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A History of Agriculture in India v2.c53: Chapter 1

A History of Agriculture in India v2.c53

Language
English

Contents

Chapter 1

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THE ROLE OF THE ARAB HORSE AND THE CAMEL THE CALIPHATE, THE CONQUEST OF NORTH AFRICA AND SPAIN THE ARAB CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE, AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE

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ARABIA is a plateau, 610 to 1,524 metres (2,000 to 5,000 feet) high, with desert, rocks and oases. Much of the land is an arid waste, shingly in the north and sandy in the south. Its climate has been described as one of alternate frying and freezing. Sand-storms are common in summer, and a hot wind, called *simoom*, blows for many days at a stretch. In the desert are sand-dunes in all directions, and appear like sea-waves piled on each other, suddenly arrested and converted into reddish sand. Below the sand are vast oil-fields, over some of which pillars of fire hover by night. Among the sand-dunes at some places are the oases with groves of datepalms. Plodding through the sand are camels, led by hook-nosed, wiry men wearing flowing robes. In the cities are domed mosques with needle-like minarets from which the muezzin calls the faithful to the prayers. The houses have mud walls and flat roofs and are box-like. The women are veiled and are seldom seen by the outsiders. Some of them are beautiful, and it is their charm and beauty, their guiles and passion, which are celebrated in the *Arabian Nights*.

The Prophet

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Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca in A.D. 570 and died in A.D. 632. This was the period when Harsha ruled over India; China was under the Tang Dynasty; Chosroes II ruled over Persia; and Heraclius was the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. Mecca, with a population of about twenty thousand, was a pilgrimage centre, and Kaaba, a small square temple of black stone, was the chief attraction for the pilgrims. A meteorite, regarded as a god, was its corner-stone, and all other minor tribal gods were under its protection.

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On account of his campaign against idolatry, there arose great opposition to Muhammad in Mecca, and on 20 September 622 he fled to Yathrib, which later on acquired the name of Medina. In A.D. 629, Muhammad conquered Mecca, and in A.D. 632, when he died at the age of sixty-two, he was the master of all Arabia.

Islam, a Social Revolutionary Creed

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The new religion of Islam was a social revolutionary creed. It preached brotherhood of Islam and every Moslem regarded every other Moslem as his brother. Muhammed preached that all believers were equal before God, and the rich must share their wealth with the poor. Many of the Prophet's early followers came from the ranks of the poor and the depressed. The Islamic principle of equality had a great appeal for the working people who were oppressed in the class- and caste-ridden societies of the Roman, Byzantine and Persian empires. Its spirit of generosity and brotherhood and its simple doctrine of one God made a great impact on the people who were baffled with the obscure Christian dogmas of the Trinity and the Magian mysticism.

Geographical Situation of Arabia and Trade

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The geographical situation of Arabia proved as much a boon to the renascent Islam as was the situation of England between Europe and America.

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Arabia was situated between the old civilizations of India, Iran, China, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and any power which could control this Arabian bridge between the Orient, Europe and Africa could also control the vital trade-routes and the trade. The heavy taxation and misrule of the Byzantine Empire diverted the Chinese trade to Arabia, and the tribes flourished as never before. The Arab caravans took over the commodities from India near the present Aden, and further up also from Abyssinia. They brought this merchandise to Mecca. From Mecca the caravans passed through Medina and reached Damascus, which had become an emporium of the trade with Europe.

The Camel and the Arab Horse

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The camel and the Arab horse have played as great a role in the phenomenal rise and spread of Islam as its social revolutionary programme of equality and fraternity. The development of the Arab horse by the Bedouins is the first great achievement in animal breeding of which there is any definite record. The safety of the owners hinged upon the speed and the endurance of their horses and, hence, they laid emphasis on these qualities in their breeding programmes and achieved them to a high degree. Peake and Fleure state that the famous breed of drought-resistant Arab horses was evolved in Nejd, the central oasis of Arabia, about the close of the fourth century. The Arab horse proved a formidable weapon of warfare and the cavalry charges of the Arabs broke up the armies of Iran, Egypt, Byzantium, Spain and the Hindu India.

