About the Zabin Waterfall

The waterfall was formed by the natural spring in the citadel as well as from rainwater and wastewater, and led into the Tigris (Özcoşar, p. 201).  The stream was named Zabin after the legendary Zaav, the tenth shah of the Pishdadian dynasty (Sandreczki, 1857, pp. 256-257).  The water feeding the waterfall came through underground passages (Özcoşar, p. 201).  Çelebi describes the spring and waterfall:

The water that turns the mills of this citadel comes out of the rock in the citadel by God’s command and turns the water mills. It passes through the palace of Bıyıklı Mehmet Pasha, leaves the castle through an iron cage window, and after pouring down from Fiskaya, it hits itself from stone to stone and flows into the Tigris river like a waterfall (in heaven). This spring water of the citadel tastes like the pure water of heaven. (Coşkun, page 254)

Sandreczki also describes the spring and waterfall:

Towards the terrace of the northern side the volcanic rock rises in steep masses, and over the uppermost edge of it, near the corner where the northern city wall takes its direction from east to west, rushes a not insignificant stream, the Zabin, . . . which fills a kind of ditch along the wall, falls in a wide arc and is caught in a basin between huge basalt blocks, from where it rushes past a mill through the tree gardens down to the Tigris. Just below the waterfall, the 60-foot-high rock wall seems to have been hollowed out by the action of the water on the crevices and fissures, and almost threatens to collapse (Sandreczki, 1857, pp. 256-257)