Water as an Actor in the Life-World of Khurāsānīs in the Early Islamic Centuries

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Document Type : Original

Authors

1 Nowruzgan Laboratory

2 Department of Archaeology, Ha.C., Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran

Abstract

The Lebenswelt of Khurāsānīs in the early Islamic centuries was deeply dependent on water at ‎every level and in every aspect of life. Just as rivers and streams had physical and material ‎sources—emerging from one place, flowing through another, spreading across the land, and ‎bringing about prosperity—they also had mental and spiritual sources, slopes, basins, and ‎destinations. What gave coherence and integrity to this world was the interweaving of these ‎material and immaterial dimensions. Some aspects of this Lebenswelt are revealed in texts ‎composed by the Khurāsānīs of that time. The central question of this study is: Based on what ‎these texts convey, what role did water play—as a material, mental, and cultural actor—in the ‎world of Khurāsānīs during the early Islamic centuries‏?‏



Drawing on Actor–Network Theory as well as concepts from cultural environmental history and ‎human–environmental studies, this article explores the role of water in this historical ‎Lebenswelt. Rather than viewing water as merely a natural element, we approach it as a material, ‎spatial, and cultural actor that contributed to the organization of collective life, spatial order, ‎power relations, and human mentalities. Through close readings of Persian prose and verse texts ‎from early Islamic Khurāsān, we examine the complex network of interactions between water ‎and other human and nonhuman actors. In this network, water emerges as a mediator of ‎meaning-making, social order, and lived experience—simultaneously present in the visible and ‎invisible realms—and plays a structuring, mediating, and multidimensional role‏.‏

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