The old city of Herat is an oasis located on the ancient silk road (trade route) in Afghanistan and
has historically been replete with water supply cisterns. Using existing literature and interviews with
residents, the paper attempts to reproduce the spatial analysis of water supply cisterns in the city
and explain how the cisterns and their architecture developed. The typology of architectural forms is
analysed for each of the three case studies of cisterns to clarify their historical development. Documents
in Persian (Dari), satellite photographs, historical maps, and field surveys were used for the research.
