Episode 15 – The Fertile Crescent, Water and Al-Jazari

Islamic Golden Age (2017)

By Eamon Gearon

Film Review

This lecture concerns water management and agricultural productivity during a period when most of the Muslim world was desert.

Gearon defines the fertile crescent as the river systems extending from the Nile Valley to the Persian Gulf, specifically the Nile, Jordan, Lintani (Lebanon), Orontes (Lebanon and Syria) and Tigris/Euphrates complex (Turkey and Iraq)

Pre-Islamic water management in middle East and North Africa:

• Garamantes (500 BC – 700 AD) – Berber kingdom in North Africa consisting of six prosperous city-states. Its rulers employed slaves to dig wells linking to desert aquifer.
• Nabataean Kingdom (3rd century BC to 103 AD) – Arab kingdom in northern Arabia and southern Levant. Prior to Roman conquest, its chief city Petra (in modern day Jordan) used gravity driven channels to harvest ground water and rain water.
• Yemen (8th century BC) – Built Great Dam of Mand. Earlier dams on same site date back to 2000 BC.
• Persian Empire (500 – 300 BC)  – numerous dams for irrigation and flood control

Around 762 AD, the Abbasid caliphate expanded existing canals to accommodate Baghdad’s growing population. As the Abassid caliphate experienced growing threats to their rule, money used to maintain canals was spent for the military. The canals began to silt up, resulting in reduced agricultural production and economic hardship.

Mathematician and Engineer Ismael Al-Jazari

Ismael Al-Jazari, the father of robotics and crank technology, built human automatons and water raising devices and water clocks. The first was the water wheel pump:

A later one used perpendicular interconnecting gears and double action piston motion. Al Jazari invented segmented gears 300 years before they were adopted in Europe and had a major impact on the European inventors of the steam and internal combustion engine.

At the request of the caliph he wrote a book about his inventions called The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, which had a major influence on future European machines.

Agricultural Productivity Skyrockets

In addition to improved irrigation technology, new knowledge about crop rotation (from the Iberian peninsula), grafting, fertilizer and pest control increased productivity during the Islamic Golden Age. a year. By the tenth century, Islamic farmers had imported the cultivation of oranges, lemons, sugar cane, rice, mangoes, aubergines, cotton, peaches, plums and artichokes from India to the Middle East.

When the Umayyad caliphate Abu Rachman fled from Damascus to southern Spain, he introduced date palms and pomegranates to the Iberian peninsula.

By the 9th century, distinctive Islamic style decorative gardens had emerged with strict geometric patterns, reflecting pool and fountains that changed shape.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5756987/5757017