Manures were deposited in stone reservoirs contrived to prevent evaporation or leakage. Nothing was wasted; every substance available for the fertilization of crops was carefully preserved, the different varieties being separated and applied to such soils as experience had taught were most productive under their use. No natural obstacle was sufficiently formidable to check the enterprise and industry of the Moorish cultivator. He tunnelled through mountains. His aqueducts traversed deep ravines. He levelled with infinite patience and labor the rocky slopes of the sierra. Where the vast public works of Roman genius could be utilized, they were repaired and extended. The vegetable products of the remotest countries of the globe—the grains of Asia, the nuts and berries of Europe, the luscious fruits of the African coast—were transported to Andalusia.
Profound botanical knowledge, which went hand in hand with Arab horticulture, wonderfully promoted these researches. The Spanish Moslems were perfectly familiar with the circulation of the sap, with the difference of sex in plants, with the process of artificial fecundation. They invested them with the conditions of activity and repose, of motion and sleep. They employed eight distinct methods of grafting; and the injurious effects of the sun were obviated by the use of a perforated vessel, from which the water fell drop by drop upon the graft, which, without this precaution, would have been withered by the heat. The Moorish gardeners devised numerous expedients for the improvement of their products, not a few of which modern ignorance has assigned to a more recent date. An example of these was the removal from the tree of a portion of the fruit before maturity to insure the superior size and excellence of that which remained. They cultivated such dye-stuffs as madder and indigo, products of India. They introduced on a diminished scale the hanging gardens of Babylon. In floral ornamentation they had no superiors. They contrived labyrinths, artificial grottoes, concealed fountains. They traced texts and inscriptions by means of gorgeous blossoms on a ground of living emerald. The intricate designs of tapestry were imitated by an infinite variety of flowering plants, whose tints blended in perfect harmony, like the colors of the material they were intended to represent. They acquired such dexterity in the culture of roses that, at all seasons of the year, they bloomed in profusion in every garden. Like our modern florists, they endeavored to produce them of unusual tints, and met with corresponding failures. They understood how to extract opium from the poppy, but the process they employed has not come down to us. They treated with success the diseases of all the known species of the vegetable kingdom. They were exceedingly skilful in the distillation and refining of essences, and great plantations of flowers were cultivated for the sake of the exquisite perfumes they afforded. Twenty-five different kinds of these are mentioned, and they were so abundant and cheap that they were scarcely accounted a luxury. In all the multifarious duties of his occupation the Moorish horticulturist possessed expert knowledge. He could preserve fruits for an indefinite period; banish noxious insects; expel poisonous gases from wells and excavations. He was versed in meteorology, and could foresee atmospheric changes with an accuracy incomprehensible to those whose daily pursuits did not require familiarity with the varying aspects of the seasons and the annual recurrence of natural phenomena. In the principal cities of the Peninsula were schools where practical instruction in the various departments of husbandry was given.
As the Koran explicitly forbade the exportation of grain, the surplus of the harvests was deposited in subterranean granaries hewn in the rock. When a child attained his majority, one of these magazines was presented to him, and such was the dryness of the receptacles that wheat in perfect preservation was found in some of them near Granada, where it had lain two centuries after the capture of that city. The wisdom of this arrangement was apparent during the famines which, despite the industry of the people, occasionally afflicted the Peninsula. Reliance was sometimes placed upon less palatable food, however, and near Pedroche, from time immemorial, forests of giant oaks were carefully preserved for the sake of their acorns, which furnished a coarse but nutritious diet when all other resources failed.
The great work of Ibn-al-Awam, of Seville, a vast monument of industry and erudition embracing every conceivable branch of the subject, shows to what extraordinary perfection the science of agriculture had been carried in the twelfth century by the Spanish Mohammedans. It treats, in a comprehensive and exhaustive manner, not only of the methods found by the experience of centuries to be the best adapted to the sowing and harvesting of grain, to the planting and cultivation of orchards, to the propagation of edible and aromatic plants; but it also, with infinite minuteness of detail, describes the breeding and care of every species of domestic animals, their qualities, their relative excellence, their defects, their habits, their diseases. It discourses at length upon the different breeds of horses and upon the rearing of that useful animal so prized by the Arab. It explains the details of artificial incubation, a process borrowed from Egypt. It directs how to produce in geese the abnormal hepatic conditions which induce the foie gras, that artificial delicacy so dear to the epicure, and a thousand years ago, as to-day, an invaluable adjunct to fashionable gluttony. It teaches different methods of cooking and the preparation of various confections, jellies, syrups, and sweetmeats of every description. The manufacture of wine, so rigidly forbidden to the Moslem, and whose immense consumption had already, in the time of the khalifate, scandalized the pious, is detailed in all its stages in this remarkable book. In it are given recipes for cordials of many kinds, cooling beverages, and hydromel. It also prescribes the rules by which the household of the farmer should be governed, and defines the reciprocal duties of employer and employee. In every operation of rural life and domestic economy, it enforces by repeated admonition the necessity for cleanliness, system, and order.
