Short Description
Abu Zakariya Yahya ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Al-Awwam Al-Ishbili is a Hispano-Muslim agriculturist who flourished at Seville about the end of the twelfth century
Abu Zakariya Yahya ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Al-Awwam Al-Ishbili is a Hispano-Muslim agriculturist who flourished at Seville about the end of the twelfth century. He wrote a treatise on agriculture, Kitab al-filaha, which is the most important Muslim work as well as the most important mediaeval one on the subject.
The treatise divides into two main parts, the first dealing with soils, fertilizers, water, gardens, trees, fruits and their preservation, etc, while the second deals with ploughing, the choice of seeds, the seasons and their tasks, grain farming, leguminous plants, small allotments, aromatic plants and industrial plants, harvesting, farming engineering, livestock breeding, poultry, and the treatise ends with a section devoted to veterinary subjects.
Ibn Al-Awwam's treatise covers 585 plants, and explains the cultivation of more than fifty different fruit trees, in addition to containing striking observations on the different kinds of soil and manure and their respective properties, on various methods of grafting, on sympathies and antipathies between plants, etc.
Ibn Al-Awwam also studies gardening, water variety, irrigation, animal husbandry and bee keeping, the symptoms of many diseases of trees and vines are indicated, as are also methods of cure.
Ibn Al-Awwam innovated further as we hear from him:
Ibn al-Awwam's work was published in a Spanish translation, and a French version between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth for utilitarian purposes as the techniques it describes were of particular interest to the development of agriculture in both Spain and Algeria. Both editions and translations were very unsatisfactory, according to Sarton, an opinion which is shared by Leclerc, who blames the deficiencies on the old age of Clement Mullet pressed by time, and thus stresses the need for a new, better translation of the work. However, since Leclerc was writing, in 1876, and since Sarton was, early in the 20th century, such translation has not been forthcoming, and reliance is still on the deficient ones by both Banqueri and Mullet. There is an edition of the work into Urdu, but still none into English, and none into Arabic easily available!
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