The aim of the article is a preliminary assessment of the possibility of using ATES (Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage) technology for the seasonal storage of heat and cold in shallow aquifers in Poland. The ATES technology is designed to provide low-temperature heat and cold to big-area consumers. A study by researchers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands indicates very favorable hydrogeological and climate conditions in most of Poland for its successful development. To confirm this, the authors used public hydrogeological data, including information obtained from 1324 boreholes of the groundwater observation and research network and 172 information sheets of groundwater bodies (GWBs). Using requirements for ATES systems, well-described in the world literature, the selection of boreholes was carried out in the GIS environment, which allowed aquifers that meet the required criteria to be captured. The preliminary assessment indicates the possibility of the successful implementation of ATES technology in Poland, in particular in the northern and western parts of the country, including the cities of: Gdańsk, Warsaw, Wrocław, Bydgoszcz, Słupsk, and Stargard.
The paper presents how the pluralism of relations in the early Muslim sources concerning the memory the Qādisiyya narrative is problematic for reconstructing the event of the battle by modern scholars. Specific studies of the early Islamic sources concerning the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya lead to the conclusion that it is certainly easier to interpret the functions of particular topoi than to determinate the facts about the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya. The main, unsolved questions related to the Qādisiyyah narrative are the uncertainty of the date of the battle, the size of the Muslim and Persian forces that fought in the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya as well as some contradictions and different presentations of the battle. Scholars have undertaken many attempts to make the conflicting accounts more coherent but in fact, they only made some speculations or, at the best, case scenario – explanations made on the basis of limited and uncertain evidence. For these reasons, the paper contains the suggestion to avoid an undue emphasis on the importance of the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya and to replace this term by the more general expression “the Mesopotamian campaign 634–637.” The critical evaluation of the Muslim sources leads to a more general description of the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya as an element of the campaign (stage 634–637) whose unambiguous evaluation is impossible.