Coordinates 23°58'14?N 32°52'40?E? / ?23.970589°N 32.877861°E? / 23.970589; 32.877861Without impoundment, the River Nile would flood each year during summer, as waters from East Africa flowed down the river as they did in ancient times. These floods brought nutrients and minerals that made the soil around the Nile fertile and ideal for farming. As the population along the river grew, there came a need to control the flood waters to protect and support farmland and cotton fields. In a high-water year, the whole crop might be entirely wiped out, while in a low-water year there was widespread drought and famine.
The earliest attempt at building a dam in Aswan dates back to the 1000s, when the Iraqi polymath and engineer Ibn al-Haytham (known as Alhazen in the West) was summoned to Egypt by the mercurial Fatimid Caliph, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, to regulate the flooding of the Nile, a task requiring an early attempt at an Aswan Dam.[1] After his field work made him aware of the impracticality of this scheme,[2] and fearing the caliph's anger, he feigned madness. He was kept under house arrest from 1011 until al-Hakim's death in 1021, during which time he wrote his influential Book of Optics.
The British began constructions for the first dam in 1889. Construction lasted until 1902. It was opened on 10 December 1902, by HRH the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn. The project was designed by Sir William Willcocks and involved several eminent engineers including Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Aird, whose firm, John Aird & Co., was the main contractor.[3] A gravity dam, it was 1,900 m long and 54 m high. The initial design was soon found to be inadequate and the height of the dam was raised in two phases, 1907–1912 and 1929–1933.
