rethinking the islamic agricultural revolution

7/27/2019 Rethinking the Islamic Agricultural Revolution

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Plants and Progress: Rethinking the Islamic Agricultural Revolution

Michael Decker

Journal of World History, Volume 20, Number 2, June 2009, pp. 187-206

(Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press

DOI: 10.1353/jwh.0.0058

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187

Journal of World History, Vol. 20, No. 2 2009 by University of Hawaii Press

Plants and Progress: Rethinking theIslamic Agricultural Revolution*

michael deckerUniversity of South Florida

In 1974, Andrew Watson published an influential article titled TheArab Agricultural Revolution in which he argued that Muslim agri-culturalists transformed Mediterranean farming beginning shortly afterthe seventh-century conquests of most of the Middle East and NorthAfrica. Watson elaborated his claims in another article, A MedievalGreen Revolution (1981), and in a monograph, Agricultural Inno-vation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming

Techniques, 700 1100.1 In these works, Watson proposed a medievalGreen Revolution that entailed the spread of intensive methods offarming and irrigation technology and a rise in crop yields because ofthese farming techniques. Accompanied by a demographic upswing,intensive farming methods elevated labor requirements and yieldedhigher crop surpluses. In turn the abundance of food supported thelarger and more numerous cities of the Muslim world.2

In support of his thesis, Watson charted the advance of seventeenfood crops and one fiber crop that became important over a large area

* I am grateful for Mr. Nick Maroulis who supported this work via my endowed profes-sorship. I also thank the editor and anonymous reviewer for their insightful criticisms ofthis paper.

1 The trio of Andrew Watsons works, The Arab Agricultural Revolution and Its Dif-fusion, 7001100,Journal of Economic History 34 (1974): 835; A Medieval Green Revo-lution, in The Islamic Middle East, 700 1900, ed. Abraham Udovitch (Princeton, N.J.:Darwin Press, 1981), pp. 2958; andAgricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). All dates, unless otherwise specified, are c.e.

2 Watson, Arab Agricultural Revolution, pp. 917; and Watson,Agricultural Innova-tion, pp. 23.


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188 journal of world history, june 2009

of the Mediterranean world during the first four centuries of Islamicrule (roughly the seventh through eleventh centuries c.e.). Amongthese flora we find familiar items whose impact on our diets today is

self-evident: Asiatic rice, sugar cane, banana and plantain, lemon,lime, hard (durum) wheat, and sorghum. Others are of less importancebut familiar and significant: watermelon, eggplant, spinach, artichoke,colocasia, sour orange, shaddock, mango, and coconut palm. Eventu-ally, during the European colonization of the New World, a number ofthe crops of the Green Revolution became major components of theColumbian Exchange and thence passed into global agriculture andindustry. Chief among the crops are ubiquitous and fundamental NewWorld planter crops: sugar cane, banana, and rice.3

Following the mid seventh-century collapse of Byzantine author-ity in the eastern Mediterranean and the demise of Sasanian Persia,the Muslim caliphate unified under a single authority for the first timelands from Afghanistan to Spain, an unprecedented and unduplicatedsuccess. The colossal embrace of the Islamic polity meant that east andwest were connected as never before. This unity facilitated communi-cation and trade and created an atmosphere that encouraged the spreadof knowledge and goods. Further, the Arabs own familiarity with farm-ing in arid regions meant that they were both experienced in develop-

ing marginal lands and interested in doing so.Some of the flora of the Green Revolution were adapted to drylands,such as hard wheat and watermelon, and thus permitted the extensionof the land without irrigation. Others, such as sugar cane and coconut,were able to flourish on soils that had been rendered saline by previousirrigation schemes that had rendered the land useless for conventionalcrops such as wheat and barley. Crops such as rice were best grownunder regimes where heavy water input was available. To supply thedemands of thirsty crops, Islamic farmers turned to numerous meth-

ods of irrigation, including machinery and underground canals (qanats)that in turn sustained the expansion of plants and the farmed land-

3 An overview of the transfer of major crops is found in Alfred W. Crosby, The Colum-bian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: PraegerPublishers, 1972), pp. 64121; and Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The BiologicalExpansion of Europe, 900 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Furtherlight on the Columbian exchange supra those crops that formed part of the Green Revolu-tion may be found in Judith A. Carney, African Rice in the Columbian Exchange,Journalof African History42, no. 3 (2001): 377396. Finally, a brief overview of the environmentaltransformation of the New World through European farming methods in the age of colonial-ism may be glimpsed in B. L. Turner II and Karl W. Butzer, The Columbian Encounter andLand-Use Change, Environment34, no. 8 (1992): 1620.


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Decker: Plants and Progress 189

scape. The massive influx of crops that quickly became vital to life,expanded the farmed landscape, and replaced inferior foodstuffs alteredthe Middle East and Mediterranean drastically.

Watson also proposes that the Muslims encroached on the tradi-tional summer fallow of the ancient world: the opening of the summerseason was one of several factorsperhaps the principal onepermit-ting systems of rotation which made much more intensive use of theland. This statement ignores evidence that shows that the Romans,Byzantines, and Sasanian Persians exercised continuous cropping ofthe land and a sophisticated annual crop rotation.4

Few changes that Watson traces are more important than the asser-tion of Islamic introduction of new techniques of irrigated farming.

In the area of irrigation technology, the Muslims are credited withan array of new devices and management techniques that, while notnew in some regions of their empire, were a rarity before the arrival ofthe Muslim conquerors.5 Beyond aiding the acclimatization and dis-semination of new plants, these hydraulic systems increased yields ofearlier established crops. Because the preindustrial world was agrarianin it essence, the alteration of farming life was embedded within a cas-cade of change that touched on labor, technology, trade, industry, anddemography. Grand in its scope and scale, the Green Revolution posits

a classical Islamic agriculture fundamentally different than preconquestRoman, Byzantine, Persian, and Jewish practices.Watsons thesis has been accepted without serious challenge.