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The camel is essentially a desert-dweller and came into its own only when the Afrasian steppe land had dried up. The figure of a camel has been found in a First Dynasty tomb in Egypt. The camel appeared in Mesopotamia about 1000 B.C. However, it was many centuries later that the camel achieved any importance. It was about the fourth century that the camel began to be used as a ship of the desert. The peculiar structure of its stomach with devices for storing water and gobbled-up food enables the camel to pass many days without food and water. With the use of the camel the deserts no longer remained a barrier against human intercourse. The mastery over the camel stimulated intercourse between China, Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Arabia and Europe, and promoted trade. Trade has played a great role in the diffusion of culture and interchange of ideas. A trader acquires a broader outlook and sheds local prejudices by meeting people with different customs. Trade sharpens the critical faculty and thus opens the gates of knowledge and progress.

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How the animals and plants which form a part of a people's environment affect their economic and social life is also interesting. As the wealth of a desert nomad consists of camels, horses, sheep, goats and date-palms, the mathematical apportionment of shares among parents, brothers, sisters, daughters, etc., is peculiarly suitable for such communities. This shows how suitable Islamic law of inheritance is for desert nomads. On the other hand, the exclusion of females from inheritance to maintain the solidarity of the village community was peculiarly suitable for the peasants of the Hindu India.

The Caliphate

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Abu Bakr succeeded Muhammad as his Caliph in A.D. 632. He was followed by Omar (A.D. 634-644), whose general, Khalid, defeated the army of Heraclius in A.D. 636 upon the banks of the Yarmak, a tributary of the Jordan. Damascus was taken in A.D. 635. In A.D. 641, the Persian army was defeated at Nahavend by Caliph Omar, and Iran, Mesopotamia and Central Asia passed into Muslim hands. Alexandria was sacked in A.D. 642. Syria, Iran and Egypt were conquered by the Arab Army, all in a period of twenty-five years. Thus the Arabs controlled the trade routes from China, India and Africa. Under Walid I (A.D. 705-714), northern Africa and Spain were conquered.

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In A.D. 749, Abdus Abbas became the first Abbasid Caliph with his capital at Baghdad. The Abbasids were Shias, the followers of Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet. They were more liberal in outlook than their predecessors, the Omayyads. In A.D. 757 the Caliph Al-Mansur founded a new capital at Baghdad on the Tigris. Under Haroun-al-Rashid (A.D. 786-809), a contemporary of Charlemagne, Baghdad became a great trading and literary centre. It attracted Greek, Nestorian Christian and Jewish scholars and philosophers from all over. The Caliph sent scholars to different parts of the Eastern Roman Empire to collect and purchase all the available works of Greek philosophers. It was thus that the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Galen, Euclid, Appolonius, Ptolemy and others became available to them, and they got them translated into Arabic. To the translations they appended erudite commentaries. Thus arose a great Arabic culture, liberal in spirit, which absorbed the best elements of the Persian and Egyptian cultures, and the science of the Greeks and the Hindus. Through Baghdad, the Hindu medical, astronomical and mathematical theories found their way to mediaeval Europe. Caliph Al Mamun (A.D. 813-833) obtained copies of scientific manuscripts from India, which were sometimes collated to establish a sound text. Didactic fables of India, e.g. the Panchatantra, adopted the guise of Kalila and Damna, and later on became popular in Europe as Aesop's fables.

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Unlike the Romans, the followers of Islam regarded trade and labour as honourable professions. The Caliphs of Baghdad were also part-time traders, and they purchased their personal goods with the proceeds of their manual labour. They organized the Moslem industrial workers, such as weavers, goldsmiths and blacksmiths, in guilds, and supervised and patronized them. Trade involves travel, visiting distant lands and observing their people as well as their soil, rocks, minerals, fauna and flora. It makes a person observant, and encourages him to think in abstract. From the eighth to eleventh centuries, the entire trade of India and China, on the one hand, and of Europe, on the other, was with the Arabs. The extent of the Arab empire in the ninth century is shown in Fig. 1. An enormous number

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Map of the Arab Empire in the IX Century A.D.

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FIG. 1. The Arab Empire was at its maximum extent in the 9th century A.D.

