Burhanpur's Khooni Bhandara, an Underground Water System Built From 1615 on Persian Qanat Lines, Still Moves Groundwater Into the City by Gravity Alone

Burhanpur, in Madhya Pradesh, has a groundwater system that Mughal engineers began in 1615 and that still works without a pump. Rain that soaks into the Satpura foothills is caught underground, runs through a buried channel on a gentle slope, and comes out in the city. It is called Khooni Bhandara or Kundi Bhandara, and India put it on UNESCO’s tentative list for World Heritage status in 2024. As of 5 November 2026, a state team is surveying the whole network to see how much of it can be brought back into use.

Who built it, and why Burhanpur needed it

UNESCO’s tentative-list entry, which India submitted, says Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan commissioned the system while governing Burhanpur under the Mughal emperor Jahangir. Burhanpur was the Mughal base for the push into the Deccan, and the entry says large armies camped near it for long periods. Down To Earth, the environment magazine, reported in 1992 and again in 2002 that the city held about 35,000 people and an army of two lakh (200,000).

The city sits on the Tapti, but the entry says the banks were so high that carrying river water to the town was difficult and costly. Down To Earth adds a second reason: the Tapti also ran through other kingdoms, so a river-only supply could be poisoned in wartime. An underground supply could not be tainted from the surface. The Centre for Science and Environment’s 2001 newsletter gives the same motive.

The design is credited to a Persian geologist whom Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan invited in 1615. UNESCO’s entry spells his name Tabkutul Arz, Down To Earth writes Tabukul Arj, and the 2001 newsletter has Tabkutul Arj. The spelling is not settled in the sources, but all of them date the work to 1615. Burhanpur is also where Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631, a story told in the Taj Mahal article.

How the water travels

The system is a qanat, a Persian method of tapping groundwater at the head of a valley and sending it downhill through a buried tunnel. UNESCO’s separate entry for the Persian Qanat, inscribed in 2016, describes the pattern: a nearly level tunnel, shafts sunk at regular intervals to remove spoil and let in air, and gravity doing the work.

Burhanpur’s version intercepts groundwater flowing from the Satpura hills toward the Tapti at four storage points northwest of the city. Down To Earth names them Mool, Chintaharan, Sookha and Khooni bhandara. Water from Mool and Chintaharan meets and runs to Khooni, then on to a collecting chamber called Jali Karanj, and from there to the town. Sookha joins just before Jali Karanj.

Between the storage points and the city, vertical shafts called kundis mark the line of the tunnel. A 2001 account from the Centre for Science and Environment says the kundis are 0.75 to 1.75 m across and 6 to 24 m deep, and that the first one stands on the Satpura slope about 30 m above the city’s ground level. A 2023 paper in the International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research reports that the tunnel is about 80 cm wide and the shafts are spaced about every 20 m. Maintenance crews once climbed down iron stairs, Down To Earth wrote, and now use ropes. In the Mughal period, clay pipes took water from Jali Karanj into the city, according to the 1992 report. The British later replaced them with iron.

Down To Earth measured the Sookha tank at roughly 30 m below ground, with about 1.5 m of water in it even in summer. People who live beside the shafts use them as wells all year, the magazine reported.

How much water it gives

Figures differ by source, and the oldest ones come from a time when the system was already clogged. Down To Earth’s 1992 article says the Mughal-era supply was about 100 lakh (10 million) litres a day, and that the works could then yield at most about 30 lakh. In the same article, an assistant engineer of the municipal corporation said the works could supply up to 18 lakh litres a day. Of the 90 lakh litres a day Burhanpur received in 1992, 13.5 lakh came from the old works and the rest from dug wells and borewells.

A 2015 paper in the journal Sustainability, by Amit Wahurwagh and Alpana Dongre of VNIT Nagpur, gives the same split: 1,350,000 litres a day, or 15 percent of the city’s water, from the old system, with up to 1,800,000 litres (20 percent) possible after repairs. Because those numbers match the 1992 article exactly, they are best read as one measurement quoted twice rather than two separate checks. In 2021, Saransh Bajpai of the World Resources Institute India told Mongabay-India that the network can supply 15 percent of the city’s water.

Down To Earth’s 1992 headline calls the supply free, since gravity is the only energy, and the 2015 paper says the same.

