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The geographer al-Muqadasi (985 CE) relates: "In Jerusalem there is an abundance of water. Therefore it is said that in Jerusalem there is no place without a source of water or where the sound of prayer is not heard. Few houses are without one or more cisterns. Within the city there are three large pools... Within the precinct of the Temple Mount there are twenty enormous pools, and there are some quarters in which there are no public cisterns, rather the water is received from drainage of the streets. Water is stored at some distance from the city, in the valley. Two pools have been fashioned there into which rainwater flows in the winter, and from the two pools canals carry the water to the city." In the early Arab period, Jerusalem's water supply was based on collecting rainwater, and parts of the systems which were built in the Byzantine period continued to serve the Muslims as well. To these were added a system of pipes that brought water to the Temple Mount and to the palaces below. |
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