Though some criticism of faulty methodology, errors of fact, and falseassumption were raised by early reviewers, major secondary specialistand general sources now take for granted that his portrayal reflects real-ity on the ground in the medieval Mediterranean.6 Given the stability

4 The Geoponica, a Greek farming manual compiled in the tenth century from lateantique sources 2:3 shows that summer sowing was normal in the Roman Mediterranean.Since the handbook was compiled from late antique sources mainly from Syria, it does notreflect the minor role in some parts of the northern Mediterranean (italics in the original)ascribed it by Watson, Arab Agricultural Revolution, p. 10; see Geoponica, ed. HeinrichBeckh (Leipzig, 1886), 2.3. On the Geoponica, see below. On Roman systems of crop rota-tion, see recently G. Kron, Roman Ley-Farming,Journal of Roman Archaeology 13 (2000):277287; for the Jewish and Sasanian Mesopotamian case, see Julius Newman,AgriculturalLife of the Jews in Babylonia between 200 C.E. and 500 C.E. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1932).

5 Watson, Arab Agricultural Revolution, pp. 9 13.6 Critical reviewers include J. Johns, A Green Revolution? review ofAgricultural

Innovation in the Early Islamic World, by Andrew Watson, Journal of African History 25(1984): 343344; and C. Cahen, review ofAgricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World,by Andrew Watson,Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient 29, no. 2 (1986).Those who accept Watsons view include J. H. Galloway, The Mediterranean Sugar Indus-


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of farming systems throughout much of recorded history, the possibilityof a major break with the agrarian past, driven by new crops, methods,and technologies, poses an intriguing prospect.

It is impossible in the space provided to undertake a thorough cri-tique and analysis of all components of the medieval Green Revolutionthesis. Though there has yet to be a systematic treatment of these inlight of the Green Revolution thesis, some specialist work has beendone on ancient demography and irrigation that rebuts sizeable partsof the Watson thesis.7 A recent study of Mesopotamian irrigation sys-tems shows, for example, that intensive hydraulic farming was at itsapogee there under the Sasanians; subsequent Islamic work was largelyrestricted to restoration or expansion of older systems. Work in the

Mughan steppe of northwestern Iran demonstrates that the Sasaniansystems there were abandoned in the seventh century; the regions agri-culture never recovered and the area became a sparsely populated pas-toral landscape until the twentieth century.8 In Spain, Glicks theory ofa radical transformation of the irrigated landscape has been challengedby thorough archaeological survey work that suggests that the Islamichydraulic infrastructure was built up from the prior Roman network,and that it augmented rather than replaced the latter landscape.9

Nothing has been written, however that attacks the central pillar

of Watsons thesis, namely the basket of plants that is inextricably

try, Geographical Review 67 no. 2 (1977): 179; D. Hill, Engineering, in Encyclopedia of theHistory of Arabic Science, 3 vols., ed. Roshdi Rashed (London: Routledge, 1996), 3:751795;Ahmad Y. al-Hassan and Donald R. Hill, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 206; A. Dallal, Science, Medicine, andTechnology: The Making of Scientific Culture, in The Oxford History of Islam, ed. JohnL. Esposito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 196197; and Francis Robinson,ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Muslim World, with a foreword by Ira M. Lapidus(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 149154.

7 rjan Wikander, Handbook of Ancient Water Technology (Leiden: Brill, 2000); P. Briant,Irrigation et drainage dans lantiquit, Qants et canalisations souterraines en Iran (Paris, 2000);Ariel S. Lewin and Pietrina Pellegrini, eds., Settlements and Demography in the Near Eastin Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Colloquium, Matera, 2729 October 2005 (Pisa: Istitutieditoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2006).

8 Peter Christiansen, The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environments in the Historyof the Middle East 500 B.C. to A.D. 1500 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1993),pp. 73116. For the Mughan Steppe, see Karim Alizadeh and Jason A. Ur, Formation andDestruction of Pastoral and Irrigation Landscapes on the Mughan Steppe, North-WesternIran,Antiquity81, no. 311 (2007): 148160 for recent work on Sasanian era agriculturallandscapes and their medieval transformation.

9 Thomas F. Glick, Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vard University Press, 1970). A more nuanced view is held by Karl W. Butzer et al., Irriga-tion Agrosystems in Eastern Spain: Roman or Islamic Origins?Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers 75, no. 4 (1985): 479509.


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linked to all other elements of his analysis. This work will thereforeassess the place and importance of four crops of the Islamic Agri-cultural Revolution for which there is considerable pre-Islamic evi-

dence in the Mediterranean world. Plants and the allied technologiesneeded to grow them traveled as a bundle into semiarid zones of theIslamic Mediterranean, and their exploitation accompanied the demo-graphic growth and prosperity of medieval Islam. A case study of theplants themselves thus offers a sound initial view of the major tenets ofWatsons work, since the spread of these plants offers insight into thecomplexities that attended the widespread adoption of certain plantsover others, and ultimately allows us to test the notion that Muslim eraagriculture was essentially different than what came before. All four

crops were selected because of the evidence for their pre-Islamic usein the Mediterranean. Three of these crops remain of great economicsignificance today: durum wheat, rice, and sorghum. The fourth exam-ple, artichoke, is of only modest significance today, but serves as a fineproxy for the bevy of medieval minor crops that fill out Watsons owngroup.10

It must be stated from the outset that the aim is not to overturn thewhole of Watsons thesis by showing that all of the plants he discusseswere present in the Mediterranean world before the coming of Islam;

clearly several were not. While it is conceded that Muslims made animportant contribution to world farming through the westward diffu-sion of some crops, the Islamic introduction of agronomic techniquesand materials was not as widespread, as consistent, nor as deeply appliedas the Green Revolution proposes. Watson failed to account for a size-able body of evidence that demonstrates the presence of new plants,whose place in the landscape demonstrates an interest in experimen-tal crops, intensive farming methods, and the widespread applicationof irrigation technology that he views as belonging to a much later

period. The failure to account for these data reveals a profound lack ofinterest in the pre-Islamic landscape and a host of flawed assumptions.The resultant Green Revolution thesis is therefore a simplistic, linearmodel of the movement of ideas and goods that fails to acknowledgethe complexities of these transmissions, the correct range of their dif-fusion, and the real limits of their significance.

10 Jeremy Johns already noted that banana, coconut, mango, shaddock, and others ofWatsons examples had no importance in Mediterranean agriculture; see Johns, A GreenRevolution? p. 343.


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Durum Wheat

The most important crop considered by Watson is durum wheat. Todaythe various varieties of wheat account for as much as 20 percent ofdaily calories consumed worldwide. Durum wheat (hard wheat, Triti-cum durum) is a major variety, most familiar to world consumers as themain ingredient of most pastas. Watson argues that durum wheat wasunknown or scarcely grown in the pre-Islamic world, when in fact itwas widely cultivated and consumed in the classical Mediterranean.

