The Rasha is the river of Yantra. It rises on the slopes of Mount Uruk, crosses the city from northwest to southeast, exits through the walls, descends the plateau and leaps down the Calate with the Rasha Falls. All of Yantra’s water comes from it: canals, channels, basins, fountains and the wall moat are, one by one, derivations of the Rasha.
The name comes from the ancient root rash, “to flow with force, to cut, to leave a mark.” From the same root come the names of the Rash, the city’s fast railway, and the daily newspaper Rasha.
The course
Above the city. The Rasha rises at around 2,500 meters, among the rocks of the Uruk, and is a narrow, cold torrent, cut into a gorge it has carved out itself: where the mountain put a ridge in its way, the water did not go around it, it cut straight through.
The High Basins and the Sluices. It enters the city from the north and passes beneath the High Basins (about 1,900 m), where the mountain’s water is collected and regulated. Further downstream are the Rasha Sluices: gates, reservoirs and a basin that measure the torrent before it descends toward the Forum. The Basins and Sluices once stood at the edge of the settlement, and it was there that the city took charge of the torrent; then Yantra grew toward the mountain and absorbed them, and today they lie in the midst of the districts.
The mirrors. From the Sluices downward, a staircase of weirs, one about every six hundred meters, holds the river in broad, slow pools, one below the other. It is the same torrent water, only wider because it moves slowly. On the first stretch of pools stands the Bridge of the Wheels, near the Forum.
Outside the walls. After the gardens and filtration basins of the south, the Rasha exits the walls and becomes a torrent again. It turns south, runs for about fifteen kilometers across the plateau and reaches the edge of the Calate, from which it falls with the Rasha Falls. Below, on the plain, it is a quiet river heading toward the sea.
Water in the city
- The canals. There are four: the Canal of the Workshops and the Industrial Canal, which branch off from the Rasha toward the eastern production districts, the Canal of the Gardens, which runs south, and the Market Channel, which splits off from the Canal of the Gardens. Where the ground rose, the city dug out their beds, and around the eastern canals the land now opens into a wide, gentle valley, the plain of the canals. On the map they are the solid blue lines branching off the river, with their name written above them when you zoom in.
- The channels. When a basin lies not far away and only slightly lower than an already-served water source, it is connected by a channel: a small open-air waterway, a few meters wide, running down a shallow trench between the houses.
- The conduits. When the distance is long, or there is a ridge in the way, the water travels enclosed in an underground conduit. A conduit can pass beneath a hill, because it runs full and under pressure. On the map these are shown as dashed blue lines.
- The terraced basins. Basins built on slopes are divided into terraces along the contour lines, each with its own water level, separated by stone walls. Each basin is fed from its highest terrace, which overflows above the wall into the one below, and so on down to the bottom. Upslope of each basin the ground has been dug out, downslope it has been raised into an embankment.
- The wall moat. The moat draws from the Rasha where the river enters the city and runs around it in two branches, one on each side of the walls. It descends in steps, with a wall at each drop, and returns the water to the river where it exits toward the south.
Related entries
Yantra
Mount Uruk
Map of Yantra
Rasha (newspaper)