Why the flow shrank

Down To Earth’s 1992 report blames mineral build-up first. The water is rich in calcium and magnesium, and deposits on the tunnel walls, shafts and tanks, in places as thick as 15 cm, slowed the seepage that feeds the channel. It also names falling groundwater levels as tubewells spread, forest loss in the catchment, effluent from a mill near Jali Karanj, and broken kundis letting sewage in.

UNESCO’s entry and Down To Earth’s 2002 article both say the system supplied the whole city for about 300 years and collapsed in 1977; the 2002 article says 312 years. Counting 312 years from 1615 gives 1927, not 1977, and the sources do not explain the gap, so the duration is best treated as approximate. The Centre for Science and Environment’s 2001 account says only that the works were damaged in 1977 and went out of sight for about 12 years.

Three rounds of repair

The first revival began in December 2000. The collector of Khandwa district, Praveen Garg, started a three-phase plan with Rs 1.4 million from the state government and Rs 0.1 million from public donations through the Red Cross. Desilting the kundis and repairing three damaged ones got water flowing again in the tunnel. Down To Earth reported that the first phase added 0.11 million litres a day to the city supply.

The second round came from the Union environment ministry’s Climate Change Action Programme. Mongabay-India reported that a project began in March 2019 and was due to finish by February 2021, with Covid-19 delaying it. The sanction had a Rs 5 crore ceiling. The project’s first stage located 71 of the 102 wells on GIS maps and restored them, according to the project report the magazine quoted. It also covered 325 hectares of forest in the catchment, 250 rainwater harvesting structures on government buildings, and an expected saving of Rs 17.23 lakh a year in pumping costs for the municipal corporation. The same project document puts the expected gain at about 10 percent of Burhanpur’s supply. A 2015 environmental impact study cited in the same report found the corporation supplying 13.75 million litres a day against an estimated need of 32.4 million.

The third round is under way. On 29 July 2026 the Free Press Journal reported that a team from the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT), Bhopal, led by civil engineering assistant professor Rutuja Chavan, had inspected the network at the request of the state Directorate of Archaeology, Archives and Museums. A technical survey, documentation and a conservation roadmap come next. Amar Ujala reported on 8 August 2026 that the team will use magnetic and other non-destructive surveys to map where tunnels are sound, blocked or collapsed, that a detailed project report is being prepared, and that the state archaeology department protects the site while the Burhanpur municipal corporation maintains it. A local historian, Kamruddin Falak, told the paper that two kundis have caved in and that recent inspection still found water moving in parts of the network.

Other qanats in India

India has other Persian-style tunnels. The UNESCO entry names Aurangabad, Bijapur and Bidar, and the Deccan Herald describes the Bidar karez as a fifteenth-century system built by local engineers learning from skilled Persian immigrants. Scroll’s 2021 report notes that Burhanpur’s was long believed to be the only qanat in India. For the stepped wells of the north-west, see Rani ki Vav; for a Harappan city that stored rain in rock-cut tanks, see Dholavira; and for another old water work still in service, see Veeranam tank.

What the sources disagree on

The counts of the system’s parts vary, and the article does not choose among them.

• Kundis: 103 (UNESCO tentative entry, the 2001 newsletter, the 2023 paper), 102 (Mongabay-India, quoting a local researcher and the World Resources Institute), 105 (the municipal commissioner, quoted by Amar Ujala in August 2026).
• Tunnel length: 3.9 km (UNESCO tentative entry), about 6 km to the royal fort (the commissioner in Amar Ujala).
• Tunnel lining: marble (UNESCO tentative entry, Down To Earth 2002), unlined tunnels (Down To Earth 1992), a domed channel with lime-and-mud brick walls (2023 paper).
• Depth: 80 to 100 feet below ground (UNESCO entry), about 10 m (2023 paper), 60 to 70 m (the commissioner).
• Works traced: eight sets excavated and traced in the early twentieth century, six still intact (UNESCO entry). Down To Earth 1992 says three of the six supply Burhanpur and three supply Bahadurpur and Rao Ratan Mahal.
• Original storage: 10 million litres (Down To Earth 2002), one million (the 2001 newsletter).

The name has one documented explanation. UNESCO’s entry and Down To Earth both attribute “Khooni”, which means bloody, to a reddish tint in the mineral-rich water, and Down To Earth stresses that the system was a source of life. None of the sources ties the name to a battle.