Monsoon winds continue to lash northern India this week. While the mountains struggle with devastating floods, cities in the lowland and on the coast are inundated. It wasn’t so long ago that our cities were struggling with drinking water shortages under a sweltering summer sun. Though our unpreparedness for climate change becomes more apparent every year, unreliable weather isn’t new to the subcontinent.
Here’s how three of the most important medieval metropolises— Vijayanagara, Bijapur, and Fatehpur Sikri—managed the challenges of inclement weather.
Crowdfunded reservoirs
The great cities of contemporary India—think Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru—have all grown rapidly in the last century due to internal migration. In the colonial period and after, resources and jobs have been concentrated in state capitals, with much fewer opportunities available in the rural hinterland. As such, Indians seeking to climb the socioeconomic ladder can either make do with what our cities offer or leave. Civic infrastructure does not drive internal migration.
This was not the case through most of Indian history, especially the latter part of the medieval period, c. 1400–1600 CE. During this time, states began to transition to the use of gunpowder and developed rudimentary bureaucracies. Technology was harnessed to expand cultivation into drier climates. And, seeking talented labour, rulers went out of their way to ensure that urban centres offered the chance for a good life. Arguably the most successful in this was Vijayanagara (present-day Hampi), nestled along the rocky courses of the Tungabhadra River. With an estimated population of 3,00,000–4,00,000, Vijayanagara was second only to Beijing in size for its time. It easily dwarfed London and Paris.
In The Irrigation and Water Supply Systems of Vijayanagara, historian Dominic J Davison-Jenkins argues, based on inscriptions and travellers’ accounts, that the kings of Vijayanagara were considered responsible for ensuring the city’s access to water. Vijayanagara was in the dry interior of the Deccan, on soils that had poor water retention. In previous centuries, smaller settlements in the region had figured out how to build modest catchment tanks for rainwater, digging channels that hugged contours and gathered runoff from the boulder-like hills. The military campaigns of Vijayanagara kings gave them the resources to expand these to hitherto-unimagined scales. In her paper ‘Supplying the City: The Role of Reservoirs in an Indian Urban Landscape’, archaeologist Kathleen D Morrison notes that reservoirs around Vijayanagara ranged in size from 2 metres to 3 kilometres long; the highest embankment was 28 metres high—taller than some apartment buildings today.
Davison-Jenkins makes particular note of Vijayanagara inscriptions linked to reservoirs. One of the most elaborate, dating to the fifteenth century, mentions the need for a Brahmin ‘learned in Hydrology’, and a dam made of stone with sluices to control eddies and turbulence. It also warns against the risks of over-silting and salinity. Enormous resources were dedicated to tank building: According to the Portuguese traveller Fernando Paes, one royal project employed nearly twenty thousand people. As irrigation spread further inland from the river banks, powerful lords and temples also invested in tank building, expanding the cultivable area. However, this also meant that much of the construction was based on practical engineering and rule-of-thumb, requiring frequent repairs and reinvestment.
Morrison notes that towering sluices, which controlled the flow of water, were carved with likenesses of tank investors. As an annual return, investors could also expect cultivators to pay them a share of the crops. A good chunk of Vijayanagara’s water systems, then, were essentially crowdfunded. As Morrison puts it: “In this way, small donations or investments were pooled to finance irrigation works requiring large capital outlays, and even very large-scale agricultural facilities could be constructed without either centralised initiative or control… Not only were the rights and obligations of cultivators and investors shared, but so also were the risks.” For an investment in public infrastructure, families could be guaranteed a share of harvests of different crops from multiple villages—a remarkably climate-resilient arrangement.
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The urban scenario
In comparison to the vast and complex irrigation system, Vijayanagara’s municipal water systems were limited. Davison-Jenkins’ fieldwork found that the majority of the city’s water facilities—fountains, aqueducts, piping, channels—were focussed in its royal centre. Some temples had large reservoirs, which must have fulfilled some of the city’s drinking water requirements. But otherwise, communities had to maintain their own small rainwater tanks.
