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As early as the ninth century, a modern agricultural system
became central to economic life and organisation in the Muslim
lands. The great Islamic cities of the Near East, North Africa and
Spain, as Artz explains, were supported by an elaborate
agricultural system that included extensive irrigation and an
expert knowledge of the most advanced agricultural methods in the
world. The Muslims reared the finest horses and sheep and
cultivated the best orchards and vegetable gardens. They knew how
to fight insect pests, how to use fertilizers, and they were
experts at grafting trees and crossing plants to produce new
varieties. In the words of Durant, the Muslims:
`…grew a hundred varieties of grains, vegetables, fruits,
nuts and flowers. The orange tree was brought from India to Arabia
at some time before the tenth century; the Arabs introduced it to
Syria, Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and Spain, from which
countries it pervaded southern Europe. The cultivation of sugar
cane and the refining of sugar were likewise spread by the Arabs
from India through the Near East, and were brought by Crusaders to
their European states. Cotton was first cultivated in Europe by the
Arabs. These achievements on lands largely arid were made possible
by organized irrigation; here the caliphs made an exception to
their principle of leaving the economy to free enterprise; the
government directed and financed the maintenance of the greater
canals. The Euphrates was channelled into Mesopotamia, the Tigris
into Persia, and a great canal connected the two rivers at Baghdad.
The early Abbasid caliphs encouraged the draining of marshes, and
the rehabilitation of ruined villages and deserted farms. In the
tenth century, under the Samanid princes, the region between
Bokhara and Samarkand was considered one of the "four earthly
paradises", the others being Southern Persia, Southern Iraq, and
the region around Damascus'.
According to Scott , the agricultural system of the Spanish
Muslims, in particular, was `the most complex, the most scientific,
the most perfect, ever devised by the ingenuity of man'. This is supported by Glick as he outlines
from a range of sources, that the Muslims introduced many
transformations, A further sign of Islamic land revolution
was that whilst the rest of Europe crumbled under serfdom and slave
labour, the land under Islam was granted to tilling farmers. Under
Andalusian `Arabs' Joseph McCabe remarks that `great estates
tilled by serfs and slaves were rare. Along the course of the
Guadalquivir alone there were 12,000 happy villages'.
The Islamic agricultural revolution seems bewildering, as it
literally revolutionised the whole land of Islam without exception.
This great period of Islamic civilisation elapsed over five
centuries, from the 7th century onwards. The lands of
Islam thrived and were able to produce burgeoning communities as a
result of prosperous farming. For example, according to early
geographers and others, there were 360 villages in the Fayyum (a
province in Egypt south of Cairo), each of which could provide for
the whole of Egypt for a day; there were 12,000 villages along the
Guadalquivir; the coast between Tangiers and Melilla (north
Africa), which today is almost entirely abandoned, was densely
settled and prosperous; on the road between Gafsa and Feriana, a
part of Tunisia which today is desert, there were 200 villages; and
that along the Tigris (Iraq), settlement was continuous, to the
extent that before dawn crowing cocks answered one another from
housetop to housetop all the way from Baghdad to Basra. Other evidences paint the same picture but
with greater precision. For example, an eighth-century census of
10,000 villages in Egypt showed that no village had fewer than 500
ploughs. Further, data from the seigneurie of Monreale in Sicily
suggest that some hundred years after the Norman conquest of the
island—by which time depopulation may already have set
in—the rural areas of the seigneurie, amounting to some 1,000
square kilometres, had about 20,000 inhabitants. Almost everywhere frontiers were pushed
back, disused space was utilised, and settlement became denser and
more continuous—all changes of great significance not only
for agriculture but also for the development of trade,
communications and central administration. Cities were also
growing. This is evidence that in spite of denser rural population,
the countryside could export an increasing surplus of food-stuffs
to urban areas.
To comprehensively cover all of the factors and causes of this
agricultural revolution would require lengthy writing, which is not
the intention, or within the scope of this article. Incidentally,
to build on the work of Watson, Glick and Bolen would introduce a
great step forward in the field of agricultural history. This
article does, however, discuss four paramount factors that account
for such a revolution: firstly, the introduction of new crops by
the Muslims; secondly, the more intensive use of irrigation;
thirdly, the better use and management of soil; and finally the
role of scholarly works in promoting farming innovations and
sciences.
The introduction of new crops by the Muslims
In the pre-Islamic ancient Mediterranean world, generally speaking
only winter crops were grown, with each field yielding one harvest
every other year. The Muslim expansion however, introduced a
variety of new crops, many of Indian origin, to which the
Andalusian agronomists, such as Al-Tignarî of Granada make
reference to, hence a significant increase.
Baron Carra de Vaux mentions 'plants and animals that had come
from the Orient, and which are used in agriculture, pharmacy,
gardens, luxury trade, and arts'. He lists tulips, hyacinths, narcissi,
lilacs, jasmine, roses, peaches, prunes, sheep of `Barbary' lands,
goats, Angora cats, Persian cocks, silk, cotton, plants and
products used for dyeing, etc.. Chief amongst the newly introduced
irrigated crops into Spain was sugar cane, which in al-Andalus was
watered every four to eight days, and rice, which had to be
continually submerged in water. Cotton was cultivated at least from
the end of the eleventh century and was irrigated, according to Ibn
Bassal, every two weeks from the time it sprouted until August
1st. The Andalusis were self-sufficient in
cotton and exported it, according to al-Himyarî, to Ifriqiya
and as far south as Sijlmasa. Oranges and other citrus plants were also
irrigated, as were many fruit trees and dry-farming crops which do
not require watering but that do produce greater yields if they
are.
