Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 12

A second winnowing done by wooden
shovels is sometimes necessary. Finally
the grain is sifted to separate it from the
stones and earth with which it may have
become mixed during threshing and win-
nowing. Two men can winnow and sift
20-25 cwt. of corn a day. Donkeys and
other pack animals take the grain in sacks
to the granaries. The chaff is removed in
nets and used as fodder for horses, don-
keys and oxen.
Sheep and goats are commonly grazed
on stubble fields, which thus receive a
slight benefit from their manure. For the
most part, however, animal dung is used
as fuel. In some dry farming areas there is
insufficient rainfall to rot the manure even
if it were used. Household sewage mixed
with earth is used as fertilizer in some
areas, especially round urban centres.
Earth from old walls and ruined buildings
is also broken down and spread on the
fields. Gardens tend to be manured more
regularly than fields and to be cultivated
annually. Pigeon lime, collected in pigeon
towers, is used in the Ifahān district for
the cultivation of melons and pear trees.
Fa ¶ r al-Dīn Rāzī mentions the use of
bird lime and weed-killers. Fish manure
is used in Kirmān for pistachio trees.
Chemical fertilizers have been introduced
in recent years but their use is compara-
tively rare.
Practices in fallow, during which the
land may or may not be ploughed, and
crop rotation vary very widely. Unirri-
gated land tends to be left fallow for long
periods. Irrigation is usually by inunda-
tion. In vineyards, melon land, and mar-
ket gardens the water is let into the land
by irrigation trenches. In land watered by
anāts the tendency is to cultivate more
intensively the land nearest the mouth of
the anāt to avoid water loss while that
at the end of the anāt is less frequently
cultivated.

In many parts of Persia the crops have
to be guarded, especially at night, to pre-
vent depredations by wild pig and other
animals. Scarecrows ( matarsak ) are erected
in some districts.

(A.K.S. Lambton)

iv.—Ottoman Empire
During the period between the
8th/14th and 11th/17th centuries, when
the tīmār system prevailed in the Ottoman
Empire, the raabe, i.e. , the freehold own-
ership of agricultural lands was regarded
as vested in the State. The tenure of lands
held as waf and mülk in the pre-Ottoman
Muslim states of Anatolia was in part
confirmed, but Meemmed II converted
some of them to mīrī— land, as he did the
land belonging to Christian monasteries
in the territories of Trebizond: generally
speaking the central authority, when it
was powerful, attempted to increase the
extent of mīrī— land.
According to the typical örfī ānūns
promulgated in these centuries, land was
granted on lease to farmers in parcels
usually termed čift or čiftlik . The peasant
could not transfer these raiyyetlik lands as
mülk or as waf or as a gift. If he wished to
sell them or give them up he was obliged
to obtain the permission of the sipāhī and
pay a fixed charge, the a-i arār (in
the 11th/17th century, 3% of the selling
price). Thus the peasant possessed merely
the right of usufruct ( isti ∞ lāl ); and this
right could pass directly only to his sons.
The čift unit of land could not be divided:
if more than one son inherited they
enjoyed the usufruct jointly. In principle,
the peasant could not leave this land: if he
did, he was obliged to pay the čift bozan
resmi (50 ače in the 9th/15th, 75 ače in
the 10th/16th century; as the number of
peasants leaving the land increased so the
čift bozan resmi was increased, with the fall