Agriculture and Irrigation in Pre-modern Muslim Societies

            Agriculture across the Muslim world may be completed by four short pieces on the most important grains grown. These will be preceded by three very important cultivated crops, the Date palm, Sugar cane and the Olive tree. Eliyahu Ashtor approaches the subject of Wheat as an economic historian and notes it was the main crop established in several varieties throughout the Middle East from well before the Muslim era. Commonly a victual’s terminology could vary from one place to another. ‘Wheat’ in Egypt is called ‘kamh’ while in Iraq it is ‘hinta’; another synonym is ‘burr’. The situation appears more perplexing in the domain of medieval cook books. For example, a recipe for a meat dish called hintiyya (‘wheaten’ preparation) is actually made with rice (aruzz) cooked in milk and the meat. Terminological confusion is also found with regard to Millet, and while opinion was divided as to its nutritional value, it was believed to be an effective remedy against certain physical complaints. Barley was the second most commonly grown crop and widely used to make popular, less expensive bread than wheat-bread. Finally, Rice was more limited in its cultivation than wheat or barley, yet was a staple of the poor in rice producing zones, and in the cook-book world of the urbanite was used in a number of different dishes.

            The next article is also composite, dealing with water chiefly in the sense of Irrigation, making it complementary to the discussion above on agriculture. Whereas Egypt was known as “the gift of the Nile”, Iraq possessed two major rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, although there were significant differences between the Egyptian and Iraqi river systems. Persia had no such great waterways that traversed the land from one end to the other and depended far more upon a range of irrigation techniques involving dams, weirs, wells and cisterns and the particular type called kanat that all influenced settlement sites and social patterns. Different again, India seemed to rely more heavily upon the seasonal monsoon rains. Like India, Egypt too was a two crop (winter and summer) country, the former depending solely upon the annual inundation of the Nile, the latter upon artificial irrigation means. The important matter of water rights of access and use is also discussed by different authors. A notable feature of water use, whatever type employed, was the heavily labour intensive preparation and maintenance required to sustain a viable supply of water for agricultural output. An excellent illustration of this is the chief irrigation officer of Marw (in Persia) who had 10,000 workers under him, ‘each with a specific task to perform’, to keep the irrigation system in good condition. The organisation of these systems depended both upon the input of central and local authorities.