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of Arab coins, dating from the end of the seventh to the beginning of the eleventh century, which have been found in Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway, indicate the extent of Islamic trade in northern Europe. This trade with the countries of the East and the West became a great source of wealth to the Arabs. With this wealth, they raised armies which enabled them to extend their conquests. Its most beneficent effect was the rise of a leisured class which occupied itself with studies and pursuit of knowledge.

The Arab Conquest of Spain

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Here reference may be made to the Arab conquest of Spain. The leader of the first expedition into Spain was Tariq, a Berber, who with a force of three hundred Arabs and seven thousand Berbers defeated the West Goths in a great battle in A.D. 711. As compared with the Arab invaders, these Goths were unlettered savages. In A.D. 720, the Arabs reached the Pyrenees. It was Charles Martel who defeated the Moslems at Poitiers in A.D. 732 and saved the Christian Europe. If he had lost the battle, the whole of Europe would have been conquered by the Moslems, and the history of the world would have been different.

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During the Arab occupation, many families of Christians living in Spain were converted to Islam. Toledo became a great centre of learning. Cordoba in the tenth century was the most civilized city in Europe. It had seventy libraries and nine hundred public baths.

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The Moors, as the Arabs were called, made a great impact on the life of the people of Spain. They introduced new musical instruments, e.g. the lute (al-ūd), guitar (cītāra) and rebeck (rabāb). The word troubador is of Arabic origin (from tarraba, to sing or make music). The chess, which was borrowed by the Persians from India, was introduced by the Moslems into Spain, and from there it spread to the rest of Europe.

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New manufactures and fashions spread to the West—cottons; muslins from Mosul; baldachins from Baghdad; damasks and damascenes from Damascus; 'sarsenets' or Saracen stuffs; samites and dimities and diapers from Byzantium; the 'atlas' (Arabic atlas), a sort of silk-satin manufactured in the East; rugs and carpets and tapestries from the Near East and Central Asia; lacquers; new colours such as carmine and lilac (the words are both Arabic); dyes and drugs and spices and scents, such as alum and aloes, cloves and incense, indigo and sandalwood; articles of dress and of fashion, such as camlets and jupes (from the Arabic jubbah), or powders and glass-mirrors; works of art in pottery, glass, gold, silver, and enamel; and even the rosary itself, which is said to have come from the Buddhists of India by way of Syria to western Europe.¹

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¹ Arnold, Sir Thomas, and Guillaume, A. The Legacy of Islam, pp. 60, 61

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From Spain and Sicily, where the civilization of the Arabs attained its acme, it transmitted its influence into France and Italy. Its greatest gift to Europe was paper. The Moslems learnt paper-making from the Chinese workmen whom they captured in Samarqand in A.D. 704. The first paper factories were established by the Moslems in Spain and Sicily in the twelfth century. Paper provided the foundation for the renaissance in literature, which followed the invention of the printing-press.

Arabs Promote Science

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The Arabs also played a great role in the promotion of science. ‘If the Greek was the father, then the Arab was the foster-father of the scientific method,’ observed H.G. Wells. Chemistry, algebra, astronomy, optics and medicine flourished in the cities of Basra, Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba.

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After paper, the greatest contribution of the Arabs to the advancement of knowledge was the introduction of the Hindu invention of the zero in arithmetic. Before this, the Roman numerals were in use and their range was limited. The zero liberated arithmetic, and people could now count in millions, billions and trillions.

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The leading work of Indian science, the Brahma-Siddhanta of Brahma Gupta, was translated into Arabic, and was given the name of Sind-Hind.

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With the aid of new instruments of observation, the Arab philosophers acquired the exact knowledge of the circumference of the earth, and the position and the number of planets. Astronomy began to outgrow its primitive form (divinations of astrology), and developed into an exact science. Although algebra had been invented by Diophantus of Alexandria, it did not become an object of common study until the age of Arabic learning. Botany was studied for medical purposes; yet the discovery of two thousand varieties of plants by Dioscorides represented the birth of a new science. Chemistry owes its origin and initial development to the industry of the Arabs. The most renowned of the alchemists was Jabir ibn Hayyan (fl. about A.D. 800), and Al-Razi (about A.D. 865-925), also known as Rhazes. The Arab alchemists discovered new substances, such as potash, nitrate of silver, and nitric and sulphuric acids. The word alcohol is Arabic.

