Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 30

Grafting, already known to the ancients,
was the subject of descriptions and experi-
ments infinitely more varied among the
Muslim agronomists. Everything was
taken into consideration, form and colour
of the grape, the syrupiness of the juice,
the early or late quality of the vine-plant,
the degree of alcohol, etc. In order to
improve the species for the achievement
of precise needs, fantastic means were
sometimes adopted ( e.g. , grafting the vine
on the olive-tree). On the technical level
it was grafting by terebration ( taāama
according to Ibn a ¡¡ ā ¡ cited by Ibn
al-Awwām).
Like today, the protection of the vine
against diseases and bad weather dis-
tressed the vine-grower, who was impo-
tent before the scourge. More than the
Romans, the Andalusians feared the prox-
imity of the sea and, with good reason,
drizzle. The symptoms of diseases, very
exactly described by Ibn Wa ª iyya, cor-
respond to anthracosa, rust and jaundice;
the remedy prescribed drew its inspiration
from the curative panacea, namely a mix-
ture of oil, wine and water applied to the
stock of the exposed level; Ibn a ¡¡ ā ¡
added straw there, which moreover pro-
tected against frosts.
Without our being able to furnish for
all the Muslim countries the same pre-
cise details as for Spain and Irā, we can
assert, thanks especially to the geogra-
phers' information, the presence almost
everywhere of the vine, at least until the
nomad invasions of the later Middle Ages,
and often later: in Arabia, Mesopotamia,
Iran, Central Asia, Syria, Egypt; in the
Mongol period, Mustawfī azwīnī was
still to see in Turkish Asia Minor the
vines inherited from the Armenians and
Greeks. The princely courts never had
difficulty in providing wine, and the poets
who used to sing of it must have had some
acquaintance other than theoretical. The
Crusaders must have developed the vine

on the Syrian coast. There is no doubt,
however, that the vine declined at the end
of the Middle Ages, as much through the
growth of strictness and conversions as
through the interference of nomads. On
the other hand, without it being possible
here to make more than one passing allu-
sion, it is known that the conditions of
European colonization and international
modern commerce led in certain Muslim
lands, in particular in North Africa, to the
development of new vineyards on some
almost completely new bases, whose mon-
ocultural character, often excessive, in its
turn presents some difficult problems of
re-adaptation today.

(L. Bolens, Cl. Cahen)

Irrigation

The present article covers the religio-
magical and the Islamic legal aspects of
water, together with irrigation techniques,
as follows:

1. Hydromancy
As a vehicle for the sacred, water has
been employed for various techniques of
divination, and in particular, for pota-
monancy (sc. divination by means of the
colour of the waters of a river and their
ebbing and flowing, consulted for divina-
tory reasons); for pegomancy (sc. omens
given by rivers, springs, floods, a feature
of Babylonian divination); hydromancy
(called istinzāl ); lecanomancy (sc. divina-
tion from the waves set up on any shiny,
liquid surface, such as water, blood, milk,
honey, oil or petroleum); and crystallo-
mancy and cataoptromancy (sc. omens
drawn from the features appearing upon
any polished, reflecting surface).
The lack of perennial water courses
in Arabia and the infrequency of springs
prevented the development of such divi-