The Faiyum is a great depression with a maximum depth of 174 feet below sea level, about 15 miles west-northwest of the town of Beni Suef. Although it belongs geologically and physiographically to the Western Desert, from every other point of view it is an integral part of the Nile valley, and its occupied section is administered as one of the valley provinces.
Early in Paleolithic time, some 70,000 years ago, an arm of the Nile, then at a much higher level than at present, breached the low divide which separates the Faiyum from the valley in what is known as the Lahun gap. Since then the Nile has watered it, and Nile silt forms its cultivable land. Nile water, pouring into the Faiyum, formed a huge lake whose surface reached 130 feet above the present level of the sea. The free flow of Nile water through the gap it had breached continued until the late Paleolithic (about 8000 B.C.). But during much of that period the levels of the Mediterranean Sea and of the Nile were falling in successive stages, and the lake declined correspondingly. The rich remains of human habitations left in the resulting succession of gravel terraces around the lake have been the subject of much archeological investigation.
Before the dawn of recorded history in Egypt the Lahun gap had silted up to the narrow passage through which a natural channel, the Bahr Yusef, still carries Nile water into the depression. The Bahr Yusef originally took off from the Nile near the present town of Dairut, 40 miles north of Asyut, but when the Ibrahimiya Canal was dug it was connected with the canal and its Nile take-off was closed. The Faiyum is thus entirely dependent on the Ibrahimiya Canal for its water supply.
Agriculture in the Faiyum is believed to be as ancient as it is in the Nile valley. What are possibly the world’s oldest water engineering works were those carried out there in Pharaonic times, notably during the reign of Amenemhat I of the Twelfth Dynasty. A large section of the depression was converted into a great reservoir, later named Lake Moeris by the Greeks, to provide both flood protection and irrigation water for the lower valley and the delta. It served as an outlet for Nile water during the flood period of the river, and the water thus stored was released back into the Nile for irrigation during the period of low water. The land around the reservoir was also cultivated under flood irrigation.
During Ptolemaic and Roman times the Faiyum was the “Garden of Egypt.” A great masonry embankment and barrage, of which the remains are still to be seen, was built across the Lahun gap and the flow of the Nile so controlled there that the level of Lake Moeris was lowered below the present sea level, leaving an extensive area for reclamation around it. The extent of this reclamation is revealed by the remains of canals, tunnels, a cistern, and wells dug in the lacustrine clay in what is now a desert waste beyond the borders of the cultivated land.
The Faiyum was one of the first sections of Egypt to feel the effects of the decline of the Roman empire. Only by highly organized and carefully controlled operation could its complicated irrigation system be maintained. So neglected was the operation of the Lahun Barrage that by the middle of the fifth century the fringe settlements had been abandoned for lack of irrigation water. From then on the area under cultivation shrank progressively.
It was not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that the Faiyum began to prosper again. The completion of the Asyut Barrage in 1902 to maintain the flow of water into the Ibrahimiya Canal during the low-water period of the Nile, the connecting of the Bahr Yusef with this canal, and the restoration of the old Lahun Barrage and the construction of a regulator a few miles upstream gave the Faiyum its first assurance of a dependable and controlled supply of irrigation water in 1400 years. Reclamation of long-abandoned farmland followed rapidly. Today the area in the Faiyum under crop is 15 per cent of the total in the provinces above the delta. It still has more land capable of reclamation than does any other of these provinces, and cultivation is gradually being extended.
The lake, now a shallow brackish body known as Birket Qarun (Lake of Horns) along the northwest side of the depression, is maintained by drainage into it and evaporation from it at a fairly well-balanced level of about 148 feet below sea level. At that level it is twenty-five miles long and six miles wide at its greatest width and occupies an area of nearly eighty-five square miles.
Most of the land in the Faiyum slopes appreciably toward the lake and consequently is easily irrigated and drained. The exceptions are a fringe around the lake and the Gharaq lowland in the southwestern part of the depression. There pumps must be used in places for both irrigation and drainage, and soil salinity is a problem. Considerable use is made of the gradient in the irrigation canals for operating primitive flour mills and in a few localities for small hydroelectric generators. About two-thirds of the water supply comes into the depression through the Lahun Barrage and the remainder by way of an artificial channel, the Wafis Canal, which takes off from the Bahr Yusef above the barrage. Drainage is all into the Birket Qarun.
A pronounced escarpment borders most of the depression. Southeast of the lake and standing at about five miles from it, this escarpment stretches unbroken for some eighteen miles. Between the escarpment and the lake is a chain of settlements, of which Sinnuris and Ibshawai are, respectively, the second and third in size of the towns of the province. The orcharded terraces and shaded, gully – like irrigation canals of this section of the Faiyum are in distinct contrast to the monotonous green flats of the valley proper and the delta. On the northern side of the lake, barren land rises to a bold escarpment that reaches heights of over 1000 feet above the sea.
The area of the Faiyum depression is generally taken as that below 25 meters (82 feet) above sea level – nearly 890 square miles. The area administered as the province of Faiyum is 670.5 square miles, the greater part of which lies below the 20-foot contour above sea level. The Faiyum is thus fifth in area of the eight valley provinces, but only Aswan is less densely populated. The Faiyum has more alluvial land, however, that could be reclaimed for agriculture if sufficient irrigation water were supplied than does any of the other valley provinces.
As elsewhere in the valley, grain and cotton are the Faiyum’s principal crops, but agriculture there profits rather more from sidelines than anywhere else in Egypt. Faiyum chickens are well known in the urban markets for their size and quality, as compared with the poor type to which the Egyptian chicken has in general degenerated (see Chapter 4, Agriculture); its waste land provides pasture for a breed of sheep so good as compared with the general run of Egyptian sheep that it carries the name of the province. The Faiyum, indeed, is well on its way to becoming again the “Garden of Egypt.” Its acreage in limes, figs, grapes, dates, olives, and prickly pears is greater than that of any of the other valley provinces, and its products are noted throughout the country for their superior quality. Good rail and road connections with the valley trunk routes and a direct road across the desert to the Cairo-Giza metropolis provide speedy transportation of orchard products to both valley and delta markets.
Fishing in Birket Qarun is still an industry of considerable importance, although it has declined rather seriously in recent years, owing apparently to the increasing salinity of the water. About three-fourths of the fish taken is bolti, chiefly Tilapia zillii and Tilapia nilotica, the latter the most common of the Nile River fish. The remainder is mainly gray mullet (Mugil capito), a fish introduced some years ago to replace the Nile perch (Lates nilotica), which at one time constituted a major portion of the catch but is now rarely caught.
Since early times a succession of towns has occupied the present site of Faiyum, the capital of the province. The Pharaonic town was called Crocodilopolis by the Greeks because of its temple to a crocodile god kept in the lake. Mounds north of the city are the remains of the Ptolemaic town of Arsinoë. Faiyum is exceeded in size among the valley towns only by Asyut. In addition to its importance as the market and distributing center for the agricultural products of the province, it is second only to Asyut as a manufacturing center, with wool and cotton spinning and weaving, cotton dyeing, tanning and cigarette making the principal industries.