Durum wheat possesses several advantages over other varieties, oneof which is its lack of the tough outer husk common to most ancient cul-tivars. In the case of husked grains, before bread can be made, the outerculm must be removed, usually by pounding in a mortar and pestle orparching. Durum, however, is free-threshing; it does not require signifi-cant preparation before milling, and this saves the producer significanteffort during processing. Hard wheat is also drought resistant, a qualitythat makes it especially attractive in the Mediterranean, with its sparseand often unreliable rainfall. Durum also keeps for an especially longtime, a key advantage over other varieties in a world before modernstorage methods prevailed.

The pre-Islamic textual and material evidence for the cultivation ofdurum wheat is substantial. As early as the seventh millennium b.c.e.,the family to which durum belonged is attested archaeologically at sitesin Anatolia and Syria. These free-threshing tetraploid (having fourchromasome sets) wheat varieties appear in Iran by the sixth millen-nium b.c.e. and in Greece by the fifth millennium b.c.e.11 Durum wheatwas probably already present in the Neolithic period in the valley ofthe Euphrates, where tetraploid wheat remains have been identified inarchaeological excavation.12 The group of free-threshing, durum-likewheats were domesticated by the fifth millennium b.c.e. In the BalikhRiver valley of northern Syria, a hard wheat species that is probablydurum or a closely related species was recovered in Bronze Age levels.At Tell Keisan, hard wheat was found in archaeobotanical investiga-tions in contexts dating to the eleventh century b.c.e.13

11 Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World, 3rd ed.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 46.

12 George Willcox and Valrie Roitel, Rapport archaeobotanique prliminaire de troissites prcramiques du Moyen-Euphrate (Syrie), Cahiers de lEuphrate 8 (1998): 75.

13 Willem van Zeist, Evidence for Agricultural Change in the Balikh Basin, NorthernSyria, in The Prehistory of Food: Appetites for Change, ed. Chris Gosden and Jon Hather(London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 350374; Mordechai Kislev, Contenu dun silo a bl delpoque du fer ancient, in Tell Keisan 19711976: Une cit phnicienne en Galile, ed.Jacques Friend and Jean-Baptiste Humbert (Paris, 1980), pp. 361380.


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A good deal of evidence exists then to suggest that durum or itsclose relatives had been an important feature in the eastern Mediterra-nean landscape for centuries before the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty

fostered its cultivation in Egypt between the fourth century b.c.e. andthe first century c.e. Durum featured in an account dated 248245b.c.e. preserved in the Zenon Papyri.14 It apparently supplanted theold emmer varieties as the dominant wheat in Egypt and continued togain ground among the cultivators of the Roman Empire from the firstthrough sixth centuries c.e.

By the second century, durum wheat was already widespread acrossthe Mediterranean. The first-century medical author Dioscorides, whohailed from the Cilician city of Anazarbus in what is now southeast-

ern Turkey, was familiar with the grain and described it in his com-pendium of medicines.15 The early Roman agronomist Columella, whoalso wrote in the first century, advised how durum should be grown, asdid the later agricultural writer Palladius (fourth century). The sec-ond-century physician Galen compared durum wheat to barley, and heconsidered them similar in their nourishing qualities.16 The mention ofdurum by the early third-century polymath Athenaeus of Alexandria inEgypt further suggests it became a familiar part of the diet of antiquity.17The fourth-century physician Oribasius noted that durum then grew in

Anatolia, and the doctor considered this wheat variety to be superiorto most other kinds of cereals.18 Based on its mention in the Geoponica,a medieval compilation of predominantly late antique material (fourththrough seventh centuries), durum was extensively grown around theancient Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria, a city that at that time lentits name to a particular subvariety of the wheat.19

14 PZen77, ed. William Westermann, Clinton Keyes, and Herbert Liebesny, ColumbiaPapyri: Greek Series no. 4: Zenon Papyri, 2.5253.

15 Dioscorides, Materia Medica Libra Quinque, ed. Max Wellman (Berlin, 19061914),2.285.

16 Galen, De victu attenuante, ed. Karl Kalbfleisch, Galeni de victu attenuante (Corpusmedicorum Graecorum5.4.2. Leipzig: Teubner, 1923): 433451, section 34.1.

17 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, trans. Charles Burton Gulick, 7 vols. (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 19271941), 1:120, 2:26, 40, 88, 280.

18 Mark Grant, Dieting for an Emperor: A Translation of Books 1 and 4 of Oribasius Medi-cal Compilations with an Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers,1997), pp. 3233 for durum (semidalite) wheat; M. S. Spurr,Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy(c. 200 B.C. c.A.D. 100) (London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1986), pp.1517. Columella, De Re Rustica, ed. W. Lundstrm (Uppsala, 1897), 2.6.1, 2.6.4, 6.5.2;Palladius, Opus Agriculturae, ed. R. H. Rodgers (Leipzig, 1975), bk. 2.9, p. 53, l. 2; bk. 10.2,p. 187, l. 5.

19 Heinrich Beckh, ed., Geoponica Sive Cassiani Bassi Scholastici De Re Rustica Eclogae(Stuttgart, 1994), bk. 3.3.


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Archaeological evidence also supports the view that, by the Romanera at the latest, durum had replaced emmer wheat as the dominantgrain in Egypt. At Mons Claudianus, in the Eastern Desert, the early

Roman mining settlement relied heavily on durum imported from theNile valley.20 The excavations at Karanis, in the Fayyum of centralEgypt, produced finds of durum wheat from the early Roman period.21Along the Red Sea coast of Egypt at Quseir al-Qadim and at Berenike,Roman levels have yielded finds of cultivated hard wheat that is alsoprobably durum. As at Mons Claudianus, the durum found at these RedSea ports was likely imported from the Nile valley, which further indi-cates the prevalence of the grain within the classical period Egyptianagricultural regime.22

In North Africa, durum wheat remains were recovered from Romanlevels at Ghirza in Libya, and the UNESCO Libyan Valley surveys dis-covered evidence of its production in Cyrenaica (modern Libya), whilethe farming of durum in Africa Proconsularis, one of the granaries ofthe empire, is supported by textual evidence.23

Asiatic Rice

Asiatic rice (Oryza sativa) is currently the second most important grainin the world diet.24 Watson believed the plant to have been widelydiffused in western Eurasia only after the Islamic conquests. Although

20 Marjike van der Veen, The Plant Remains from Mons Claudianus, a Roman QuarrySettlement in the Eastern Desert of Egyptan Interim Report, Vegetation History andArchaeobotany 12 (1996): 137141; Marjike van der Veen, A Life of Luxury in the Desert?The Food and Fodder Supply to Mons Claudianus,Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998):101116.

