of the earth does not seem to be man-made in the city of Gonabad! A city that the locals and their inhabitants believe its old name Jennabad, means the village of jinns. It has changed to Janabad and then Gonabad over the years! Beneath this legendary city is a larger legend buried.
As mentioned, it is inconceivable that humans have been able to dig such spiral tunnels underground. According to the legends, in the maze of Qasabeh aqueduct, the land of jinns is located and every human being who discovers the way to enter it takes their property.
The old people of Gonabad, who even their fathers lived in this place from the beginning, when they want to talk about this castle, say about it: We have heard the story of this aqueduct a lot from our grandmothers. Our elders always said that the construction of this aqueduct at this depth cannot be done by the son of Adam, and we have no doubt that this aqueduct was built by forces beyond human beings.
Another group believes that men were forced to dig aqueducts by the king. Due to the difficult conditions and the lack of sufficient air, many of them were killed during the digging and dredging, and no trace of them remains. They went into the aqueduct in white clothes like shrouds because there was always the possibility that they would not return alive. These men became wandering ghosts living in these tunnels.
Bahman, one of the ancient kings of Iran, did not consider himself worthy of the monarchy after committing a great sin, but the priests voted that he could do a good deed to atone for his sin, the good of which would be made public. Bahman built a thousand aqueducts in waterless places around his reign, including the important aqueduct of Qasabeh Gonabad.
Due to the large distance between the footprints seen on the floor of the aqueduct, it was suggested that the diggers of this aqueduct were at least 20 cm taller than modern humans. Of course, due to the loss of some footprints, the opening of new wells or measurement errors, it cannot be a scientific cause.
Other legends say that after many people needed water, a person named Taher Abshenas found a way to solve the problem. He ordered the jinni to make a canal and direct the water from top to bottom, and the aqueduct was created from there.
According to one of the old legends, the construction of the Qasabeh Gonabad aqueduct should be attributed to the reason for expiation of a great sin by the order of Bahman, who was one of the ancient kings of Iran. According to this famous story, which has been quoted 12 times in the Shahnameh of the poet Ferdowsi, this aqueduct, which is located in the city of Gonabad, dates back to before the reign of Kaykhosrow.
Aside from some mythological and historical stories that tell of the aqueduct’s antiquity, archaeologists who have taken the aqueduct as their subject have found out using pottery collected from the mouths of major wells that This strange aqueduct dates back to the reign of the Achaemenids.
The length of this aqueduct is more than thirty-three thousand meters and 470 wells have been drilled inside it. The depth of the largest well is 300 meters. Those who want to see the aqueduct are only allowed to visit 700 meters of it, which is concreted. With a little care in these numbers, we can find out about the reason of this number of stories and legends about this engineering masterpiece.
This aqueduct shows the dehydration of the region in the distant past, and thus they solved this problem with great effort and amazing construction of this structure in the distant times. In many parts of Iran, it was the aqueduct that solved the water crisis and brought prosperity to cities and villages.
Qasabeh aqueduct is the longest and oldest aqueduct in the world. As soon as you enter it, the light of day disappears and darkness takes its place. After all these years, this aqueduct still provides the water needed by the city without anyone explaining it. After many efforts in recent years, Iran managed to register the Qasabeh aqueduct in the UNESCO list of monuments.
Those who dug the aqueduct were highly learned people and were very skilled in geology, hydrology, etc., so that each of the disciplines leading to the main discipline of the aqueduct stretched along one valley that the Kalat, Disfan, and Khanik valleys are the deepest and wateriest ones among the valleys. Studies have shown that first the aqueduct was dug in this place and then the city of Gonabad was built on it. The people of this land used to live along the Kal-e-Shoor river, 35 meters from Gonabad, but after the drought and the salinization of the water, they thought of building an aqueduct.