The more intensive use of irrigation
The introduction of new crops, combined with extended and more
intensified irrigation, gave rise to a complex and varied
agricultural system, whereby a greater variety of soil types were
put to efficient use. Thus, fields that had previously yielded only
one crop yearly at most, prior to the Islamic period, were now
capable of yielding three or more crops, in rotation, per year.
With this effort agricultural production responded to the demands
of an increasingly sophisticated and cosmopolitan urban population
by providing the towns with a variety of products unknown in
northern Europe.
Irrigation, from Andalusia to the Far East, from the Sudan to
Afghanistan, remained central, `the basis of all agriculture and
the source of all life'. The ancient systems of irrigation that the
Muslims encountered were in an advanced state of decay, and
ruins'. The Muslims repaired, adapted and devised
new systems, as well as developing new techniques to seize,
channel, store and lift the water, besides producing ingenious
combinations of available devices and resources. Abu'l Khair (fl early 12th
century) the author of Kitab al-Filaha proposes four
procedures to collect rain water, as well as other artificially
obtained waters, Also, Abu'l Khair stresses the need for
the recuperation of rain water for the reproduction of olive trees
by cuttings.
Water was seen as a very precious commodity in an Islamically aware
age. It was managed according to stringent rules, thus any waste of
water was banned. With this in mind, underground tunnelling of
water was developed to avoid waste to evaporation known under the
system of Qanats or locally in the Algerian Sahara as
Foggaras. In Spain, the same strict management of water was
in operation. The water directed from one canal to the other was
used more than once, the quantity was accurately regulated, and two
hundred and twenty four distributing outlets were established, each
with a specific name were adaptation to each soil variety. All disputes and violations of laws on
water were dealt with by a court whose judges were chosen by the
farmers themselves. This court was named The Tribunal of the
Waters, and sat on Thursdays at the door of the principal mosque.
Ten centuries later, the same tribunal still sits in Valencia, but
at the door of the cathedral.
The better use and management of soil
Watson argues that the Islamic agricultural revolution was by no
means confined to heavily irrigated and fertile areas. On the
contrary, although the impact of the revolution was greatest in
such areas and although these areas may perhaps be regarded as
being at the spearhead of agricultural advance, it is also true
that the Islamic agricultural revolution effected and benefited
extensively from the very best to the very worst land. Virtually all categories of land came to be
farmed more intensively. More kinds of soil were used than had been
the custom in antiquity, and the agronomical handbooks argued that
each soil type should be fully exploited. Ibn Bassal, whose treatise was based
completely on practical experience, distinguished between ten
classes of soil, assigning to each a different life sustainability,
according to the season of the year. He was insistent that fallow be ploughed
four times between January and May while, in certain cases (for
example, cotton, when planted in the thick soils of the
Mediterranean littoral) he recommended as many as ten ploughings. The far greater number of annual ploughings
required by the new crop succession and the resultant water loss
tended to make Muslim irrigators meticulous in their regard for the
water-bearing capacities of each kind of soil.
The role of scholarly works in promoting farming innovations and
sciences
A great number of Muslim scientists wrote on farming, and gave
practical advice for the advance of agriculture in their land.
Writers on farming in the East included Ibn Mammati (d.1209) who
lived in Egypt during Ayyubid times. In the following century Djamal
Eddin al-Watwat (d. 718/1318) while based in Cairo wrote the
Mabahidj al-fikar wa-manahidj al-ibar (unpublished), the
fourth volume of which is devoted to plants and agriculture. In the
10th/16th century, a Damascene author named Riyad al-Din al-Ghazzi
al-Amiri (935/1529) wrote a large book on agriculture which has not
survived. In general, the writers of ancient Arabic works on
agriculture dealt with the following subjects:
- types of agricultural land and choice of land,
- manure and other fertilizers,
- tools and work of cultivation,
- wells, springs, and irrigation channels,
- plants and nurseries,
- planting, pruning and grafting of fruit trees,
- cultivation of cereals, legumes, vegetables, flowers, bulbs and
tubers, and plants for perfume,
- poisonous plants and animals,
- preserving of fruit,
- and sometimes, zootechny.
In the West, Ibn al-Awwam writes in detail about the methods for
preserving corn, fruits and olive oil. Abu'l Khair (fl early 12th
century), proposes four procedures to collect rain water, and other
artificially obtained waters. He also informs us about the process of
sugar making. Al-Ishbili (fl. end of the 12th
century), wrote on soils, fertilizers, water, gardens, trees,
fruits and their preservation, ploughing, seeds, seasons and their
tasks, cereal farming, harvesting, farming engineering, livestock
rearing, veterinary subjects, etc.
The advances made by Muslim farming owe to the adaptation of
agrarian techniques to local needs, and to `a spectacular cultural
union of scientific knowledge from the past and the present, from
the Near East, the Maghrib, and Andalusia. The success of Islamic farming also lay in
hard enterprise. No natural obstacle was sufficiently formidable to
check the enterprise and industry of the Muslim farmer. He
tunnelled through the mountains; his aqueducts went through deep
ravines, and he levelled with infinite patience and labour, the
rocky slopes of the sierra (in Spain).
The advance of Islamic farming was also combined with care for the
natural environment. `With a deep love for nature, and a relaxed
way of life, classical Islamic society,' Bolens concludes,
`achieved ecological balance, a successful average economy of
operation, based not on theory but on the acquired knowledge of
many civilized traditions. More subtle than a simple accumulation of
techniques, Muslim efforts in agriculture have seen an enduring
ecological success, proven by the course of human history.'
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