21 C. E. Leighty, Botanical and Zological Reports, in Karanis: The Temples, CoinHoards, Botanical and Zological Reports Seasons 19241931, ed. A. Boak (Ann Arbor,Mich., 1933), pp. 8788.

22 Marjike van der Veen, Trade and Diet at Roman and Medieval Quseir al-Qadim,Egypt: A Preliminary Report, in Food, Fuel, and Fields: Progress in African Archaeobotany,ed. Katharina Neumann, Ann Butler, and Stefanie Kahlheber (Kln, 2003), pp. 207212;Rene T. J. Cappers, Archaeobotanical Remains, in Berenike 1995: Preliminary Report ofthe 1995 Excavations at Berenike (Egyptian Red Sea Coast) and Survey of the Eastern Desert,ed. Steven Sidebotham and Willemina Wendrich (Leiden, 1996), pp. 332335; and Spurr,Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy, pp. 1517.

23 G. Barker, A Tale of Two Deserts: Contrasting Desertification Histories on RomesDesert Frontiers, World Archaeology33, no. 3 (2002): 494; Marjike van der Veen, Botani-cal Remains, in Ghirza: A Libyan Settlement in the Roman Period, ed. Olwen Brogan and D. J.Smith (Rome, 1984), pp. 308313.

24 R. Prescott-Allen and C. Prescott-Allen, How Many Plants Feed the World, Con-servation Biology 4, no. 4 (1990): 368.


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wheat is planted on more acres, rice is without peer as a subsistencecrop. It is the staple food crop for more than half of the worlds 6.6 bil-lion inhabitants.25 Although not as nutritious as wheat, rice is a major

provider of carbohydrates and thus offers ready energy. Like wheat, thehigh yield and disease resistance of rice make it an attractive staplegrain. Similarly, ample evidence shows that rice was a crop of someimportance in the ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamia before theIslamic conquests. Rice originated in China and spread south and eastseveral millennia before the ancient Greeks learned of it, around thetime of Alexander the Greats conquests. Hellenistic writers accuratelydescribed the plant as growing in flooded paddies, and the fourth-cen-tury b.c.e. Greek botanical writer Theophrastus knew rice as a prolific

producer.26

By the first century b.c.e., the Greek writer Diodorus Sicu-lus viewed rice as primarily an Indian crop that formed an importantpart of the intensive agricultural year on the subcontinent. His con-temporary Strabo knew rice through his source Aristobulus as a cropthat grew in the eastern regions of Bactriana, Babylon, and Susis, butalso in Lower Syria. When seventh-century Muslim armies first reachedBasra in southern Iraq, they saw rice for the first time where it had beenestablished for centuries in the marshy lands of southern Mesopota-mia.27 The Babylonian Talmud (redacted ca. 500c.e. but containing

earlier material) records that rice ranked behind only barley and wheatas a staple grain among the ancient Jewish communities of Mesopo-tamia.28 These documentary data thus indicate that rice had becomesignificant for Jewish farmers under Sasanian Persian political control(third through seventh centuries c.e.).

By the second century c.e., the crop was established in RomanEgypt: it is mentioned as growing there by the rhetorician Julius Pol-lux of Naucratis, and it is noted by the Alexandrian author Athenaeus(late second/early third century c.e.), who drew much of his material

from earlier sources. Several papyri also preserve record of rice produc-tion and trade throughout the early Roman period. By the third cen-tury c.e. at the latest, rice was a minor but well-known plant exploited

25 FAO World Rice Situation, http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/Y0906T/y0906t01.htm(accessed 6 August 2008).

26 Theophrastus, Historia de Plantis, 4.4.10.27 M. Canard, La riz dans le Proche-Orient aux premiers sicles de lIslam,Arabica6

(1959): 113131.28 J. Newman, The Agricultural Life of the Jews in Babylonia between the Years 200 C.E. and

500 C.E. (London, 1932), pp. 9193.


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in the Nile Valley.29 Rice may have arrived in Egypt via Mesopotamiaand through the fertile corridor of the Palestinian coast, where the cropwas certainly an important part of Jewish agricultural life. The Jerusa-

lem Talmud (redacted ca. 400c.e.) records centers of rice productionnear Antioch in northern Syria as well as around the upper waters ofthe Jordan by Lake Tiberias, at Banias (Paneas/Caesarea Philippi) inthe Lower Golan, and on the coast at Caesarea Maritima in northernIsrael.30 The rabbinic literature is further supported by a sixth-centurymention of rice among the local crops in a Hebrew inscription from asynagogue at Rehob, near Bet Shean (Scythopolis) in northern Israel.The grain was thus a common local crop around the well-wateredregions of Bet Shean and Banias in the Golan.31

Although rice may have arrived in Egypt via the Fertile Crescent, itmay well have come to the Nile Valley from India. By the Hellenisticperiod, there were direct contacts between the Red Sea ports of theEgyptian coast and the Indian subcontinent. By the second century c.e.rice was a trade item for Roman merchants plying the Red Sea routethat led down the African coast to Arabia and India. The Periplus MarisErythraei, a first-century guidebook for merchants traveling the RedSea and Indian Ocean, mentions that the grain was found along thecoast of northwestern India.32 Rice recovered in excavation of Roman-

period levels at Berenike, on the southern coast of Egypt, confirms thatit continued to be a traded commodity into the late Roman period.The early Roman culinary writer Apicius included a recipe that usedthe water in which rice has been cooked, and in the second centuryGalen (and later his fourth-century follower Oribasius) prescribed thegrain as a stomach medicine.33

In the fourth century, rice was a crop of commercial significanceas far west as the city of Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor (mod-ern Turkey).34 By this time, the grain was apparently well established

29 Heinrich Konen, Reis im Imperium Romanum: Bemerkungen zu seinem Anbau undseiner Stellung als Bedarfs- und Handelsartikel in der Rmischen Kaiserzeit, MnsterscheBeitrge zur antiken Handelsgeschichte18 (1999): 2935.

