A study of Andrew Watson’s ‘Islamic agricultural revolution’ in the context of recent literature concerning medieval Iberia, Sicily and Malta, and Egypt

Abstract

This dissertation aims to evaluate to what extent Andrew M. Watson’s theory applies to different regions of the Mediterranean. Watson’s theory of the Islamic Agricultural Revolution proposed back in 1974, suggests that agricultural techniques, irrigation methods and crops were transmitted from India to the Mediterranean after the Islamic conquests. To evaluate this theory, this dissertation focuses on three separate regions: Iberia; Sicily and Malta; and Egypt. These regions’ agricultural history before the Islamic conquest is taken into account to see the level of complexity and sophistication previous civilisations took on agriculture. The Romans, for example, were able to grow crops during the summer through irrigation, suggesting that summer was not as “dead” as Watson implies. His theory is further disproved by the history of the diffusion of crops, many of which grew in the Mediterranean much earlier than Watson described. That being said, each of the three aforementioned regions was studied independently and yielded results specific to it. Of all the three regions, Watson’s theory applied more to Sicily and Malta than to Egypt or Iberia.