Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
exported widely in the Islamic world,
including Yemen and Mecca, where olives
were not grown.
figures point to a slight predominance of
barley, but this cereal was used for animal
fodder. Furthermore, the accounts show
that barley was grown mainly in districts
where the soil was apparently less adapted
to wheat growing. It is worth noting that
the equilibrium between wheat and bar-
ley was a striking feature of agriculture
in Irā from Sumerian times and is still
characteristic at the present day. In the
days of the caliphs Upper Mesopotamia
produced great quantities of wheat which
were shipped to southern Irā. In Syria the
provinces of amā, im and Balabakk,
and particularly the awrān, were veri-
table granaries, supplying the surrounding
regions with wheat. In Palestine wheat of
excellent quality was grown in the coastal
plain, so that al-Muaddasī could praise
the quality of the bread of Ramla. Egypt,
which had earlier supplied Rome and
Constantinople with wheat, exported it
in the days of the caliphs and their suc-
cessors to the i ¡ āz and to other coun-
tries. The main wheat-growing region was
the aīd, the southern part of the coun-
try. Arabic authors emphasise that some
types of Egyptian wheat were unequalled.
Barley-growing had been decreasing in
Egypt before the Muslim conquest and
probably continued to decline thereafter.
European travellers who visited Egypt in
the 8th/14th century dwell on the excel-
lent quality of its wheat bread. So over
many centuries the predominance of
wheat remained unchanged. Throughout
the coastal regions of North Africa wheat
was produced and was the staple food,
at least of the town-dwellers. Speaking of
the province of Būna, the geographer Ibn
awal says that wheat and barley were
so plentiful that their quantities could not
be measured. The Muslim merchants of
North Africa exported wheat to the coun-
tries then called fi āna and Takrūr, now
part of Senegal and Mali.
(D.M. Varisco)
(Penelope C. Johnstone)
Wheat
am is the name for wheat in Syria
and in Egypt; in Irā wheat is called ina
and in Arabia it was called £ urr . These
different words are also used in the lit-
erary Arabic of the western and eastern
provinces of the Muslim empire.
Wheat was the main grain crop in
the Near East from the beginning of the
Muslim period (and much earlier), while
in Europe in the Middle Ages even the
upper classes ate bread made from bar-
ley and rye. The predominance of wheat
among cereals distinguished Muslim
countries from the Far East also, as Chi-
nese travellers observed.
Muslim physicians recommended
abstention from other bread and literary
evidence shows that in the caliphal period
only the poor classes of southern Irā ate
rice bread. In ūzistān and in some
Caspian provinces, such as Māzandarān,
however, there were extensive rice planta-
tions or rice was even predominant. But in
the central provinces of the Muslim world
people ate bread made of cereals other
than wheat only in times of distress, e.g.,
famines, or when the general prosperity
had declined considerably, as in Egypt at
the end of the 9th/15th century. Bread
made of barley was the food of ascetics.
The accounts of the Irāī treasury of
the 3rd/9th century, which have come
down to us in extracts included in the
works of the geographers udāma b.
afar and Ibn urradā £ bih, contain
information on the quantities of wheat
and barley received as taxes in kind. These
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