ABSTRACT
In addition to water’s strategic importance in sustaining human settlements and its role in the functioning of pilgrimage networks, it has another, deeper significance in the region. It is the bearer of community memories, sculpting images of their collective past and carrying it forward into the present. This chapter explores “Malik Ambar ki Pipeline,” a water system devised by Malik Ambar to direct run-off through a series of cascading lakes along a 2 kilometre dyke into Daulatabad fort. The system was revealed by a community member who was not only aware of its functioning since childhood but also deeply regarded Ambar as a local hero. His own childhood memories of the water system underpinned by Ambar’s possible experiences of his upbringing in the wadis of Ethiopia produce a layered narrative of memories of different landscapes, connected by the presence of water.