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It was in the science of medicine that the Arabs made the greatest progress. Masua and Geber, the disciples of Galen, and Avicena (A.D. 980-1037), were born in Bukhara. They were great physicians. Avicena’s Qanun-i-Shifa is the greatest treatise in Moslem medicine, and was the textbook of Moslem physicians throughout the Middle Ages. The school of Salermo, the centre of medical learning in Europe until the sixteenth century, owed its origin to the Arabs.

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Al Farabi, a great physician, taught at Damascus as well as at Baghdad. His commentary on Aristotle was studied for centuries as an authoritative work. Roger Bacon learnt mathematics from his works.

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The Arabs were not merely the carriers of science, they were also innovators. In the eleventh century lived Al Hassan (A.D. 965-1039) of Basra, who deserves a place among the greatest scientists of all ages. Optics was his special subject. He corrected the mistaken notion of the Greeks that the rays of light issued from the eye. By anatomical and geometrical reasoning, he proved that the rays of light came from the object seen and impinged on the retina. There is ground for belief that Kepler borrowed his optical views from Al Hassan.

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The mechanical clock, introduced into Europe in the fourteenth century, was adopted from Moslem models. ‘The clock had great influence upon the development of Western technics and Western civilization in general’, observes Geise.

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Al Gazali, son of an Andalusian merchant, anticipated Descartes in reducing the standard of truth to self-consciousness.

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‘The distinctive merit of the Arab scholars was the zeal to acquire knowledge through observation,’ observes M. N. Roy. ‘They discarded the vanity of airy speculation, and stood firmly on the ground known to them.’

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They held that philosophy must be based on mathematics; and it should cease to be an idle speculation: abstract thought should be guided by precise reasoning, based on concrete facts and established laws in order to produce positive results.

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In navigation, the Arabs, with their improved astrolabe and mariner’s compass, were leaders. The astrolabe was invented by al-Fazari, about A.D. 775, at Baghdad. The magnetic compass was an invention of the Chinese, and the Arabs possibly borrowed it from them and improved upon it. In the ninth century, their ships reached Java and Sumatra. About the middle of the tenth century, Arab ships reached the Chinese town of Khanfu, now Canton. It may be mentioned that the word ‘admiral’ is of Arabic origin, and so are cable, average, shallop (sloop), barque, and monsoon.

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In the Moslem Spain, it was between A.D. 1058 and 1269 that a galaxy of men of genius flourished, e.g. Al-Bakri and Idrisi, the geographers, and Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), the physician, Avempace, Averroes (Ibnrushd) and Ibn Tufayl, the philosophers, Ibn’ Arabi of Murcia, the mystic, Maimonides, the Jewish savant, and Ibn Jubayr, the traveller. Averroes (A.D. 1126-1198) taught at Cordoba, and among his students were many Christians. He made a sharp division between religious and scientific truth, and thus liberated science from the dogmas of Christianity and Islam. Averroes and Averroism dominated the scientific thought of Europe for four hundred years.

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From the ninth to the thirteenth century, the Moslem civilization was greatly superior to the civilization of Europe. ‘While Europe lay for the most part in misery and decay, both materially and spiritually, the Spanish Muslims created a splendid civilization and an organized economic life. Muslim Spain played a decisive part in the development of art, science, philosophy and poetry, and its influence reached even to the highest peaks of the Christian thought of the thirteenth century, to Thomas Aquinas and Dante. Then, if ever, Spain was "the torch of Europe".¹

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¹ Arnold, Sir Thomas and Guillaume, A. *The Legacy of Islam*, p. 5