30 Z. Safrai, The Economy of Roman Palestine (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 117118.31 J. Sussman, The Rehob Inscription: A Translation, inAncient Synagogues Revealed,

ed. L. I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), pp. 152154. I am grateful toDr. David Milson for bringing this reference to my attention.

32 Lionel Casson, ed. and trans., The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Princeton, N.J.: Princ-eton University Press, 1989), p. 76.

33Apicius, ii.2.8, ed. and trans., B. Flower and E. Rosenbaum (London, 1958); andGrant, Dieting, p. 53.

34 Expositio totius mundi et gentium, ed. J. Roug (Paris, 1966), XLVII.8.


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throughout the Mediterranean world: the Edict on Maximum Prices ofthe emperor Diocletian (c.e.284305) that regulated maximum pricesempire-wide set the price for cleaned rice at 200 denari per modius.35

The inclusion of the grain in an edict issued empire-wide can onlyindicate that it was a commodity commonly traded in the marketplacesthroughout the Roman world.

Although the advent of Pax Romana and the intensified trade thataccompanied it led to the wide diffusion of Asiatic rice, the declineof the Roman world did not spell the end of its production. In thefifth-century West we find the grain being traded as a foodstuff in post-Roman Gaul.36 Similarly, the late Roman physician Cassius Felix, whowrote at Carthage in 447c.e., recommended its use as a treatment for

headache and dysentery, indicating perhaps that it was grown locally inmarshy areas around Africa Proconsularis.37 The continued productionof rice and its general use, particularly in medicine, is attested in laterGreek writers such as the physicians Aetius of Amida (fl. 530560c.e.)and Alexander of Tralles (ca. 525605c.e.).38 Rice is mentioned in theAnazarbus Tariff inscription (sixth century c.e.) that spelled out cus-toms duties on goods entering a city that lay in the well-watered plainsof Cilicia (modern southeastern Turkey), where one would expect sucha crop to flourish.

Cotton

Cotton is a tropical plant that originated in southern Africa. In prehis-tory, early cotton varieties were spread by people traveling the IndianOcean routes to the subcontinent. According to finds from the Indusvalley the plant was integrated into agriculture, probably by the fourthmillennium. From its wild forms, two major species of cotton devel-oped: Gossypium arboreum L. and G. herbaceum L. Both are perennialshrubs that typically grow about two meters tall and yield a fiber-cov-ered seed whose utility was recognized by early humans. The first majortype of Old World cotton, G. arboreum L., sometimes referred to as

35 1.23, ed. Lauffer, pp. 100101.36 M. Grant, ed. and trans.,Anthimus, On the Observance of Foods (Blackawton, United

Kingdom, 1996).37 Cassius Felix, De la Mdecine, ed. and trans. A. Fraisse (Paris, 2002), i.11; xlviii.17.38 Aetius of Amida,Aetii Amideni Libri Medicinales iviii, ed. A. Olivieri, Corpus Medi-

corum Graecorum (Leipzig, 19351950) i.116117 (bk. 1.298); Alexander of Tralles, ed.Theodore Puschmann (Berlin, 18781879), ii.61.19; ii.403.14.


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tree cotton, is found mostly in Asia, with limited distribution ineastern Africa and Arabia. The second, G. herbaceum L., belonged toAfrica and Arabia. G. herbaceum L. became more widely diffused and

agriculturally developed, with many new varieties resulting from culti-vation. The most important change was the shift in growth cycle withvarieties ofG. herbaceum L. altered from perennial to annual cultivars,which adapted them to the cooler environments found in Mesopota-mia, Egypt, and India. This evolution occurred at a later stage thanthe initial diffusion ofG. arboreum, which had also entered cultivationand continued to be grown in Africa.39 It is possible that cotton wasintroduced to the Roman world from the empires eastern neighborsand Africa via Egypt.

Most of the evidence for cotton in the pre-Islamic Mediterraneanworld has recently been collected by John Peter Wild, but a brief surveyof the data is in order.40 Indian cotton itself was imported into Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia, as confirmed by finds from Iraq.41 The Greekhistorian Herodotus (484425b.c.e.) knew of the production of cottonfrom trees in northern India and noted that soldiers of the Persian kingXerxes (485465b.c.e.) wore cotton clothing.42 During Alexander theGreats naval expedition in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf theMacedonians encountered cotton, and by the fourth century b.c.e., at

the latest, the plant was grown along the Gulf, where Theophrastusnoted its presence. Cotton production seemingly endured there forcenturies, as Pliny wrote that cotton was worked into fine cloth onthe island of Tylos (Bahrain).43 By the time the plant had reached thePersian Gulf, it was likely also growing in Mesopotamia and elsewherein the Hellenistic world.

During Late Antiquity (fourth through seventh centuries c.e.), cot-ton had become an important crop beyond the Araxes River in present-day Azerbaijan, which belonged to the Sasanian Persian empire. Far-

ther east, excavations in the oasis of Merv (in modern Turkmenistan)has yielded finds of cultivated cotton from the Sasanian period (third

39 C. L. Brubaker, F. M. Bourland, and J. F. Wendel, The Origin and Domestication ofCotton, in Cotton: Origin, History, Technology, and Production, ed. C. W. Smith and J. T.Cothren (New York: Wiley, 1999), pp. 2021.

40 Watson, Agricultural Innovation, pp. 3435; J.-P. Wild, Cotton in Roman Egypt:Some Problems of Origin,Al-Rfidn18 (1997): 287298.

41 F. Hideo, K. Sakamoto, and M. Ichihashi, Textiles from at-Tar Caves, Part II(4)Cave 16, Hill C,Al-Rfidn17 (1996): 160.

