The Arab (Islamic) Agricultural Revolution
- Date
- c. 8th-13th centuries CE
- Category
- Economy & trade
- Region
- Middle East, North Africa, and al-Andalus (Islamic world)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
During the Islamic Golden Age, the unification of a vast territory under Arab and Muslim rule enabled an unprecedented diffusion of crops, irrigation technologies, and farming techniques across the Old World, a phenomenon the historian Andrew Watson termed the Arab Agricultural Revolution in 1974.
Muslim traders and conquerors transmitted heat- and water-loving plants from India, Africa, and China into the drier, cooler Mediterranean and Near East, including Asiatic rice, sorghum, hard (durum) wheat, sugarcane, cotton, citrus fruits, bananas, watermelon, spinach, artichokes, and aubergine. Improved irrigation such as the saqiyah (animal-driven waterwheel), qanats, windpumps, and expanded canal networks, together with intensive crop rotation that cropped land four or more times in two years, sharply raised agricultural productivity. This abundance underpinned population growth, urbanisation, dietary diversification, and the rise of a sophisticated agronomic literature, including the works of Ibn Bassal and Ibn al-'Awwam in al-Andalus. Although later scholars such as Michael Decker have argued that several staple crops were already established under the Roman and Sassanid empires, suggesting continuity rather than abrupt revolution, the period is widely recognised as a transformative era in the history of agriculture and economic life.
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Empires active in c. 8th-13th centuries CE
- Tang Dynasty618 CE – 907 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE – 1258 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Uyghur Khaganate744 CE – 840 CE
- Khazar Khaganate650 CE – 969 CE
Related economy & trade events
- Yang Yan's Two-Tax Reform (Liangshui fa) in Tang China780 CE
- Peak of the Trans-Saharan Gold-Salt Tradec. 950-1050 CE
- Distribution of Early-Ripening Champa Rice in Song China1012 CE
- Song China issues jiaozi, the world's first government paper money1023 CE
- Rise of the Hanseatic Leaguec. 1159
- Great Zimbabwe rises as a stone city on the gold trade13th–14th centuries CE
Further reading
The wider story
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