Ottoman Period Fountains and Our Water Resources

Our village is very rich in terms of water resources. It is possible to reach a water source at every point of the village, including the highlands. There are fresh water sources at every altitude from 1500 to 2500 altitudes. The temperature of the water that comes out of our water resources varies between 3 and 10 degrees between summer and winter.

Although the sources of the fountains are old, the ones built before the Republic are mostly in settlements. Since these residential areas were abandoned after the population exchange, most of them were demolished. You can see the ruin of those fountains on our photos page. As it is known, in the old days, potable domestic water did not reach our houses. There were one or two fountains in every neighborhood, and everyone used to carry water from those fountains to their homes in buckets. Some works that required a lot of water were done at the beginning of the fountain or by the stream. However, I would like to point out that before the population exchange, water was drawn to some significant houses, especially in the Monamatlı region, through copper pipes. Among the ones we know are Panagioti Aseri and the priest's house.

During the Ottoman period, most of the water resources, especially outside the settlements, were in the form of eyeballs, pastries, and springs. It was built as a fountain by the benefactors of our village during the Republic period. These fountains, which were built by the benefactors of our village, were named after the deceased or living inhabitants of our village. You can see the locations of some of these fountains on the map in Annex-22.

Among the drinking water sources that are still used in our village, we can count Kriopuar (Greek cold water), Karapuar and Örmeza. Örmeza is the name of a woman who lived there during the Ottoman period. It is still possible to see the ruins of the house, the barn, and the shed (Epek in local terminology) from the living area.

By the way, I would like to talk about how laundry was washed in the past, in terms of water. If you have a small amount of laundry, you could wash it by hand at the fountain or at home. Wooden laundry troughs were used to wash clothes at home. If you had a large amount of laundry to be laundered, you would go to the creek together on certain days. These days when we walked to the riverside, there was a lot of racket and fun and the food was eaten while the laundry was being laundered. In the past, when washing clothes, there were no detergents like today. While washing laundry, natural substances such as ash soap, ash and clay were used as cleaners. While the laundry was being boiled, turquoise blue "indigo", which was a little bigger than sugar cubes, was also obtained naturally. Yellowed clothes boiling in a laundry tub with Arabic soap or grated soap would acquire a blue-looking whiteness with the color of indigo. Occasionally, thick clothes were beaten with a clothespin on the washing stone in the washing tub or on the stones in the stream.