Shaduf

It is the song of the "shaduf," and the "shaduf" is a primitive rigging, which has remained unchanged since times beyond all reckoning. ❋ Pierre Loti (1886)

This was a far easier way of irrigating by hand than the traditional shaduf, a single bucket that had to be dipped into the river itself. ❋ Colleen McCullough (2007)

The pi cottah, used primarily in India, is similar to the shaduf but is operated by two people, one of whom acts as a moving counter weight to eliminate much of the strenuous work of returning the water container against a stationary counter weight. 29 Although it can lift water 5-8 m (16-26 ft), its output is small, and it is used primarily to water small vegetable plots. ❋ Unknown (1991)

The counterpoise lift, or shaduf, is a traditional method from the Middle East and East Asia consisting of a container (leather bag, metal bucket, lined basket) on one end of a pole with a counter weight on the other and a fulcrum in the middle. ❋ Unknown (1991)

If water is being applied in containers, such as buckets or calabashes, either by hand or with a shaduf (section 12.7.1) or other mechanism, the volume of the container can be determined by pouring water from it into another container of known volume. ❋ Unknown (1991)

For purposes of irrigation, water was raised from streams or pools by water-wheels, or by a shaduf, commonly used on the banks of the Nile to the present day. ❋ M.G. Easton (1897)

And, finally, the great labour of the watering: the traditional noria, turned by a little bull with bandaged eyes and, above all, the shaduf, worked by men whose naked bodies stream with the cold water. ❋ Pierre Loti (1886)

In any case the human species, in course of deterioration through overstrain, would find amongst these singers of the shaduf and these labourers with the antiquated plough, brains unclouded by alcohol, and a whole reserve of tranquil beauty, of well-balanced physique, of vigour untainted by bestiality. ❋ Pierre Loti (1886)

The olden style of irrigation was going on by means of the shaduf, worked by hand, the same as was done in the East four thousand years ago; while the very plow, rude and inefficient, which is used upon these plains to-day, is after the fashion belonging to the same period. ❋ Maturin Murray Ballou (1857)

Before it found an application in the lifting of objects, the single pulley was used from the 8th or 9th century BC onwards for drawing water from wells (the shaduf). ❋ Kristinsponsler (2010)