This was in marked contrast to Vijayanagara’s rival, Bijapur, the seat of a Sultanate of the same name. In ‘Bijāpūr: Alimentation en Eau D’une Villa Musulmane Du Dekkan Aux XVI–XVII Siecles’, scholar Klaus Rotzer writes that Bijapur’s kings invested in cutting-edge water management technology from Iran, including hydraulic lime mortar; sophisticated locking systems for barrages; and the qanat, an underground channel with regular vertical shafts serving as wells. The Bijapur Sultans also took care to build baolis or stepwells in the city’s most crowded neighbourhoods, which were accessible to all (though of course the palaces got the best systems). After a long period of neglect, the restoration of these stepwells in 2022 rejuvenated the city’s access to year-round drinking water. The Deccan Heritage Foundation has also worked on the restoration of other historic water systems in the region, including the qanat at Bidar.
We are often preoccupied with the military competition between Vijayanagara and the Sultanates, forgetting that the cities also competed in their water facilities and sought to attract the best engineering talent. Medieval Bijapur’s hydraulic experts were able to work out the pressure exerted by water on the base of their reservoirs, building angled bunds that took up much less material and resources. By controlling water pressure, they could easily desilt canals. Finally, the use of vaulted roofs and mortar made construction more cost-effective than in Vijayanagara. Bijapur’s quality infrastructure made it an attractive immigration destination; its court included talent from as far away as Armenia and Ethiopia, which in turn fed into its political and military success.
While Vijayanagara’s crowdfunded canal system was much more extensive and productive, it was irregular, required continuous manual labour for desilting, and was subject to disastrous leaks. (Indeed, the Raya canal, built at great cost in the 16th century, was never used due to issues with its bund.) Bijapur’s mortar-lined, engineered qanats, on the other hand, efficiently channelled water to its urban stepwells, but its agrarian hinterland was nowhere near as rich as Vijayanagara’s.
Yet in many ways the greatest beneficiary of these developments was the Mughal Empire, which by the late 16th century was becoming the subcontinent’s dominant power. Historian SAA Rizvi notes that Fatullah Shirazi, an engineer resident at the Bijapur court, had moved to the new Mughal capital, Fatehpur Sikri, by 1582. (As it happens, the names of all these medieval capitals meant “City of Victory”). By ordering a nearby valley closed off and flooded, the Mughal Emperor Akbar created a vast reservoir on the city’s shore, which served the needs of its people and animals. Historian Syed Ali Nadeem Rizvi, in Fatehpur Sikri Revisted, describes extensive systems of rainwater harvesting integrated into the Jama Masjid complex as well as the tomb of Sheikh Salim Chishti. Underground channels funnelled water into storage tanks. The most elaborate waterworks, on the northern side of the city, used waterwheels and an elaborate pulley system to raise water uphill to the palaces. Though Fatehpur Sikri is popularly believed to have been abandoned due to water shortages, Rizvi shows there’s little evidence of this in Mughal court records—it was extraordinarily well-provided with water. The city’s gradual decline and abandonment were due to political shifts in the 17th century.
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Lessons for today?
Medieval cities did have one major benefit that contemporary cities do not: much smaller populations. On the other hand, the technological possibilities of today would have been completely unimaginable to medieval hydraulic engineers.
My colleague, archaeologist Disha Ahluwalia, has pointed out that premodern cities—especially those of the Indus Valley Civilisation—took care not to interfere with natural drainage systems, while also rigorously maintaining their own water supply and drainage. While hydraulic engineering will be key to making more climate-resilient cities, the more fundamental challenge will be in urban planning and in the responsible custodianship of wetlands and water resources.
What, then, can we learn from medieval cities? Beneath the engineering is the political economy of water: Of community stewardship, as in the Vijayanagara hinterland; of political commitment to water provision, as at Bijapur and Fatehpur; but most importantly, the relationship between citizens and the state. Until political fortunes depend on well-heeled and educated citizens demanding quality civic infrastructure, we can only look forward to the next year’s monsoon disasters and summer droughts.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of ‘Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire’ and the award-winning ‘Lords of the Deccan’. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha.
This article is a part of the ‘Thinking Medieval‘ series that takes a deep dive into India’s medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)