thumb|The [[norias of Hama on the Orontes River in Syria (video).]]

A noria (, nā‘ūra, plural nawāʿīr, from , nā‘orā, lit. "growler") is a hydropowered scoop wheel used to lift water into a small aqueduct, either for the purpose of irrigation or to supply water to cities and villages.

Name and meaning

Etymology

The English word noria is derived via Spanish noria from Arabic nā‘ūra (ناعورة), which comes from the Arabic verb meaning to "groan" or "grunt", in reference to the sound it made when turning. For devices powered by animals, the usual term is saqiyah or saqiya. Other types of similar devices are grouped under the name of chain pumps. However, the names of traditional water-raising devices used in the Middle East, India, Spain and other areas are often used loosely and overlappingly, or vary depending on region. Al-Jazari's book on mechanical devices, for example, groups the water-driven wheel and several other types of water-lifting devices under the general term saqiya. In Spain, by contrast, the term noria is used for both types of wheels, whether powered by animals or water current. For a modern noria in Steffisburg, Switzerland, the designers have uniquely connected the two functional wheels not directly but via a pair of cog wheels. This allows individual variation of speeds, diameters, and water levels.

Unlike the water wheels found in watermills, a noria does not provide mechanical power to any other process. A few historical norias were hybrids, consisting of waterwheels assisted secondarily by animal power. There is at least one known instance where a noria feeds seawater into a saltern.

History

thumb|A noria running in [[Erlangen in southern Germany, on the river Regnitz]]

thumb|Remains of the medieval [[Albolafia noria in Cordoba, Spain (the wheel itself was reconstructed in the 20th century)]]

Paddle-driven water-lifting wheels had appeared in ancient Egypt by the 4th century BC. According to John Peter Oleson, both the compartmented wheel and the hydraulic noria appeared in Egypt by the 4th century BC, with the saqiyah being invented there a century later. This is supported by archeological finds in the Faiyum, where the oldest archeological evidence of a water wheel has been found, in the form of a saqiyah dating back to the 3rd century BC. A papyrus dating to the 2nd century BC also found in the Faiyum mentions a water wheel used for irrigation, a 2nd-century BC fresco found at Alexandria depicts a compartmented saqiyah, and the writings of Callixenus of Rhodes mention the use of a saqiyah in the Ptolemaic Kingdom during the reign of Pharaoh Ptolemy IV Philopator in the late 3rd century BC.

The undershot water wheel and overshot water wheel, both animal- and water-driven, and with either a compartmented body (Latin tympanum) or a compartmented rim, were used by Hellenistic engineers between the 3rd and 2nd century BC. In 1st century BC, Roman architect Vitruvius described the function of the noria. Around 300, the Romans replaced the wooden compartments with separate, attached ceramic pots that were tied to the outside of an open-framed wheel, thereby creating the noria.

During the Islamic Golden Age, norias were adopted from classical antiquity by Muslim engineers, who made improvements to the noria. In 1206, Ismail al-Jazari introduced the use of the carank in the noria and saqiya, and the concept of minimizing intermittency was implied for the purpose of maximising their efficiency.

Muslim engineers used norias to discharge water into aqueducts which carried the water to towns and fields. In the 10th century, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi's Al-Hawi describes a noria in Iraq that could lift as much as 153,000 litres per hour, or 2550 litres per minute. This is comparable to the output of modern norias in East Asia, which can lift up to 288,000 litres per hour, or 4800 litres per minute.

In the late 13th century the Marinid sultan Abu Yaqub Yusuf built an enormous noria, sometimes referred to as the "Grand Noria", in order to provide water for the vast Mosara Garden he created in Fez, Morocco. Its construction began in 1286 and was finished the next year. The noria, designed by an Andalusian engineer named Ibn al-Hajj, measured 26 metres in diameter and 2 metres wide. The most famous are the Albolafia in Cordoba (of uncertain date, partly reconstructed today), along the Guadalquivir River, and a former noria in Toledo, along the Tagus River. Norias and similar devices were also used on vast scale in some parts of Spain for agricultural purposes. The rice plantations of Valencia were said to have 8000 norias, while Mallorca had over 4000 animal-driven saqiyas which were in use up until the beginning of the 20th century. The Alcantarilla Noria near Murcia, a noria built in the 15th century under Spanish Christian rule, is one of the better-known examples to have survived to the present-day.

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File:Nora Hidráulica do Mouchão.jpg|Noria in Tomar, Portugal. Paired ceramic pots along the wheel collect the water.

File:Nora Hidráulica (pormenor).jpg|Close-up of the previous

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Kintjir of waterschepwiel in Djambi Sumatra TMnr 10007886.jpg|Noria in Jambi, Indonesia, between 1914 and 1921

File:Rastan, 1934-39.jpg|In Al-Rastan, Syria in the 1930s

File:Iraq-wheels-Euphrates.jpg|On the Euphrates, at Ajmiyeh, near Rawa, Iraq, in 1911

File:Noria CDR4.JPG|Noria de Casas del Río, in Requena, Spain, in 2009. Operational.

File:Azuda de la Montaña, Aranjuez 01.jpg|, Madrid, Spain

File:RuedaAlcantarilla.jpg|Noria of Alcantarilla in Spain, operational as of 2020

File:Sénia de la séquia reial del Xúquer.jpg|Noria of L'Alcúdia, Ribera Alta

File:SchoepfradSteffisburg251.jpg|Noria in Steffisburg shown lifting ~150 L/s

File:Norias on Trebisnjica river, Bosnia and Herzegovina.jpg|alt=Norias on Trebišnjica river|Two norias on the Trebišnjica River (Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina) are still in use for irrigation

</gallery>

Emergency management

In some countries, such as Spain, France and Belgium, the term noria is also used to describe a logistical process that involves the repeated transfer of people or material as if according to a scoop wheel, particularly in emergency management. Most notably, the term is used to describe the structured transport of casualties in a mass casualty incident between the scene and the different stages of health care. Resources such as rescue workers or ambulances that are active in a noria consecutively bring casualties from one stage of care to the next.

References

Sources

  • Spanish norias in the Region of Murcia
  • Photos of the norias of Hama in Syria