Page 190 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 3

Exemplary Civilization in Sustainable Water Management from
The Perspective of Environmental History: The Ottoman State

The Topuzlu reservoir also conveys many differences in the nature of a
message to today with its existence. The fact that the colors, texture and
function of this architectural structure, which has an aesthetic concern, are
compatible with nature, inspires the understanding of architecture, which
is made in a simplicity that can only fulfill its task where today’s economic
concerns are taken into account. The water gauges are a good example of
this. Even in these systems, which functioned as a pump, the Ottoman state
adopted the same aesthetic sensitivity (Borat, 2000).
All the architectural works that are part of the water culture were brought to
the peak especially with the reign of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. Sultan
Suleyman the Magnificent, who paid the greatest attention to water supply,
usually supplied the city with water from rivers, wells or underground water
sources. For this reason, in order to show the importance of water health, he
had small reservoirs built on the rivers to stabilize the flow of the flowing water
and prevent the formation of pollution. Another method used to prevent
pollution was to narrow the overflow of the water in order to prevent bottom
materials such as silt, stones, etc. from rising to the surface, and to install
grids, with its current expression, on the side parts of the reservoir. In order to
deliver these waters refined from the pollution, large
Water Collection and Distribution Centers (maksem) were built. The water
collected in these centers (maksem) was balanced by measuring the flow rate
and distributed to the different locations of the city through drain pipes or
lead pipes (Zehir, 2000). Eğrikapı Maksem, shown in Figure 5, is an example
of such structures, which were usually covered with domes or vaults at the top
and have survived to the present day (Güngör, 2021).

Figure 5. Eğrikapı Maksemi (Güngör, 2021).

Year 2 / Issue 3 / January 2023 175