The Nabataean Agriculture (), also written The Nabatean Agriculture, is a 10th-century text on agronomy by Ibn Wahshiyya (born in Qussīn, present-day Iraq; died ). It contains information on plants and agriculture, as well as on magic and astrology. It was frequently cited by later Arabic writers on these topics.
The Nabataean Agriculture was the first book written in Arabic about agriculture, as well as the most influential. Ibn Wahshiyya claimed that he translated it from a 20,000-year-old Mesopotamian text. Though some doubts remain, modern scholars believe that the work may be translated from a Syriac original of the 5th or 6th century. In any case, the work is ultimately based on Greek and Latin agricultural writings, heavily supplemented with local material.
The work consists of some 1500 manuscript pages, principally concerned with agriculture but also containing lengthy digressions on religion, philosophy, magic, astrology, and folklore. Some of the most valuable material on agriculture deals with vineyards, arboriculture, irrigation and soil science. This agricultural information became well known throughout the Arabic-Islamic world from Yemen to Spain.
The non-agricultural material in The Nabataean Agriculture paints a vivid picture of rural life in 10th-century Iraq. It describes a pagan religion with connections to ancient Mesopotamian religion tempered by Hellenistic influences. Some of this non-agricultural material was cited by the Andalusian magician and alchemist Maslama al-Qurtubi (died 964) in his Ghayat al-Hakim ("The Goal of the Wise", Latin: Picatrix), while other parts were discussed by the Jewish philosopher Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190).
The French Orientalist Étienne Marc Quatremère introduced the work to the European scholarly community in 1835. Most 19th-century scholars dismissed it as a forgery, but from the 1960s onward several researchers have shown increased interest in its authenticity and impact.
'Nabataean'
The word 'Nabataean' (Arabic: ) in the title of the work does not refer to the ancient Nabataeans, the northern Arab people who established a kingdom at Petra during the late Hellenistic period (). Rather, 'Nabataean' is a term used by Arabic authors of the early Islamic period to designate the non-Arabic speaking, rural population of various conquered territories. Thus, we hear of "Nabataean" Kurds and Armenians, as well as of "Nabataeans of the Levant" (the term apparently used by Arabic authors for the ancient Nabataeans of Petra) and "Nabataeans of Iraq". Generally speaking, the term 'Nabataean' was strongly associated with a rural, sedentary way of life, which was perceived as backwards and as thoroughly opposed to the noble, nomadic lifestyle of the Arabs.
The term 'Nabataeans of Iraq' was used to refer to the rural, Aramaic-speaking, native inhabitants of the , now central and southern Iraq. However, it was also used by scholars like Ibn Wahshiyya (died ) and the historian al-Mas'udi (died 956) to refer to the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia. These scholars believed that the ancient Mesopotamians had spoken Syriac, a prestige form of Eastern Aramaic during the 10th century which in reality goes back no further than the first century AD, and that this supposedly Syriac-speaking people had ruled over Mesopotamia from the legendary times of Nimrod until the advent of the Sasanian Empire in the 3rd century. Unlike the term 'Nabataeans of the Levant' then, the term 'Nabataeans of Iraq' did not refer to a historical people, but to an 'Aramaized' understanding of the Mesopotamian heritage.
Given the perceived antiquity of the 'Nabataean' culture of Iraq, Ibn Wahshiyya believed all human knowledge to go back on 'Nabataean' foundations. This idea itself was not exactly a new one: already in the Hellenistic period a secret knowledge was often attributed to the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, referred to in Greek as "Chaldaeans" (compare, for example, the Chaldaean Oracles), a term used (Arabic: ) more or less as a synonym of 'Nabataean' by Ibn Wahshiyya and al-Mas'udi. However, in contrast to both earlier Hellenic authors and later Arabic authors such as Sa'id al-Andalusi (1029–1070), Ibn Wahshiyya was in direct contact with a living Mesopotamian tradition, making his "Chaldaeans" or "Nabataeans" more firmly rooted in empirical reality.
Ibn Wahshiyya took great pride in his 'Nabataeans', as well as in the nobility of peasants more generally. Written at a time when ancient Mesopotamian culture was in danger of disappearing due to the Arab conquests, his work can be interpreted as part of the , a movement by non-Arab Muslims to reassert their local identities. In this view it is an attempt to celebrate and preserve the 'Nabataean' heritage of Mesopotamia.
Composition
The work purports to have been compiled by a man named Ibn Wahshiyya from Qussīn, a village near Kufa in present-day Iraq. It includes a preface in which he gives an account of its origin. This preface states that he found the book in a collection of books from the Chaldeans, and that the original was a scroll with 1500 parchment sheets. The original bore the lengthy title (“Book of Cultivation of the Land, the Care of Cereals, Vegetables and Crops, and their Protection”), which Ibn Wahshiyya abbreviated to Book of the Nabataean Agriculture. Ibn Wahshiyya claimed that he translated the work from an "ancient Syriac" ("") original, written c. 20,000 years ago by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. In Ibn Wahshiyya's time, Syriac was thought to have been the primordial language used at the time of creation. In reality, however, Syriac is a dialect of Eastern Aramaic that only emerged in the 1st century, although by the 9th century, it had become the carrier of a rich literature, including many works translated from the Greek. Ibn Wahshiyya said that he translated the text to Arabic in 903/4, and then dictated the translation to his student Abu Talib al-Zayyat in 930/1. These dates are probably accurate, because Ibn al-Nadim lists the book in his Kitab al-Fihrist ("The Book Catalogue") of 987, showing that the book was circulating in Iraq by the end of the 10th century.