42 Herodotus, History iii.106; vii.65.43 Theophrastus, Historia de Plantis IV.7.78; Pliny,Natural History, XII, 21.


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through seventh centuries c.e.).44 The Babylonian Talmud (compiledca. 500c.e.) mentions cotton-seed oil used by the Jewish communitiesof Persian Mesopotamia, cotton dealers, and cotton wool.45

Cotton textiles from the first through seventh centuries c.e. arefound in an arc from the Sudan to Syria. In the Sudan, Nubia, andEgypt, cloth fragments have been recovered at Mero, Karanog, andQasr Ibrim in Nubia, at Doush in the Kharga Oasis in the WesternDesert of Egypt, and at Berenike and Quseir al-Qadim on the Red SeaCoast.46 At Karanis, in the Fayyum of central Egypt, a skein of cot-ton thread, dyed red, and dated to the fourth or fifth century c.e., wasrecovered.47

Cotton textiles are manufactured with both Z-spun (right-hand

spin) yarns and S-spun (left-hand spin) yarns. The distinction is animportant one, since weavers working in the traditions of Egypt andthe Levant normally worked in S-spun yarns.48 The majority of cot-ton finds at Berenike were Z-spun cotton yarns, indicating they wereimports from India; only a small number of the Berenike finds wereS-spun. In Palestine, S-spun Roman-Byzantine period cotton textileshave been found at En Boqeq, 15 kilometers south of the Dead Sea,and at Nessana in the Negev. At Halabiyah (ancient Zenobia) on themiddle Euphrates in Syria, an S-spun tunic belonging to the sixth cen-

tury was found in excavation, while farther downriver, in the Romancity of Dura Europus, S-spun cotton was woven into a wool textile.49

44 Robert Hewsen, ed. and trans.,The Geography of Ananias of irak (AXARHACOYC):The Long and the Short Recensions (Wiesbaden, 1992), 65A; Georgina Herrmann, K. Kurban-sakhatov, and St. John Simpson, The International Merv Project: Preliminary Report onthe Fourth Season (1995) Iran34 (1996): 20; and Georgina Herrmann, K. Kurbansakha-tov, St. John Simpson et al., The International Merv Project: Preliminary Report on theFifth Season (1996), Iran35 (1997): 9.

45 Babylonian Talmud, ed. I. Epstein (London, 19351948), Megillah, 105; Sanhedrin,463; Abodah Zarah, 140; Newman,Agricultural Life, p. 103.

46 Mero, Karanog, Qasr Ibrim, Quseir al-Qadim: Watson, Agricultural Innovation, p.34; Doush: Fr. Dunand, J.-L. Heim, N. Henein, and R. Lichtenberg, La ncropole de Douch:Exploration archologique II: Monographie des tombes 73 92: Structures sociales, conomiques,religieuses de lgypte romaine (Cairo, 1992), p. 232; Berenike: J. P. Wild and C. F. Wild, TheTextiles, in Sidebotham and Wendrich, Berenike, pp. 245256.

47 L. M. Wilson,Ancient Textiles from Egypt in the University of Michigan Collection (Nor-wood, Mass., 1933), no. 133, p. 50.

48 Wild and Wild, Textiles, p. 246.49 Berenike: Wild and Wild, Textiles, pp. 251253; En Boqeq: A. Sheffer and

A. Tidhar, The Textiles from the En-Boqeq Excavation in Israel, Textile History22 (1991):2223; Nessana: L. Bellinger, Textiles, in Excavations at Nessana I, ed. H. D. Colt (Lon-don, 1962), 99, nos. 26, 27; Halabiyah: M. Nockert, Vid Sidenvgens nde. Textilier frnPalmyra till Birka, in Palmyra: knens Drottning, ed. P. Hellstrm (Stockholm), pp. 8182,9192; and R. Pfister, Textiles de Halabiyeh (Zenobia) (Paris, 1951), p. 55 and pl. iii no. 5.


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The sizeable majority of the cotton textiles discovered in theRoman-Byzantine east thus far are of Z-spun cotton and probably rep-resent imports from Nubia, India, or the Sasanian empire. The trade in

Indian cottons was frequent and important at least by the first centuryc.e., according to the Periplus Maris Erythraei, which shows that cottonwas a common item of exchange in this long-distance trade, evidencesupported in the papyri.50 But the S-spun cotton yarns used in the tex-tiles noted above were locally produced.

That cotton cloth garments were made in Roman Egypt finds somesupport in a letter of the second century c.e. from the middle Nile Valleycity of Karanis in which a certain Julius Apollinarius requested whitecottons from his brother, while a second-century letter from Oxyrhyn-

chus relates that the mother of the addressee had made a cotton tunicfor him.51 A contemporary Egyptian papyrus document of unknownprovenance recorded a request for cotton thread so that work garmentscould be made.52 One additional scrap of information indicating localcotton weaving comes from Doush (ancient Kysis) in the Kharga Oasisin the Western Desert of Egypt, where ostraca of the fourth /fifth cen-tury record weights of cotton supplied to five women, who apparentlyworked it into yarn or finished textiles.53 Local manufacture of cottongarments does not, of course, prove with certainty that the fiber itself

was produced there, but textual data indicate that the crop was, in fact,grown in Egypt.In the first century c.e. Pliny noted that cotton grew in Upper

Egypt, and in the following century the Egyptian rhetorician Polluxdescribed cotton (a tree) and that its thread was mixed with linen incloth production.54 A second-century papyrus (P. Iand. VII.142) fromthe Kharga Oasis preserves the record of cotton planting there, as does

50 Casson, Periplus, pp. 6, 41; H. Harrauer, P. Sijpesteijn, Ein neues Dokument zuRoms Indienhandel, P. Vindob. G 40822,Anzeiger der sterreichischen Akademie der Wis-senschaften, phil.-hist. Kl. 122 (1985): 124155.

51 PMich VIII.500.7 = H. C. Youtie and J. G. Winter, eds., Papyri and Ostraca fromKaranis Volume VIII (Norwood, Mass., 1951), pp. 117118; also F. Preisigke, F. Bilabel,and E. Kiessling, Sammelbuch Grieschischer Urkunden aus Agypten (hereafter SB), 26 vol-umes 6.9025 (Wiesbaden, 1963), 38; P. Oxy LIX, 3991 = E. W. Handley, H. G. Ioannidou,P. J. Parsons, J. E. G. Whitehorne, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. 59 (London, 1992), pp.127128.

52 SB vi.9026; J. G. Winter and H. C. Youtie, Cotton in Graeco-Roman Egypt,Amer-ican Journal of Philology65 (1944): 256258.

53 H. Cuvigny and G. Wagner, eds., Les Ostraca Grecs de Douch (O. Douch) (hereafterO. Douch) (Cairo, 1986), p. 51.

54Natural History xix.14; Pollux, Onomasticon, ed. E. Bethe (Leipzig, 1967), ii.vii.75.


