Hydro-Political Borders and Division of Space in the Sasanian Domain

This article argues that the Sasanian government tried to reshape the hydrological order of water resources by damming rivers, digging canals and building aqueducts according to their conception of justice. Although all Iranian dynasties more or less replenished their budget with agricultural revenues, it was the Sasanian government that for the first time exalted irrigated cultivation as the cornerstone of their political economy. The hydraulic mission of the Sasanian polity was to keep a balance between water resources and workforce in their agricultural units. This mission pursued two schemes; first all water resources were reorganized through investing in a considerable number of hydraulic structures, second the agricultural working class was kept confined to the area irrigated and affected by the same supplied water, the area that is called hydro-political territory in this study. Hydro-political borders were the product of a mesh of interactions between ideology, political power, ecology and economy, which impeded social mobility and stifled different aspects of socio-economic change in Iran’s agrarian communities. This article concludes that today’s Iran has inherited the same political tradition that gives rise to hydro-political borders by reorganizing water resources based on a geopolitical disparity between different regions and the leaders’ institutional priorities.