Zamzam, the sacred well of Mecca

According to Islamic tradition, the Zamzam well in the city of Mecca in Arabia was lit about 4,000 years ago in Abraham's time when Hajar, his second wife, was looking for water for his young son Ishmael. After several unsuccessful attempts on the part of the mother, the boy hit his feet on the ground and, miraculously, managed to make the water sprout forming a spring. 

The  Zamzam well is 30 meters deep and was excavated with a shovel in the sandy alluvium of the local wadis penetrating about 15 meters into the crystalline rocks of the substrate. The most productive aquifer is located at the contact of the alluvium with the crystalline basement. The piezometric level of the well is about 3 meters from the surface. In part, it was built as a curbstone with walls covered with stone in the layers of greater permeability. It was used for many centuries, before the rise of the Islamic religion, and from the time of the Prophet Muhammad represented the most revered water source of Islam.

Starting from the institution of Mecca as the capital and center of pilgrimage of the Muslim communities of the world, the well, which is located in the gigantic mosque Masjid al-Haran, just 20 meters from the Kaaba94 was incorporated as a ritual formality in the ceremonies of the pilgrims who went to the sacred city.

During my stay in Dhahran in 1983 I was summoned one day by the Director of the Research Institute of the University of Petroleum and Minerals where I worked as a geomorphologist and hydrogeologist to discuss a serious and urgent issue whose content was unknown.

When I arrived at the meeting I was able to check the attendance of several Saudi authorities and investigators. There he was informed about a serious event. The Kingdom was facing a serious problem. The spring of Mecca, around which the holy city, the Zamzam well, had developed, had dried up.

Nothing like this had ever happened. A miraculous well, which was largely the basis of the sacred character of the site, had run out of water. The pilgrims who came from all corners of the world used to drink their water and even take a bottle of the blessed liquid to their places of origin. In this new pilgrimage station, this would not be possible because the well was dry.

For many centuries in Zamzam millions of people had been watered since before the Islamic revolution. Countless offerings had been thrown into its waters.

When the well emptied, the testimony of an ancient history appeared. The emptying allowed to take the opportunity to "clean" it and at the same time obtain pieces of great archaeological value. I do not know what fate the many objects and remains found in the background have had.

There was a great concern. The situation was serious. The Zamzam well had run out. The accusation of the Islamic radicals would be renewed. Again, it would be shown that the Saudi government was unable to preserve the sacred sites. The authorities present at the meeting showed great alarm over what happened.

The problem had to be solved quickly, at least before the next Hajj in which millions of pilgrims would come. If this were not the case, the visitors would be disappointed to see that the spring had no more water.

The drying of a well in an alluvial aquifer of the type that exists in Mecca is usually related to the decrease in the piezometric level of the local aquifer (or aquifers, when there 

are several productive layers).

In turn, the lowering of the levels could have several causes. One of them was excessive exploitation, or there were too many wells in the surroundings or the extraction was greater than the recharge, and at some point said overuse could be expressed in the descent of the napa.

Another possible reason was the lack of rain during a sufficiently long period. Prolonged droughts cause a reduction in recharge. Not enough water enters the aquifer to compensate for the extraction.

In the case of Zamzam the rains had been normal for the period of the year in which we were, and the extraction in the surrounding wells had not increased significantly. It was necessary to find another reason.

I asked what new work was being done in the city of Mecca that could have influenced the aquifer and I was told that an underground sanitary collector was being built a few hundred meters from the well site. This construction could have affected the level of the aquifer and indirectly caused the depletion of Zamzam.

The collector was constituted by a deep tunnel whose works required a continuous pumping of water out of the underground aquifers which was thrown into a wadi downstream of the urban plant. 

The conclusion was reasonable, the level of the aquifer would have dropped due to the pumping in the tunnel. In any case, it was necessary to carry out certain investigations to confirm the hypothesis.

I was in charge of some aspects of the hydrogeological study whose execution started immediately and lasted about a month. Due to my "infidel" character I was not allowed to enter the city. For that reason, I could not go see the well personally, nor observe the works of the collector tunnel.

However, with the help of assistants, from a provisional office in Jedda I was able to prepare a report and present recommendations to stop the construction of the underground collector, which happened.

From the dry well many objects that had been thrown for hundreds of years were extracted. Today the well is functional again and continues to provide water (now bottled) to the thousands of pilgrims who constantly arrive in the holy city of Islam.

From "Chronicles of Human Peripecy", Danilo Antón, Pirtguazú Ediciones.