A History of Agriculture in India v2.c53.s8.1

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.