Hama

Hama stands on the Orontes in central Syria, surrounded by gardens watered from the river. Great wooden waterwheels, or norias, lift water into channels that supply orchards, baths and mosques. Their large wooden rims carry rows of containers, which fill as the river turns the wheel and empty into a channel at the top. Their creaking frames have long marked the city's riverbanks. Hama was also the home of the historian and geographer Abu al-Fida, an Ayyubid prince who ruled the city in the early fourteenth century.

The largest of the dated wheels, al-Muhammadiyya, was built in 1361 under the Mamluks. Its compartments raised water to an aqueduct of stone arches leading towards the Great Mosque. Other wheels served gardens on both banks of the Orontes, making the river's current work against the height of the surrounding land. These machines joined the city's daily life to the fertile orchards beyond its walls.

After the Ottoman conquest of Syria in 1516, Hama remained a provincial city of merchants, craftsmen and notable families. In the eighteenth century the Azm family became prominent in Syrian government, while other local families maintained religious and commercial influence. Courtyard houses and reception halls enriched the older town, whose river, gardens and waterwheels continued to give Hama a character of its own.