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a fourth-century ostracon (O. Douch51).55 An undated ostracon fromDoush (O. Douch537 R5) documents an account recording that wineand cotton were local products. O. Douch63456, belonging to the

fourth century, is a letter demanding payment in cotton, and O. Douch381 required payment of the annona tax in cotton. Farther north, in theoasis of Dakleh, two ostraca from Kellis (O. Kellis68, O. Kellis 69), thesecond dated 276/277c.e., record shares of cotton received from indi-vidual producers.56 A fourth-century papyrus also from Kellis (P. KellI Gr. 61) details payment owed in cotton. Farm records of the fourthcentury (P. Kell. IV Gr. 96), along with cotton seeds recovered in exca-vation there, prove that cotton was a locally grown commodity in thelate Roman period of Dakleh Oasis.57

Cotton was also cultivated in Palestine, according to the evidenceof the Mishnah (redacted ca. 200c.e.), in a passage that is repeated inthe Jerusalem Talmud (redacted ca. 400c.e.).58 Gregory of Tours (d.594) wrote that in his day, trees that produced wool grew around

Jericho.59

Artichoke

While it is not possible in this brief overview to detail the evidenceof the diffusion of all the crops proposed as Islamic introductions byWatson, one minor crop is particularly noteworthy because a fair bodyof evidence suggests its long-standing production in the Mediterraneanworld prior to the arrival of the Muslims. The artichoke (Cynara scoly-mus) is argued to have been a late medieval arrival in Europe aftercenturies of use in the Islamic world. Watson claims that There is noreference in Classical literature to a plant of this family with edibleflesh on the bracts, allowing only that the probable ancestor of the

artichoke, the cardoon (Cynara cardunculus), was known in the Greco-

55 P. Iand. = C. Kalbfleisch, Papyri Iandanae (Leipzig-Berlin, 19121938), p. 323.56 O. Kellis = K. A. Worp, ed., Greek Ostraka from Kellis: O. Kellis, nos. 1293 (Oxford,

2004).57 R. Bagnall, The Kellis Agricultural Account Book (P. Kell. IV Gr. 96) (Oxbow, 1997),

pp. 3940, 114, 122, 164.58 Mishnah Kilayim VII.2, trans. I. Mandelbaum, in The Mishnah: A New Translation,

ed. J. Neusner (New Haven, Conn., 1988); Jerusalem Talmud Kilayim: I. Mandlebaum,trans., The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary Translation and Explanation, 35 vols.(Chicago, 1990), 4.VII.2.

59 Gregory of Tours, De Gloria beatorum martyrum, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina(18441849), pp. 71, 721.


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Roman world.60 The cardoon is today considered a weedy species andis highly invasive, particularly in dry landscapes. The artichoke, bycontrast, requires regular watering and fertilizing, which fits more with

the evidence provided by Pliny discussed below. Morphologically, thecardoon and artichoke share many similarities: both grow to a heightof about 1.5 meters, have spiny leaves, and flourish in dry lands. Whileboth the cardoon and the artichoke produce a flower bud, the artichokebud is more developed and provides the fleshy edible hearts. However,the flower of the cardoon is not eaten, but its stem is consumed.

The major basis of Watsons argument regarding the artichoke islinguistic, as he contends that all the European languages derivedtheir names for the plant from the Arabic. The Arabic names used for

the plant, kharshuf, and its related forms possibly derive from the Latinname carduus, which was used to designate the artichoke. Anothercommon Arabic name for the artichoke, qinrya, is clearly derived fromthe Greek word for artichoke, kinara, a name that Watson knows, butdisregards. By the first century c.e., the cardus (carduus) plant was grow-ing in North Africa and Spain. Pliny noted that Carthage and Cordobawere major suppliers and their artichokes fetched exceptional prices(6,000sesterces from small plots).61 The cardus that Pliny discussed is aplant that required fertilizing, something that would be unnecessary for

the hardier cardoon. While this is far from conclusive, the descriptionprovided by Galen is more helpful. The physician describes the kinara,which he calls over-valued, and notes that people eat the heads,which they call whorls (sphonduloi).62 Since the heads of the cardoonare not edible, Galen has to be speaking here of the artichoke.

The agricultural handbooks from the first through sixth centuriessuggest that the artichoke was in general cultivation throughout theMediterranean world during the whole of the Roman imperial period.Columella advised that artichoke seeds be sown in spring and autumn,

similarly advised in the Geoponica, while Palladius recommended thatartichokes be planted in the garden, an area typically reserved forhigher value and more intensively worked plants.63 This also implies

60 Watson,Agricultural Innovation, pp. 6465.61 An unlabeled Roman North African mosaic in the Bardo Museum, among other

examples I have seen there, clearly depicts an artichoke.62 O. Powell, trans., Galen on the Properties of Foodstuffs (De alimentorum facultatibus)

(Cambridge, 2003), pp. 104105, 178n.637.63 Columella, De Re Rustica X.235; X.iii.14; XI.iii.28; Palladius, Opus Agriculturae,

III.24, IV.8, VI.5, XI.11.


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that the cardus / kinara of the ancient authors should generally be takento be the artichoke, and not the cardoon.

Kai Ruffing has collected the evidence for the production of arti-

chokes in Roman Egypt. There artichokes were grown in the midst ofvineyards, probably because many vines were irrigated, and the kinaraalso needed significant quantities of water.64 That the vegetable waswidely available throughout Egypt is apparent from the accounts ofthe fourth-century c.e. traveller Theophanes, who purchased them atBabylon (modern Cairo).65 It is apparently with Egypt that the Mus-lims of Spain most identified the plant: the Andalusian Muslim agri-cultural writer, Ibn al-Awwm noted that the qinrya came from Egyptto Spain, where he wrote in the twelfth century c.e.66 The Edict on

Maximum Prices of Diocletian provides proof of the artichoke as a com-mon food in the cities of the Roman provinces. The law fixed the priceof large artichokes at five for ten denarii and the heads (sphonduloi) often for six denarii. Although the list is unreliable as a real indicator ofprice, it can nevertheless be used to gauge comparative price levels. Forinstance, a sextarius (about half a liter) of ordinary wine was fixed ateight denarii. This suggests that artichokes were not cheap, but neitherwere they particularly expensive. Once more, the considerable quantityof textual references and the plants inclusion in the Price Edict indicate

that the plant was widely cultivated, known, and consumed.67

Conclusion

Although the archaeological and textual evidence for the crops exam-ined above are scattered and incomplete, their presence among theextremely limited body of materials that touches on ancient farmingis significant. This material shows that durum wheat, rice, and cotton

were crops of varying importance over much of the Roman and Per-sian worlds. Durum wheat was spread over the whole of the Mediter-ranean by Roman farmers throughout the centuries of their imperial

64 K. Ruffing, KINAPA: Anbau und Vertrieb im rmischen gypten, MnsterscheBeitrge zur Antiken Handelsgeschichte 14 (1995): 6170.