Ibn Wahshiyya said that the book was the product of three "ancient wise Kasdanian men", of whom "one of them began it, the second added other things to that, and the third made it complete." These three compilers were named Saghrith, Yanbushad, and Quthama.
Scholarly opinion as to the authenticity of The Nabataean Agriculture has changed over time (see below). While it certainly does not date back to the Babylonian era as Ibn Wahshiyya himself claimed, scholars now believe that the work may actually have been an authentic translation from a pre-Islamic Syriac original. The Finnish scholar Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila proposed a three-stage textual history in 2006: Reconstructing the sources used in the first stage is difficult because the author translated them loosely, added his own material and commentary, and used oral informants to supplement the written sources. However, they must have included a Syriac or Arabic translation of the 4th-century writer Vindonius Anatolius. The author may also have used local sources from outside the Graeco-Roman tradition, such as the lost Rusticatio of Mago the Carthaginian.
The Nabataean Agriculture was the first book written in Arabic about agriculture, although it was preceded by several books on botany and translations of foreign works on agriculture.
Contents + Contents by subject area Subject area Percent of the work Soils, fertilizers, irrigation 5% Arboriculture, fruit trees 25% Olive cultivation 3% Vineyards 16% Field agriculture 18% Garden cultivation 23% Seasonal calendar 7% Weather almanac 2%
The book contains valuable information on agriculture and its associated lore. It is divided into approximately 150 chapters on olive trees, irrigation, flowers, trees, estate management, soils, legumes, and grains. Amidst its extensive agricultural material the text also contains religious, folkloric, and philosophical content. The style is "repetitive" and "not always completely lucid," according to Hämeen-Anttila; at the same time, Hämeen-Anttila notes that the author's attitude towards agriculture is "sober," and that he appears as a "learned and perspicacious observer." The ecologist Karl Butzer described the organization of the work as "perplexing", even "baffling", as when a treatise on corpses washed out of a cemetery interrupts the section on soils.
Agriculture
The overall structure of the agricultural information in The Nabataean Agriculture does not match the agricultural context of Mesopotamia, suggesting that the author modeled the work on texts from a Mediterranean environment. For example, the work provides limited coverage of sugar, rice, and cotton, which were the most important local crops in the 9th and 10th centuries. Sesame oil was more common in the region than olive oil, but Ibn Wahshiyya writes about the olive tree for 32 pages, compared to one page for sesame. Nevertheless, the geographic references and detailed information about weather, planting schedules, soil salinity, and other topics show that the author had firsthand knowledge of local conditions in the central Iraqi lowlands near Kufa.
The book describes 106 plants, compared to 70 in the contemporary Geoponica, and offers thorough information on their taxonomic characteristics and medicinal uses. The section on the cultivation of the date palm was an important contribution and wholly original, and the extremely detailed treatment of vineyards goes on for 141 pages. The list of exotic plants, some of which are native only to India or Arabia, may have been based on the botany portions of Pliny's 1st-century Natural History.In soil science, The Nabataean Agriculture was more advanced than its Greek or Roman predecessors, analyzing the different soil types of the Mesopotamian plains (alluvial, natric, and saline), Syria (red clay), and the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq (mountain soil). It provided accurate and original recommendations on soil fertilizer. In the area of hydrology and irrigation, the text offers "a treasure trove of information, ideas and subtle symbolism." This includes material on how to dig and line wells and canals, and description of (water wheels). Finally, there is a section on farm management, which shows evidence of Roman influence. Overall, the agronomic contributions of The Nabataean Agriculture are "substantial and far-ranging, including both agronomic and natural history data unknown in the Classical literature."
Religion and philosophy
In various passages the book describes the religious practices of rural Iraq, where paganism persisted long after the Islamic conquest. Some of the book's descriptions suggest links between these Iraqi pagans, whom Ibn Wahshiyya called 'Sabians', and ancient Mesopotamian religion. The cult recognized seven primary astral deities: the Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Venus, and Mars). Of these Jupiter and Venus were good (the Auspicious Ones), while Saturn and Mars were evil (the Nefarious Ones). The gods are all subordinated to the Sun, the supreme being. There are other gods besides the seven; the text describes the fixed stars such as Sirius as gods, and refers to the Mesopotamian god Tammuz as well as to Nasr, a pre-Islamic Arabian deity. Ibn Washiyya's description of the Tammuz ritual is particularly valuable, as it is more detailed than any other Arabic source. In this ritual, people would weep for Tammuz, who was "killed time after time in horrible ways," during the month of the same name. Ibn Wahshiyya also explains that the Christians of the region had a very similar practice, the Feast of Saint George, and speculates that the Christians may have adapted their custom from the Tammuz ritual.