Arab agricultural revolution
Revolución agrícola islámica (difusión de cultivos y regadío)
- Date
- c. 800 · confidence low
- Place
- Córdoba, al-Andalus (and across the caliphate)
- Credited to
- Andalusi agronomists (Ibn Bassal, Ibn al-Awwam); Abd al-Rahman I
- People
- 👤 Abderramán I731–788
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The systematic diffusion from India and Persia of sugar cane, rice, citrus, cotton, aubergine, spinach and watermelon, together with irrigation by channels, qanats and acclimatisation gardens. It transformed the agriculture and diet of the Mediterranean.
Andrew Watson's thesis (1974) is disputed: many crops already existed in Roman times, though their mass diffusion was Islamic.
What it led to
- sugar as a colonial commodity (Madeira, the Canaries, the Americas)
- the market gardens of Valencia and Murcia and the water tribunals
- agronomy treatises translated into Castilian and Latin
Built on
- Qanatc. 800 BCE
- Large water-raising wheel (norias of Hama)c. 1100
- Large water-raising wheel (norias of Hama)
- Persian qanat
- Nabataean agronomy
Made possible
- Ibn al-Awwam's Book of Agriculturec. 1180
- Pigeon towers of Isfahans. XVII
- sugar mill
- botanical garden