Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 2

two distinct categories; in the first, tac-
che extent and distribution of the rainfall
favour the economic cultivation of various
crops. In the second category the winter
rains, though not sufficient to allow of
economic cultivation, nevertheless permit
the natural growth of certain grasses and
various succulent, bulbous and halophytic
plants which constitute the pasturages of
the desert steppes. In order to make use
both of their agricultural land and of the
steppes, the Arabs have at all times led
two sorts of lives—as a rural or urban
sedentary population, and as pastoral
nomads.
Nomadism is a necessity in the desert
steppes where the winter rainfall varies in
extent between 50 and 150 mm., but the
Bedouin tribes are not opposed to a sed-
entary existence. It is in this way that the
Yemeni tribes, long before Islam, founded
their civilization on irrigation and inten-
sive cultivation of the land. After the
Islamic conquests, the Arab tribes soon
intermingled with Aramaeans from Syria
and Irā, Copts from Egypt and Berbers
from north Africa, and with the Ibero-
Latins of the Spanish peninsula, in order
to exploit together the vast territories of
the present Arab countries and of former
Muslim Andalusia.
The mediterranean climatic system
being everywhere the same, we find
throughout these territories three agricul-
tural climates. Firstly, in most of the coastal
plains (the coasts of Syria, Lebanon, Pal-
estine, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco),
thanks to a mild winter temperature and
an annual rainfall of from 500 to 1,000
mm., it is possible without irrigation
to cultivate cereals, annual leguminous
plants, various vegetables, tobacco, olives
in particular, and even cotton. With the
help of irrigation, a vast number of annual
or perennial agricultural crops can be suc-
cessfully grown—citrus fruits, bananas,

pomegranates, loquats, early vegetables,
aromatic or ornamental plants, etc.
Secondly, in the plains, hills and inland
plateaus of Syria, Upper Mesopotamia
and North Africa, where the density of
rainfall varies between 250 and 500 mm.,
dry-farming is the dominant system of
cultivation for vast areas of non-irrigated
land. Of the chief annual plants cultivated
in these regions we may mention wheat,
barley, sorghum, lentils, chick-peas,
vetch, gherkins, melons, watermelons and
sesame, while the principal fruiting trees
and shrubs are olives, vines, figs, hazel-
nuts and pistachios.
In these regions, irrigation is indispens-
able for the cultivation of most fruit trees,
ornamental trees, vegetables, leguminous
and industrial plants—apples, pears, apri-
cots, peaches, eggplant, tomatoes, gumbo,
artichokes, potatoes, lucerne, clover, cot-
ton, hemp, groundnuts, poppies, roses,
jasmine, etc.
Thirdly, in regions with a desert climate
(Lower Mesopotamia, central Arabia,
Egypt, inland regions of Libya and North
Africa) where rain is rare and the average
annual temperature reaches or exceeds
21° C. it is only by means of irrigation
that such plants as date-palms, mangoes,
orange trees, cotton, rice, sugar-cane and
others can be successfully cultivated.
During the Middle Ages, the Arabs
were familiar with and cultivated most of
the agricultural plants now known to the
Arab world. It was they who introduced
Seville oranges and lemons from India to
Umān, and thence to Bara, Egypt and
the coast of Syria and Palestine. From
Andalusia and Sicily they disseminated
throughout the Mediterranean basin the
cultivation of cotton, sugar-cane, apricots,
peaches, rice, carobs, water melons, egg-
plant, etc. Moreover, the European names
of many cultivated plants are of Arabic
origin, that is to say borrowed directly or