Various techniques have been developed to obtain and preserve ice in the Middle Ages. To get ice, spring water was poured into large shallow pools during winter nights. When this water froze in thicknesses starting from 10-20 cm within a few hours, workers equipped with axes and pickaxes broke the ice into large pieces and carried them to the specially prepared underground cellars. This job was repeated 2-3 times a night for about 2 months. In this way, each ice cellar has ready-to-use ice stocks from May-June. Behind the icehouses built by Sâhib Ata Fahreddin Ali, there are also pools for freezing water in the winter built for this purpose. In the severe cold of the winter, the water that opens to these pools from the city river was frozen and then broken and thrown into the icehouses through the doors behind them. In the later periods of summer, when the ice in the cellars was exhausted, foundations and ice traders applied to natural ice coolers: caves. There is a natural ice cave on the mountain just above the Yasyan village in the Akşehir region of Konya, and it was used to store ice during the Seljuk period. The temperature of this cave, which does not see the sun and is filled with snow and cold weather during severe storms in winter, is always below zero. However, ice from this cave was obtained not in winter, but in the summer, when the snow and ice waters melted from the foothills of the mountain in summer were leaked into the cave. Ice was supplied from this natural icehouse on the slope of the Sultan mountain, both in its region and at long distances in summer. Ice was transported to the Seljuk palaces, mansions, mansions, and patients. Those who are busy with the supply, transportation, and sale of ice earned money with the ice-making profession in this period.
Snow and ice, which have widespread use in Anatolia, have been transported to other regions by transportation. The snow taken from a region was transported before the sun or at night to avoid melting while being taken to the wells for hiding. Karlik or glaciers are places where there is snow accumulated in large pits for use in the summer. The snow stored in the caves and icehouses by Karcılar was stored by pressing it. The snow-stored warehouses are usually located on the north-facing slopes of the mountains.
In the Middle Ages, ice making, storage, and public transportation methods are not different in regions outside Anatolia. During this period, ice was obtained from the Zagros Mountains of Iran in the Iraq region. Egypt met its ice needs from the Syrian and Palestinian mountains. The ice brought from Egypt to the mountains during the cool periods of spring has been kept underground so that it does not melt and was sold very expensively on hot summer days. In Egypt, syrups, beverages, marmalade, and medicines stored in the Hizânetü'ş-Şarâb, belonging to the palace, were transported here every day with snow, and then sold to the ice sellers or the people directly by the state. Ice was weighed in scales and sold to traveling ice sellers wholly, and they sold it for retail.
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