DOI article:
Fenton, Alexander: [A. M. Watson, Agricultural innovation in the early Islamic world]
DOI article:Iinuma, Jirō: [Nômushi, Gyogyôshi (Fukuoka Shiryô), Survey of agricultural and fishing implements in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1873]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49002#0060
58
REVIEW
of spread of the plant is related to the need to
develop equipment for growing, spinning and
weaving. Cotton threads were too delicate for
ready use as warps in warp-weighted looms.
Nevertheless cotton was growing in nearly every
part of the Islamic world by the 10th century, its
use as cloth being stimulated by the doctrine that
the faithful should be clothed from neck to ank-
les, with only face, neck, hands and feet showing.
The onward spread of these new plants to
Christian Europe was slow and late, but from the
7th-8th centuries, Islam appears as a diffusion
agent over 4 centuries with pilgrims, mis-
sionaries, traders, refugees and scholars playing
their part, as well as books in libraries. The
learned world of Islam looked first at new plants
as sources of medicine; the later enlargement of
their use as food was associated with an intensifi-
cation in agricultural techniques, and a spread
down the social scale. The new crops encouraged
the adoption of irrigation techniques, and sup-
ported greater population densities.
In contrast to the communal systems of land-
holding and associated rights of grazing, etc. with
which we are familiar, early Islam recognised the
individual ownership of land, which was itself a
fully marketable commodity. This led to the
breakdown of large estates into smaller units of
ownership, through, for example, partible inheri-
tance, confiscation and regranting. The lack of
communal land use, with all its restrictions, must
have greatly facilitated the adoption of innova-
tions, as did low rates of taxation. Fruits and veg-
etables, prominent amongst the new crops, might
not be taxed at all, and the incentive to switch to
them, and to adopt appropriate forms of irriga-
tion, was strong. Labour was not through the use
of slaves, but by the self-employed and by share-
cropping. Conditions were excellent for innova-
tion, progressed by willing and interested people,
even though the initiation phases took place in the
gardens of the better off.
The Islamic agricultural revolution added the
summer growing of crops to the winter routine,
in line with the older Indian system of multiple
cropping. Manuring therefore became a matter of
great concern, as well as irrigation, and correct
sequences of crops to maintain nutrient levels in
soils. Choice of crops allowed for flexible crop-
ping patterns, stable incomes, and surpluses that
supported a real demographic revolution through
increases in food production, industrial develop-
ment (milling of rice, sugar refining, cotton pro-
cessing etc.) and urban growth.
In all this, there was much that medieval
Europe could have copied, but by the 10th cen-
tury the momentum began to be lost. Some soil
became infertile due to salination; in some areas
cultivation had been pushed beyond the safe mar-
gin; the administrative environment with its pre-
ferential taxation began to fail, and there came a
transfer of land from individuals to institutions
(as the maqf or mawquf system) that used mana-
gers to work it; successive waves of invaders from
the 11th century onwards led to the ruin of irriga-
tion works, and the adoption of new ways of
governing regions and collecting taxes, as through
military benefices. The final blow to the profit-
able use of new crops in the Islamic world was the
15th century discovery of the New World, pro-
viding new sources of sugar and the like.
The whole story laid before us in this book is a
fascinating exercise in cause and effect, an exercise
in the study of periodisation in Islamic history. It
is invaluable in itself, and as a means of providing
comparisons with the land use systems of medie-
val Europe, which, in the end, proved to be the
more resilient.
A. Fenton
NOMUSHI and GYOGYOSHI (FUKUOKA
SHIRYO) Survey of Agricultural and Fishing Im-
plements in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1879 (Materials
for the History of Fukuoka Prefecture, Vol. 3)
Fukuoka 1982, 368 pp.
After the Meiji Restoration (the end of Japanese
feudalism, 1868), the Japanese government was
eager to introduce European and American cul-
ture and techniques. The government, however,
attempted to take measures for this in defiance of
the real conditions of agriculture and fishing in
Japan, so it failed to achieve the desired results.
