A History of Agriculture in India v2.c53.s8: The Contribution of the Arabs to Agriculture and Horticulture
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c53.s8
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The Contribution of the Arabs to Agriculture and Horticulture
v2.c53.s8.1
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.
v2.c53.s8.2
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.
v2.c53.s8.3
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
v2.c53.s8.4
³ Hyams, E. *A History of Gardens and Gardening*, p. 84