From the treatise of Ibn-al-Awam we learn that much of his information was derived from Sicilian sources, where agriculture and its dependent occupations were fully as advanced as in the Peninsula. In that rich island, saffron and numerous other herbs were indigenous, and thence with many vegetables and fruits were carried into Spain. The vineyards and the wines of Sicily, famous in antiquity, maintained their reputation during the Moslem and Norman dominations, but, during the contest of the Empire with the Papacy, the culture of the grape declined and was practically extinct for more than a century.
To Moorish enterprise Europe owes such fruits as the strawberry, the lemon, the quince, the date, the fig, the mulberry, the banana, the pomegranate; such nuts as the pistachio and the almond; such cereals as rice, sesame, buckwheat; such vegetables as spinach and asparagus; such spices as mace, nutmeg, and pepper; such condiments as the caper and saffron. The coffee and the cotton plant, which grew wild in Arabia; the sugar-cane, whose product bears, almost unaltered, the name bestowed by those who were the first to extract it, were also introduced by the Arabs. The olive plantations in the vicinity of Seville alone, containing millions of trees, indicate the estimation in which its culture was held, and the enormous profits it must have yielded the owners. Grapes were so abundant at Ubeda that there was no market for them; at Malaga, Ibn-Batutah says, eight pounds sold for a dirhem. Al-Makkari refers to the prodigious size of the melons of Cintra. The pears grown at Daroca, unequalled in richness of flavor, weighed three pounds. The apples of Santarem were thirty inches in circumference. Oranges were of not inferior dimensions; and to-day in Southeastern Spain it is not unusual to see them eight inches in diameter. It is impossible at the present time to realize the extent and thoroughness of the culture of the soil which obtained under the Moslem domination in the Peninsula. The southern portion, in its exuberant fertility now the admiration of the traveller, was under the Moors infinitely more productive. La Mancha, the Castiles, and Estremadura, which offer at present an unhappy picture of sterility and want, were as late as the twelfth century covered with luxuriant harvests, interspersed with groves and orchards, amidst which nestled countless villages, farm-houses, towers, and hamlets.
These scenes of rural thrift and beauty were traversed by thousands of canals and conduits diffusing on every side their refreshing and fertilizing waters. The gardens were enclosed by trellises made of reeds woven together and covered with trailing roses and climbing vines, the mingled odors of whose blossoms filled the air. Salamanca, now the centre of one of the most poverty-stricken and deserted districts in Spain, was in the tenth century a populous and flourishing provincial capital with a hundred and twenty-five towns, many of them of considerable magnitude, subject to its jurisdiction. Segovia, whose present condition is even more deplorable, was during the khalifate the centre of the woollen manufacture of the country, a source of great wealth to all who embarked in it. Horticulture in Aragon, where every product of the vegetable world not prohibited by the asperity of the climate grew in profuse abundance, reached its climax in the exquisite scenery of the valley of the Ebro, called the River of Fruits, from the interminable orchards that lined its banks. The entire kingdom was formerly dotted with forests, and in its deserts are to be discerned the clay-beds of many a lake and water-course, whose moisture once brought prosperity to a numerous Moorish population. The capital, Saragossa, long the seat of an enlightened dynasty, was celebrated far and near for the accomplishments of its princes, the learning of its scholars, the skill of its artisans, the wealth of its Jews, and the superb decorations of its mosques. No city of the khalifate possessed a better class of inhabitants, greater wealth, or a higher degree of civilization. Its walls were nearly two leagues in circuit. Its gardens extended for a distance of eight miles in every direction. Its atmosphere was perfumed by the flowers which covered its plain. A territory of great extent containing many villages and castles acknowledged the authority of the Beni-Hud, its rulers. The entire region was a paradise, which foreigners compared to Chaldea on account of its fertility, its numerous groves, and its profusion of waters. In its climate wood did not decay or grain mildew, and provisions might be kept for years without deterioration. The royal palace, called the Abode of Pleasures, contained a magnificent hall of state, whose marbles and arabesques were one of the wonders of the Peninsula. Abulfeda refers to the Moorish capital of Aragon as, “the Silver City surrounded by emeralds mingled with gold.” The present dreary aspect of Toledo offers no suggestion of its former grandeur under Arab rule when its population numbered two hundred thousand, and from the towers of its citadel a succession of farms and plantations could be discerned stretching away to the verge of