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How about the Turpan water system?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpan_water_system

An artificial oasis city built in the Late Middle Ages* on the Taklamakan Desert for travellers along the Silk Road, it provided irrigation by having more than 5,000km of hand-dug underground tunnels to transport water from the mountains; an IMHO extremely impressive feat of geoengineering for the time.

* https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-00728-7_...

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> it provided irrigation by having more than 5,000km of hand-dug underground tunnels to transport water from the mountains; an IMHO extremely impressive feat of geoengineering for the time.

This was a very common form of water engineering for the region; the technology was thousands of years old at that point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

Churches/mosques were common in the places where the OP picked churches/mosques. I don’t think the fact that qanats existed widely for a long time should necessarily disqualify this instance.

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