The Contribution of the Arabs to Agriculture and Horticulture

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The Arabs were also innovators in agriculture. They had improved systems of irrigation. They wrote scientific treatises on farming. They excelled in horticulture, knowing how to graft and how to produce new varieties of fruits and flowers. In Egypt their water works and canals enabled the farmers to irrigate the higher ground, and much waste-land was made to yield rich harvests. The increasing numbers of pilgrims to Mecca needed so much grain that the Arabs reopened the ancient canal of the Ptolemies between the Nile and the Red Sea to speed up the passage of wheat to Mecca, and the early Abbasid caliphs are said to have thought of digging a Suez canal. Under the Ommiad dynasty in Spain an intricate system of irrigation carried water from the mountains to the plains and opened immense tracts of arid land. The Arabs terraced the slopes with vineyards. In country that had been reduced to a depopulated and dry waste by the Visigoths, villages multiplied and cities sprang up. Into western Europe from Mohammedan countries were introduced orange, lemon, peach, apricot, banana, spinach, artichoke, rice, sugarcane, sesame, carob, melon, cotton, saffron, rose, morning-glory, and many other flowers and plants, and the silkworm with the mulberry tree.

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The Arabs specialized in the culture of date-palms. According to Swingle, the date-palm produces more well-mineralized, highly flavoured and nutritious human food per acre than any other temperate-zone crop. While it has its feet in running water, its head is in the fires of heaven. In the date-gardens of Iraq, two tiers of crops are grown below the date-palms, viz. fruit-trees like olives, almonds, pomegranates, peaches, oranges and lemons, and below them vegetables, berries and flowers.

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What were the plants grown by the Arabs in their gardens in Spain? What the Arab gardeners regarded as correct rules for planting, and some of the garden plants which they favoured, says Hyams, can be gathered from an authoritative twelfth-century work on agriculture and horticulture written by Yahyā ibn Muhammad (Abū Zakarīyā). ‘Abū Zakarīyā says that all garden doorways should be framed by clipped evergreens, that cypresses should be used to line paths and grouped to mark the junctions of paths. He objects to the mixing of evergreen with deciduous trees. He liked to see canals and pools shaded by trees or bowers, to prevent excessive loss of water through evaporation. Plants named in his text include lemon and orange trees, pines and most of our common deciduous trees, cypresses, oleander, myrtle and rose as the only flowering shrubs, violets, lavender, balm, mint, thyme, marjoram, iris, mallow, box and bay laurel. He lays much stress on aromatics, as, indeed, did all the Islamic gardeners. His climbing plants are vines, jasmines and ivy.'³

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³ Hyams, E. *A History of Gardens and Gardening*, p. 84

Architecture

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The dome and the horseshoe arch are distinct contributions of the Arabs to the architecture of Spain. The architecture of Moorish places, known as the Alhambra and the Alcazar, is marked by dignity and splendour. As the painting and sculpting of the human form was forbidden by Islam, the Moslem architects and masons took recourse to geometry. The vaults of mosques and palaces were encrusted with circular and polygonal studs, the stalactites. A new type of beauty, the beauty of crystals, emerged. The use of brilliantly coloured and decorated tiles further enriched their buildings.

Chahar-Bagh Design

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From the Persians, the Arabs learnt the *chahar-bagh* design of the garden lay-out. Thus when they were in Spain they introduced two great innovations, viz. the cultivation of date-palms and the lay-out of gardens with crossed channels containing fountains of water. On this pattern, the Arabs raised splendid gardens at Cordoba, Seville and Granada.

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The gardens of Alhambra and Generalife in Granada, with their canals, jets of water and flower-beds, also bear the impress of the Persian *chahar-bagh*. The Arabs left an indelible impress on the horticulture of Spain and Portugal, where the entire vocabulary concerned with irrigation is Arabic, and so are the names of numerous flowers, fruits, vegetables, shrubs and trees.

References

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Arnold, Sir Thomas and Guillaume, A. *The Legacy of Islam*, London, 1968 Christy, A.E. (Ed.) *The Asian Legacy and American Life*, New York, 1945 Geise, J. *Man and the Western World*, New York, 1940 Hyams, E. *A History of Gardening*, London, 1971 Peake, H. and Fleure, H. J. *The Horse and the Sword*, Oxford, 1933 Stewart, D. *Early Islam*, New York, 1972 Wells, H.G. *The Outline of History*, London, 1966

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