Access
In order to access the water, one would go through the entrance (sar-dar) which would always be open, traverse a stairway and reach the bottom where there would be faucets to access the water in the storage. Next to the faucet would be a built-in seat or platform, a water drain for disposing water from the faucet, and ventilation shafts. Depending on where (i.e. what depth) the faucets would be, the water would be colder or warmer. Some storages would have multiple faucets located at intervals along the stairway. Thus nobody had access to the body of water itself, hence minimizing possible contamination. The storage is completely isolated from the outside except for ventilation shafts or windcatchers. To further minimize contamination, the storage tank’s interior was scattered with a salty compound that would form a surface on top of the water. The storage tank would then be monitored year round to ensure that the surface had not been disturbed. The water of course would be drawn from the bottom using the pasheer.
In some ab anbars, such as in Qazvin, the stairway and storage would be constructed adjacently alongside each other, whereas in Yazd the storage and stairway often had no structural connections to each other and the stairway was positioned independently.
The number of steps would depend on the capacity of the storage. The Sardar-e Bozorg ab anbar, for example, has 50 steps that would take the user to a depth of 17 m below grade. Nabi mosque ab anbar had 36 steps, Haj Kazem 38 steps, Jame’ mosque 35 steps, and Zabideh Khatun with 20 steps (all these are in Qazvin). To provide a brief relief when traversing the steps, there would be one to three landings built midway into the stairway. All stairways are linear.
The person responsible for filling the ab anbars (both private and public) was someone called a meerab. In effect, he was responsible for distributing the kariz network at various times. If a house wanted its ab anbar filled, they would ask the meerab to open up the kariz to their ab anbar. An overnight appointment would be enough to fill a typical house ab anbar. The ab anbar would also have to be cleaned once a year from settled sediments.
Read more about this topic: Ab Anbar
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