{"book":"adl0957","page":73,"text":"50\n\nIn order to increase the supply of water it is sometimes found necessary to construct several branches at the top of the Karez. The cost of construction of a Karez varies with its length and the nature of the soil. The excavation of a Karez is expensive, and is generally constructed by joint capital and owned by several co-sharers. Passage of a Karez through land belonging to a stranger is allowed on payment in the from of a share in the Karez or cash.\n\nConstruction of dams or water- storage reservoirs, to hold up flood water, has been in vogue in this country from very ancient times. Remains of dams constructed even before the advent of Islam are to be seen in different parts of the country. Four such ancient dams, said to be constructed by Sultan Mahmood of Ghazni (998-1030 A. D.), are still to be seen in the vicinity of Ghazni. One of them known as Band-i-Sultan (Sultan's Dam) has been recently reconstructed, and is now known by the name of Band-i-Seraj. The present Government, alive to the importance of such dams in this country, has completed nearly half a dozen of these within the space of the last few years. Of these the Kajaki Dam and the Arghandab Dam are the most important. The construction of these water reservoirs has greatly improved the condition of the peasantry, and this creation of new acreage has, undoubtedly, been a strong inducement for the unsettled nomadic tribes to adopt a sedentary and peaceful mode of life.\n\nArtesian wells are not yet very popular with the people. In some parts of the country use is made of the Persian water-wheel (Arhat) for purposes of irrigation.","chars":1621,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00073.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/73","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/73","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}