Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 7

observations and experiments, in order to
adapt their works to the realities of the
Spanish soil and climate. They also intro-
duced original chapters on the cultiva-
tion of new plants—rice, sugar-cane, date
palms, citrus fruits, cotton, flax, madder,
apricots, peaches, pears, watermelons,
eggplant, pistachios, saffron, etc.
As we have seen, two Arabo-Hispanic
treatises on agronomy were translated into
Castilian. In this way, Ibn Wāfid's work
was widely used by the Spanish agrono-
mist Alonso de Herrera in his famous
Agricultura General (1513).
Finally we should note that it was
in Muslim Spain, during the 5th/11th
century, in Toledo and later in Seville,
that the first “royal botanical gardens”
of Europe made their appearance, both
pleasure gardens and also trial grounds
for the acclimatization of plants brought
back from the Near and Middle East. In
the Christian world we have to wait until
the middle of the 16th century to see the
establishment of gardens of this sort, in
the university towns of Italy.

prevent the decay of the kingdom. To
this end irrigation works were to be car-
ried out, security established, and extor-
tion against the peasantry prevented. The
philosophers and encyclopaedists similarly
regarded agriculture as the basic industry,
upon which the good order of the world
and the perpetuation of the human race
depended.
Invasion and dynastic struggles have
been the cause of frequent interruption
in, not to say decay of, agriculture. For
example in ‡ ūzistān, where there had
been considerable development under the
Sāsānians, the agricultural economy failed
to return quickly to its previous level after
the Arab invasion in the first half of the
seventh century A.D. and there was until
modern times a cumulative, though not
uninterrupted, decline. The quartering of
soldiers on the population in Būyid times
appears to have materially contributed to
agricultural decline. It has always been
the practice of government officials, civil
and military, to live upon the country, a
custom highly detrimental to agriculture.
At no time, perhaps, did the evils of the
system reach greater heights than under
the Īl ¶ āns. In the ā ¡ ār period the evil
was also widespread. In times of war, con-
tinuous or intermittent, it was sometimes
the practice deliberately to lay waste fron-
tier areas. Thus the Turco-Persian fron-
tier area in afawid times was reduced
to a desert. Many examples at different
periods of Persian history could be cited
of local officials imposing such severe con-
tributions on the cultivators of the soil as
to cause their dispersal and thus lead to
the ruin of their land.
Tribal warfare and raiding was another
major cause of agricultural decay. Such
raiding was common whenever the cen-
tral government weakened; further, when
the tribal population and its flocks rose
above the level which could be maintained

(G.S. Colin)

iii.—Persia
Agriculture in Persia was from earliest
times regarded as the fundamental basis
of the prosperity of the country. From
early times also there has been a dichot-
omy between the agricultural and the
pastoral elements of the population. The
Avesta was unequivocal in its approval of
the settled life of the peasant and of the
practice of agriculture. Agricultural pros-
perity, which was also in Islamic times
traditionally regarded as the basis upon
which stable government rested, was
closely connected with irrigation, security,
and taxation. Rulers were urged by medi-
aeval Islamic theorists to foster agriculture
in order to ensure a full treasury and thus