65 Pap. Rylands = Papyrus Rylands, ed. C. H. Roberts and E. G. Turner (Manchester,1952), 627.85, 627.149, 627.197.

66 Ibn al-Awwm, Kitab al-filhah. Translated as Le livre de lagriculture, trans. J.-J. Cl-ment-Mullet, 2nd ed. (Tunis, 1977), ii.291.

67 Ruffing, KINAPA, 65; Ed.Diocl. VI.12; II.1; IV.2.


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rule. This grain was a staple in the Roman diet from Syria to Italy andNorth Africa, where it remains fundamental to the diet today. Watsonsassertion that the Muslims had any appreciable role in expanding the

cultivation ofTriticum durum in the Mediterranean has no basis in theevidence, but is an example of an uncritical method that ignores theavailable data.

Rice cultivation in Mesopotamia was long-established before Islam,and its transmission eastward was accelerated by the Greek interest inexotics during the Hellenistic era. This westward movement continuedduring the period of their Parthian and Sasanian Persian successors.During late antiquity, rice was well established in western Asia andhad spread into Mediterranean Europe. The importance and general

availability of rice from Syria to Gaul is attested by numerous texts andunderscored by its regulation in the fourth-century Edict on MaximumPrices.

If Watsons thesis were correct, we would surely expect to find riceproduction widespread in Mesopotamia, the heartland of the classicalIslamic empire and the home of the great rivers Tigris and Euphrates.This region was close to the original points of diffusion proposed forrice by Watson. The lands of the Tigris and Euphrates also met theplants environmental criteria: there was fertile earth, abundant water,

and extensive irrigation, and a large population of agriculturists whohad grown the plant for centuries. Yet even in the hinterland of thegreatest city in the Islamic world, Baghdad, we fail to find rice in abun-dance in the medieval period. In fact, among the evidence from theAbbasid period (eighth through thirteenth centuries c.e.), the peakof classical Islamic civilizations, barley and wheat dominated the diet,as they had for millennia previously.68 Rice maintained a similar placein Iraq at the height of the Green Revolution as it had under theSasanians: wheat and barley only are mentioned as taxed crops (and

therefore clear staples) in the tax list ofQudma ibn Jafar of the tenthcentury c.e.69 In late medieval Turkey, the Pontus and Cilicia were theonly two areas known to have grown the crop, a situation that corre-sponds more closely to conditions of the fourth century than one wouldexpect had the Arab conquests and subsequent Muslim takeover of

68 Demonstrated by wheat and barley being collected as tax in Islamic Mesopotamia:R. McC. Adam, Land Behind Baghdad (Chicago, 1965), 101, tbl. 21.

69 H. el-Smarie, Agriculture in Iraq During the 3rd Century A.H. (Beirut, 1972), pp.99103.


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Anatolia propelled its movement.70 Though the advent of rice cultiva-tion is heralded as a major Muslim advancement in Spain, its farthestwestward expansion under Islam, cultivation there was likewise of sec-

ondary importance and lagged far behind the old staples of wheat andbarley in the agricultural regime.71Both the Romans and Persians alike had a significant share in the

expansion of the production of cotton. As demonstrated above, OldWorld cotton was of economic significance before the rise of Islam,especially in Persia, where the evidence from cloth production, archae-ological recovery of cotton, and textual sources indicate disparateplaces of considerable production and use. In the Roman world, cot-ton cropping and use in cloth making appears to have been relatively

modest and confined to Egypt.Despite Watsons claim, cotton production in Egypt remainedunderdeveloped during classical Islam: the major cloth plant remainedflax, as it had been for centuries. The picture of an early Islamic land-scape where cotton was restricted mainly to Persia and of only minorimportance in Egypt is known by Watson, who quotes the eleventh-century writer al-Thalabpeople know that cotton belongs to Khu-rasn [the region of Merv] and linen to Egyptbut explains this awayon the strength of anecdotal evidence.72 In the eleventh century, after

a full four centuries of Arab Islamic rule, Egypt remained proverbialfor its linen, a product for which it was famed in classical antiquity.73The earliest clear evidence cited by Watson that supports widespreadEgyptian cotton growing belongs to the thirteenth century, six centu-ries after the Muslim conquest and two centuries after the end of theso-called Green Revolution.74

The case of the artichoke provides an example of a crop that hasremained of scant global significance since its introduction. Again,Watson is mistaken in his presumption that the plants first introduc-

tion in the Mediterranean belonged to the Islamic era. Roman cultiva-tion is widely attested, and the role of the plant in the Mediterraneanand European diet, albeit minor, is embedded in the Roman, not theIslamic, past.

70 Watson,Agricultural Innovation, map 2.71 E. Garca Snchez, Agriculture in Muslim Spain, in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed.

S. K. Jayyusi (New York, 1992), p. 994.72 Watson,Agricultural Innovation, p. 40.73 P. Mayerson, The Role of Flax in Roman and Fatimid Egypt,Journal of Near Eastern

Studies 56, no. 3 (1997): 201207.74 Watson,Agricultural Innovation.


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Though Watson is certainly correct to link crops to agriculturalmethods, and link these methods to wider cultural changes, the chro-nology and scope of his proposed changes are problematic. For decades,

in large part based on Watsons provocative work, scholars have uncrit-ically pointed to the Islamic Green Revolution as one of the major giftsthe Islamic world bequeathed to Europe and thence to much of theworld. The contributions of the medieval Islamic agriculturists are cer-tainly impressive. But a growing body of evidence for pre-Islamic dif-fusion of key agrarian techniques, tools, and crops challenges the basicassumption of rapid and deep changes in Muslim agricultural practice.Rather, it appears that the pre- and post-Islamic Middle East and Medi-terranean landscape were far more similar to one another than is often

recognized. Islamic farming structures were built atop earlier Romanand Persian landscapes: these were usurped rather than swept away.

rethinking the islamic agricultural revolution

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