Selasa, 26 Juli 2011

Figs in Muslim Spain

Figs on the variegated fig Ficus aspera 'Parce...Image via Wikipedia
Figs in Muslim Spain
Quoted from T. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the early Middle Ages; Princeton Uni. Press, New Jersey, 1979; pp. 79-80:
Although figs may not have had the economic importance of olives, they afford an excellent example of the intensification of agriculture in Islamic Spain, manifest in the dazzling variety of the fruit available to consumers.
In the tenth-century Calendar of Cordoba, the Latin ficus (fig) translated the Arabic shajar "trees" (the specific word for fig is teen), indicating that the fig was so numerous that it became, by antonomasia, the tree.
From the standpoint of production for the export market, Malaga was the most important fig center, the city being surrounded on all sides by figs of the Rayyo (rayyî, also referred to as mâlaqi, Malagan) variety, "which is the best class of figs and the largest, with the most delicious pulp and the sweetest taste." Malagan figs were exported by Muslim and Christian traders and sold in Baghdad (according to al-Shaqundi) and as far away as India and China, where they were valued for their taste and their ability to preserve it over the full year's travel occupied in their transport.
In the Sierra Morena a wide variety of figs were grown, including the qûtiya (Gothic), sha'arî (hairy), and doñegal. The fig was also of interest to the agronomists: al-Hijâri reported that in the Garden of the Noria in Toledo there was grown a kind of fig tree whose fruit was half green and half white.

Source : http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=308

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Gardens, Nature and Conservation in Islam

Chumleigh Multicultural Garden 1Image by stephan_london via Flickr
Gardens, Nature and Conservation in Islam
The Quran says:
"Surely the God-fearing shall be among gardens and fountains."
(Sura 51: 15)
"And those on the right hand;
what of those on the right hand?
Among thornless lote trees,
And clustered plantains,
And spreading shade,
And water gushing,
And fruit in plenty.
Neither out of reach nor yet forbidden,
And raised couches."
(Sura 56: 27-34)
Quotes from I.R.and L.L. Al-Faruqi in The Cultural Atlas of Islam; Mc Millan Publishing Company; New York; 1986 p.322:
For the Muslim, nature is a ni'mah, a blessed gift of God's bounty, granted to man to use and to enjoy, to transform in any way with the aim of achieving ethical value. Nature is not man's to possess or to destroy, or to use in any way detrimental to himself and to humanity, or to itself as God's creation. Since nature is God's work, his ayah, or sign, and the instrument of His purpose which is the absolute good, nature enjoys in the Muslim's eye a tremendous dignity. The Muslim treats nature with respect and deep gratitude to its beneficial Creator and Bestower. Any transformation of it must have a purpose clearly beneficial to all before it can be declared legitimate.
Quotes from T. Glick in Islamic and Christian Spain in the early Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1979. p. 54:
The notion, repeated in the Koran, of Paradise as a garden (al-janna, "The Garden") is symbolized in the form of Andalusi gardens, a few of which survive physically and some of which are described in literary sources.
The form of these gardens, quadripartite rectangles with fruit trees arranged in rows parallel to an axial watercourse, was of direct Persian (though ultimately, perhaps, of Roman) inspiration. Such an arrangement is apparent in an eleventh-century description of the Hair al-Zajjali, a renowned Cordoban garden, and is confirmed by the pattern of gardens, such as the Generalife of Granada, surviving from a later era. The symbolic value of the formal Islamic garden was as an earthly anticipation of paradise. In this sense, its contents of water, shade trees, and flowers were dictated by a generalized reaction to the desert environment, the traditional environment of Arabs, one that is dominated, of course, by aridity and conditioned by associations of the desert with fear and evil.
It is striking, indeed, that desert images, a traditional theme in Arabic poetry, are almost completely lacking in Andalusi poetry, except as a device to introduce, for example, the paradisiacal, watery freshness of a place like Valencia, and this in spite of the fact that wide stretches of the southern peninsula (e.g., the Almerian hinterland) already resembled the face of the moon, having been deforested by the Romans.

Source : http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=313   

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