Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 72

amaldār s. The historian of the dynasty, · īr
Muammad Munis (1192-1244/1778-
1829), held the hereditary post of mīrāb , in
succession to his deceased elder brother,
until his death, and his History shows that
he was indeed personally concerned with
the practical affairs involved; his nephew
and continuator Muammad Riā Āgāhī,
likewise functioned as a mīrāb . Some of the
highest personages in the state gave per-
sonal attention to these matters. Munis
describes how the amīr Awa Biy Inā in
1216/1802 supervised the dredging of the
‡ īwanik canal (the term for such opera-
tions being āzū , apparently from azma
“to dig”) the actual work being done by
corvée labour ( a ª ar, bīgār ); and the ‡ ān
himself, Muammad Raīm, came per-
sonally in 1225/1810 for the re-opening
of the head of this canal.

composed in the later Sāmānid period
by an author closely connected with the
Sāmānid bureaucracy in Bu ¶ ārā; part of
this last author's information on irrigation
terminology deals specifically with condi-
tions at Marw. Ibn awal characterises
the mutawallī or muassim al-mā at Marw as
a high-ranking amīr who had under him
over 10,000 men, each with a specific
task to perform, for keeping the irrigation
system in repair. Al-Muaddasī mentions
that the amīr' s staff included guards ( urrās )
to keep watch over the canal banks and
4,000 divers ( ∞ awwāūn ) who watched
the channels night and day and had to
be ready to turn out for running repairs
in all weather conditions; the allocation of
water to its various users was determined
by a special measure or gauge ( miyās ).
For all these hydraulic systems, the dev-
astations of the Mongols must have had
an adverse effect, although agriculture
gradually revived and the systems were
brought back into repair and use. Tīmūr
took steps at restoration of the Sogdian
irrigation system, especially when he
made Samarand his capital. Under the
succeeding lines of Özbeg Turkish ¶ āns
in Transoxania and ‡ w ārazm, internal
prosperity continued to rest substantially
on an agriculture supported by centrally-
organised irrigation systems. Hence every
canal and rural community dependent on
it had its mīrāb , the official in charge of
the construction and upkeep of the dams
and channels. Some of these were com-
paratively humble local functionaries, but
the vital importance of the irrigation sys-
tems for maintaining the economic health
of ‡ w ārazm, in later times the ¶ ānate
of ‡ īwa was ruled by the Arab ª āhid
ruler Abu 'l- fi āzī Bahādur ‡ ān ( r.
1054-74/1644-63), who introduced
various administrative reforms, including
the appointment of four mīrāb s as mem-
bers of his central council of ministers or

(C.E. Bosworth)

2. Fish, Sheep and Goats

Fish

Samak (Ar.) is a substantive with a
generic sense (unit. samaka , pl. asmāk, sumūk,
simāk ), denoting fish in general, whether of
fresh water or of the sea (P. samak, māhī ,
Tkish. balık , Tamaha emen , pl. imenān,
asūlmei , pl. isūlmeien ). The term samak ,
which does not figure in the urān, is, in
the work of Arab authors, often replaced
by one of its two synonyms, ūt and nūn
(pl. nīnān, anwān ) from the Akkadian nūnu .
However, ūt (pl. awāt, ītān , in dialect,
iyūta ) is applied primarily to very large
fishes and to cetaceans.

1. Ichthyonomy
It would be impossible here to list all
the species which, in systematic ichthy-
ology ( ismākiyya ), number more than a