11 - Utility and Aesthetics in the Gardens of al-Andalus: Species with Multiple Uses

Summary

Over the course of human history, the Mediterranean basin has been an area of cultural diffusion and exchange involving various peoples, representing the destination of numerous migrations. In the seventh century, this area experienced intense upheaval when the Muslims entered Syria and very rapidly incorporated Northern Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the major islands and southern section of Italy, whereby all of these territories were united under a new language and a new religion. Islamic expansion, which integrated areas with diverse traditions and separate evolutions into a vast economic and cultural unit, created the conditions for profound agricultural reform, although revolution is a more accurate description, wherein irrigation played a key role. However, the cultivation of new plants from tropical and sub-tropical regions, which were gradually introduced into the drier and colder climates of the Near East and the Mediterranean, gave rise to the need to construct artificial ecosystems that would provide suitable conditions of humidity and temperature. Indeed, such requirements were doubly pressing given the scale of the cultivation in question. The new species could only take root as summer plants in irrigated areas, in other words, in small areas over an excessively short period of time. Hydraulic systems were quickly transformed and, via the invention of new techniques and the development and diffusion of existing techniques, the Muslims were able to create large areas of irrigated land in the territories in which they settled.

In comparison with other areas of the Islamic world, the advances made within this new agriculture were most conspicuous in al-Andalus, which may be attributed to the constant juxtaposition offered by the remainder of the Iberian Peninsula, for the most part unirrigated land. This agriculture is principally characterised by intensive irrigation of plots, largely involving smallholdings, wherein methodical and well distributed irrigation transformed previously uncultivated land or land with poor yields.

This method of structuring the landscape is clearly reflected in several agricultural treatises from the Andalusi period written between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. The first treatise, which was anonymous, was written at the end of the tenth century, followed by six of the eight known treatises within the aforementioned period.