By the end of the first millennium AD, the winds of innovation were sweeping through Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. At the crossroads of deserts, oases and fertile plains, artisans and visionaries sought to harness an inexhaustible yet fickle source of energy: the wind. This is the way I was born … One of the most emblematic and important inventions of humanity: the vertical axis mill.
But behind its silent detour lies a history marked by competition, cross-cultural rivalries and national pride, a conflict between Persian engineers and rural Asian communities and, later, European inventors and merchants.
Define the difference between scarcity and abundance
The first irrefutable news of the existence of vertical windmills comes from the east, in the remote Persian provinces of Sistan and eastern Iran, where the wind was both a blessing and a punishment. There, between the 7th and 9th centuries, residents developed devices for pumping water and grinding grain, taking advantage of the strong and constant local winds.
The design was as simple as it was ingenious: large vertical axes around which a series of blades were mounted that aligned with the wind, protected by walls or barriers to direct the flow. This principle, based on the so-called “panemone”, was effective: the blades rotated regardless of the direction in which the wind was blowing, an essential feature in areas where changing direction complicated other technical solutions.
Arab travelers, such as Al-Masudi in the tenth century, were fascinated by the sight of wood and weaving. Their records tell how mills drew water from wells or crushed wheat day and night with a monotonous sound.
In Persia, the invention of the vertical mill was not only a technical achievement, but also a symbol of control of land and climate. But the popularity of these devices did not remain limited to their native land for long: merchants, travelers, and, above all, Islamic routes of conquest and expansion, spread them throughout Egypt, India, and the rest of the Islamic world, even reaching China in the Yuan Dynasty.
Innovation with a European signature
However, in the great theater of history, no one wants to give up the credit for great discoveries. In the case of vertical windmills, the rivalry emerged when the technology also began to appear in European texts. Some European scholars argued that the invention was a local development, arising out of necessity in regions that were windy but poor in waterways.
According to another account, the technology arrived with the Crusaders who, after campaigns in the Holy Lands in the 11th and 13th centuries, returned astonished by what they saw in the Persian and Arab domains. Conflicts spread across universities, monasteries, and guilds, as each culture defended its honor and right to technological superiority.
What further fueled the fire was the difference in design: while Eastern mills maintained their vertical axis and their blades protected behind a wall, in Europe so-called vertical mills appeared for the first time, with a horizontal orientation and a body that could rotate to catch the wind where it was most suitable.
Evidence and documents are always ambiguous. Some Chinese manuscripts from the 13th century mention foreign-inspired vertical mills; Arabic treatises detail active mills in Persia centuries before Europeans dreamed of them. At the same time, each region was mastering its work according to its function: raising water, grinding grain, digging canals, or even later generating electricity.
Whoever controls energy changes society
What was behind this conflict between authors and cultures? The human desire for recognition, but also the reality of technological diffusion: an invention that has been adapted, copied and improved everywhere it has reached. When the technology reached southern Spain, possibly transmitted by Muslims during Al-Andalus, it was modified by the environment.
Later, in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, variants with a horizontal axis inspired by the structure and knowledge transmitted by the Arabs were adopted, while in the British Isles and Flanders the vertical axis died out to make room for rotating bodies and blades exposed to any wind.
The narrative of the invention of the vertical mill cannot be understood without appreciating what was at stake: control of the energy needed to transform society. In Persia, it was a vital resource for drawing water in arid regions; In China, it is a crucial component of irrigation and milling; In Europe, it was a key piece in rural development, agricultural expansion, and later the agricultural revolution.
Each civilization made its own developments. In the east, blade protection against sandstorms and wind fluctuations is improved. In Europe, the need to take advantage of variable winds has led mill owners to develop more complex steering and regulation systems, giving rise to modern renewable energy technology.
Today, the majestic vertical turbines of our wind farms are heirs to that long lineage of anonymous craftsmen and competing scientists. In the heart of Central Asia, centuries-old mills still stand, and in European museums plans for the first continental adaptations are studied. Handbooks of Physics recaptures the essence of invention: harnessing a natural, almost invisible force, and transforming it for collective benefit. The history of this technical rivalry, with its mixture of passion, skepticism, and entrepreneurial spirit, reminds us that great ideas rarely spring from a single genius in isolation.