Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 21

was being manufactured at Palermo.
This cultivation continued until the end
of the 9th/15th century.

of Plants” ( Kitāb al-Nabāt ) by the east-
ern botanist Abū anīfa al-Dīnawarī (d.
282/895). From the 4th/10th century,
its presence is noted by as many of the
principal Muslim historians, geographers
or voyagers as of European ones. As a
result, we have precise evidence in Ibn
awal for the 4th/10th century, al-Bakrī
for the 5th/11th century, al-Idrīsī and the
Kitāb al-Istibār for the 6th/12th century,
al-Umarī for the 8th/14th century, and
Leo Africanus and Marmol for the first
and second half of the 16th century.
In Spain, where it is described in the
reign of Abd al-Rahman I, during the
Muslim period the growing of sugar cane
extended from Valencia and Castellón de
la Plana to the mouth of the Guadalquivir.
Its cultivation suffering from the expulsion
of the Moriscos; it was henceforth limited
to the area between Malaga and Alméria,
which it still occupies at the present time,
the principal areas being found around
Motril, Almuñecar, Nerja, etc.
In Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, it was
noted at Algiers, Aw ¡ ila, Surt, asīliya
and Tozeur.
In Morocco, it spread from north to
south, from Tangiers and Ceuta (Balyū-
na ª ) to Goulemine and to ābī along
the Atlantic coast, with Ul ¡ a of Salé,
awz of Marraku ª and Sūs as the main
localities. For this country, textual evi-
dence can be cross-checked with tradition
and especially with recent research and
discoveries in archaeology. Fifteen sugar-
refinery foundations, of which six have
been excavated, have been identified in
the awz of Marraku ª under the Ten-
sift (Sidi · iker), the sob water course
(Suwayra adīma) and · i ª awa (where
two foundations were found), as in Sūs.
The variety cultivated must have been
hardy, and because of the region's geo-
graphical situation in a semi-arid mar-
ginal zone, the cane could only have
prospered with the aid of a massive irriga-

We are informed about the cultiva-
tion of sugar cane and its complicated
technique (repeated ploughing and har-
rowing, division of the field into small
squares— awā —which the water reaches
by channels, planting, irrigation, mea-
sures to bring on growth, struggle against
weevils by means of tar, the two succes-
sive harvests, the first called al-ras , the
second al- ¶ ilfa , which usually gives bet-
ter sugar than the first, etc.), by the Arab
treatises on agriculture, and the works
relative to financial administration, espe-
cially on Egypt. We are unable to give the
details here and to explain the technical
terms. We will only say that the plant-
ing was done in February-March (month
of phamenōth) and that the harvest took
place in November-December (month of
koyak), that three kinds of cane were dis-
tinguished, the black, the white and the
yellow of which only the two last were
pressed.

(M. Canard)

II.—Muslim West
Sugar cane, reached the West (Ma ∞ rib,
Spain, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, Pro-
vence, etc.) in the wake of the Arab
expansion in the Mediterranean. Greek
and Roman antiquity seems, in fact, to
have recognized it as a botanical curios-
ity only (Dioscorides, Pliny, Strabo, etc.).
The exact dates of its first appearances
in the various Mediterranean lands are
not known precisely. It can, however, be
presumed that they followed closely on
the advance of the Arabs, who had dis-
covered its cultivation in the East (Meso-
potamia) and encouraged it for economic
and fiscal reasons. The first allusion to
it in the Ma ∞ rib is found in the “Book