As a result, in 1882, the government switched to
the policy of taking a serious view of the tradi-
tional techniques of agriculture and fishing. The
REVIEW
of spread of the plant is related to the need to
develop equipment for growing, spinning and
weaving. Cotton threads were too delicate for
ready use as warps in warp-weighted looms.
Nevertheless cotton was growing in nearly every
part of the Islamic world by the 10th century, its
use as cloth being stimulated by the doctrine that
the faithful should be clothed from neck to ank-
les, with only face, neck, hands and feet showing.
The onward spread of these new plants to
Christian Europe was slow and late, but from the
7th-8th centuries, Islam appears as a diffusion
agent over 4 centuries with pilgrims, mis-
sionaries, traders, refugees and scholars playing
their part, as well as books in libraries. The
learned world of Islam looked first at new plants
as sources of medicine; the later enlargement of
their use as food was associated with an intensifi-
cation in agricultural techniques, and a spread
down the social scale. The new crops encouraged
the adoption of irrigation techniques, and sup-
ported greater population densities.
In contrast to the communal systems of land-
holding and associated rights of grazing, etc. with
which we are familiar, early Islam recognised the
individual ownership of land, which was itself a
fully marketable commodity. This led to the
breakdown of large estates into smaller units of
ownership, through, for example, partible inheri-
tance, confiscation and regranting. The lack of
communal land use, with all its restrictions, must
have greatly facilitated the adoption of innova-
tions, as did low rates of taxation. Fruits and veg-
etables, prominent amongst the new crops, might
not be taxed at all, and the incentive to switch to
them, and to adopt appropriate forms of irriga-
tion, was strong. Labour was not through the use
of slaves, but by the self-employed and by share-
cropping. Conditions were excellent for innova-
tion, progressed by willing and interested people,
even though the initiation phases took place in the
gardens of the better off.
The Islamic agricultural revolution added the
summer growing of crops to the winter routine,
in line with the older Indian system of multiple
cropping. Manuring therefore became a matter of
great concern, as well as irrigation, and correct
sequences of crops to maintain nutrient levels in
soils. Choice of crops allowed for flexible crop-
ping patterns, stable incomes, and surpluses that
supported a real demographic revolution through
increases in food production, industrial develop-
ment (milling of rice, sugar refining, cotton pro-
cessing etc.) and urban growth.
In all this, there was much that medieval
Europe could have copied, but by the 10th cen-
tury the momentum began to be lost. Some soil
became infertile due to salination; in some areas
cultivation had been pushed beyond the safe mar-
gin; the administrative environment with its pre-
ferential taxation began to fail, and there came a
transfer of land from individuals to institutions
(as the maqf or mawquf system) that used mana-
gers to work it; successive waves of invaders from
the 11th century onwards led to the ruin of irriga-
tion works, and the adoption of new ways of
governing regions and collecting taxes, as through
military benefices. The final blow to the profit-
able use of new crops in the Islamic world was the
15th century discovery of the New World, pro-
viding new sources of sugar and the like.
The whole story laid before us in this book is a
fascinating exercise in cause and effect, an exercise
in the study of periodisation in Islamic history. It
is invaluable in itself, and as a means of providing
comparisons with the land use systems of medie-
val Europe, which, in the end, proved to be the
more resilient.
A. Fenton
NOMUSHI and GYOGYOSHI (FUKUOKA
SHIRYO) Survey of Agricultural and Fishing Im-
plements in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1879 (Materials
for the History of Fukuoka Prefecture, Vol. 3)
Fukuoka 1982, 368 pp.
After the Meiji Restoration (the end of Japanese
feudalism, 1868), the Japanese government was
eager to introduce European and American cul-
ture and techniques. The government, however,
attempted to take measures for this in defiance of
the real conditions of agriculture and fishing in
Japan, so it failed to achieve the desired results.
As a result, in 1882, the government switched to
the policy of taking a serious view of the tradi-
tional techniques of agriculture and fishing. The