Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (2.1972/1975)

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P.V. GLOB


Fig. 2. Ard and yoke from Sulayf, south-west of Ibri. Photo Glob Febr. 1973.

Haken und Joch von Sulayf sudwestlich von Ibri.

tracts are made cultivable in this way, for ex-
ample the Batina coastal plain on the east side
which covers around 9000 square kilometres.
Plough cultivation has therefore been a matter
of course since early times. In Batina there are
extensive groves of date palms and gardens
with a luxurious growth of fruit-bearing trees,
such as orange trees, grapefruit, grapes, apri-
cots, peaches, pomegranates, almonds, figs, wal-
nuts, mulberries and mangoes. Here wheat and
barley are cultivated, the same kinds of corn as
in the oasis villages towards the south and west
and around the great mountain villages, but
barley is most common in the smaller moun-

tain villages whose small stone-enclosed or ter-
raced fields are cultivated by mattocks (fig. 3).
This same mattock (fig. 4) is used everywhere in
the date palm gardens in the sheikdoms of Qa-
tar, Bahrain and Kuwait where I have travelled
frequently since 1953 without ever seeing an
ard or plough.
In recent years the Oman ard has been seen
in use at the Buraimi oases on the west side of
the peninsula (1971), at Sohar in Batina on the
east side (1973) and at Ibri south-west of the
mountain chain on the border of the desert
Rub’al-Khali (1973). It was drawn by a single
bull with a yoke fixed in front of its hump