the horizon. It was in the tropical South, however, that the inexhaustible resources of the Moorish agriculturist rioted in the exhibition of their amazing power. The Mediterranean coast from Gibraltar to Barcelona was an unbroken belt of verdure. For fifteen miles below Seville the Guadalquivir was shaded by a succession of orchards. Near that city the district of the Axarafe—which embraced fifty square leagues and was thickly planted with olive- and fig-trees—in the twelfth century contained a thousand thriving villages, two hundred and twenty-five years after the dismemberment of the Ommeyade empire. Here flourished in close proximity representatives of the vegetable kingdom collected from the most widely separated portions of the globe. Here were to be seen hundreds of varieties of plants, some gathered on the slopes of the Himalayas, others collected in the forests of Germany; others again transplanted with infinite labor from Ethiopia and the sources of the Nile. Here were propagated the orange and the pomegranate of Syria; the palm of Egypt; the tamarind of Barbary; the fragrant balsam of Arabia. Vast groves of mulberries indicated the importance attached to the manufacture of silk.
In the manifold avocations either connected with or dependent upon the pursuit of agriculture,—in the rearing of cattle and horses, in the breeding of sheep, in the culture of bees,—the Moor of the Peninsula attained to the highest degree of proficiency. The Arabian horse lost none of his incomparable qualities in the climate of Andalusia, and to his swiftness and endurance are to be attributed many of the most signal victories which attended the progress of the Moslem arms. The silky and abundant fleece of the merino sheep owes its fineness as well as its name to the peculiar method by which flocks were tended and propagated under the laws of the Western Khalifate. Immense numbers were conducted twice each year between the Pyrenean slopes and the plains of Estremadura, by this means securing fresh and continual pasturage, and equally avoiding the droughts of summer and the storms of winter. The organization which controlled these migrations, protected by the authority of the government, eventually acquired the importance and the power of a political institution. It was designated the Mesta, and, adopted by the Castilians, its privileges, become oppressive through abuses long practised with impunity, were, until the middle of the last century, when they were largely curtailed, one of the most intolerable grievances endured by the Spanish peasantry.
The richness of the Peninsula in valuable minerals not only facilitated the development of the arts, but aided materially in the establishment of commerce with foreign nations. The silver mines of Iberia were famous from all antiquity, and after centuries of neglect under barbarian misrule their treasures were again made available under the energetic administration of the Khalifs of Cordova. In the neighborhood of Linares are still to be traced the square pits of the Arab, side by side with the circular excavations of the Roman; and their number, exceeding five hundred in this single locality, indicates the magnitude of mining operations, a pursuit whose intelligent prosecution and economical management contribute so much to the material wealth of a community. From the sands of the Darro and the Tagus were extracted considerable quantities of gold. In Spain, the centre of the largest deposits of cinnabar in the ancient world, the production of quicksilver was one of the most profitable employments of Moorish industry. At Abâl, a day’s journey from the capital, were mines where a thousand workmen were constantly employed. The superior quality of the copper utensils, the unrivalled temper of the steel blades, for which Andalusia especially was renowned, attest not only the excellence of the respective ores from which those metals were obtained, but the skill required for the fabrication of the latter into objects of utility and beauty in the workshops and armories of Almeria, Seville, Granada, and Toledo.
For leagues before approaching the great Andalusian cities the traveller traversed by highways covered with arching foliage districts so thickly settled as to resemble a succession of contiguous hamlets. The air was sweet with the fragrance of flowers; the murmur of waters was everywhere; along each stream was a row of picturesque mills; on one side rose the towers and cupolas of some palace rich with gilding and sparkling tiles; on the other a line of cottages embowered in jasmine and roses. Nothing impressed him more forcibly than the thrift which seemed to universally prevail. Every foot of land susceptible of cultivation was carefully tilled. Every drop of water was used. Great crowds filled the narrow streets. No beggars plied their annoying trade on the thoroughfares or infested the portals of the mosques. The teeming population of the country was the best indication of the general prosperity. In the year 910, there were more people in any one of the Hispano-Arab provinces bordering on the Mediterranean than there were in all Great Britain at the beginning of the sixteenth century.