Medieval Yemeni Agriculture andScience
In this work Varisco turns his attention tothe Rasulid almanacs, and using his unique combination of skills asan Arabist, historian, anthropologist, and ethnographer, he hasproduced a monumental study of one of these, drawing heavily on otheralmanacs for comparison. The Rasulid astronomical treatises, aboutwhich this volume is concerned, constitute an important corpus ofsources for the history of science as well as for the history ofYemeni culture.
The eloquent foreword by the late ProfessorRobert Serjeant places the almanac of the Sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf(datable to the year 1271), the earliest surviving Yemeni work ofthis genre, in its cultural context. Varisco in his opening chaptersprovides further details on the life and scholarly activity ofal-Ashraf in the context of the Rasulids and their scientificinterests. The Yemeni almanac tradition is clearly identified as asmall but highly important part of the Yemeni tradition inmathematical and folk astronomy. Over 100 Yemeni astronomicalmanuscripts dealing with the subject of these two levels have beenidentified and almanacs are contained in several of them. Thealmanacs belong very much to the folk astronomical tradition, buteven then they were destined for a scholarly audience. The averageYemeni farmer would have known much more about local agriculture thanis contained in these almanacs, and much of the information is of nopractical use.
Varisco's book contains the Arabic text anda translation of al-Ashraf's almanac and a critical commentary onevery aspect of its contents, drawing heavily on other almanacs, someof which Varisco has published elsewhere, others of which are stillavailable only in manuscript form. The information in the almanac isarranged according to the days of the solar year. For example, threeentries may be cited:
May 14: Entry of the sun into Gemeni... Rising of Capella. Availability of the sihla figs. Dates redden and yellow. Fresh ripe dates change color.August 2: Dawn rising of [the lunar station] tarf and the setting of [the station] sa'd bula', the naw' of which is three nights for rain. Availability of broad beans in the mountains. First planting of bukr [sorghum] in Lahj.
September 13: First planting of sabi'i [sorghum] in the coastal region. End of the last sailing of Indian [ships] from Aden during the Great Season... Picking of grapes in the Sanaa region.
The detailed commentary in this bookexplains every concept mentioned in the almanac relating tocalendars, festivals, astronomy, weather, flora and fauna,environment, commerce and agriculture, as well as medical problemsand sexual activity. Indeed not a stone is left unturned. Considerable attention is paid to lexicography and regional variants,and since much of the technical or regional vocabulary in the almanacis not to be understood from this text alone, other relevant materialis masterfully cited where necessary.
What is clear from every page of the book isthat the author is as much at home in the fields of Yemen (or theqat-sessions on long Yemeni afternoons) as in the study at hishome on Long Island. This is not an armchair study of a medievaldocument, but rather a study which shows the fruits of the author'slabors as an anthropologist and ethnographer in rural Yemen, as anArabist in manuscript libraries all over Europe and the Near East,and as a historian well versed in the cultural and economic historyof Yemen. This book is very much alive, in distinct contrast to muchmodern historical scholarship which is as dead as the people it dealswith. And even if one might tire of reading about Yemeni plants,readers will move to the edge of their seats or even stand up whenreading about insects that can kill a camel or sexual practices thatdeflower and decapillate almost simultaneously.
A very few orthographical errors caught myeye, and may be noted here not least to save others from makingsimilar mistakes. It is not necessary to provide hamzas andshaddas in editions of medieval texts, especially those thatare written in Middle Arabic (see p. 17) and which do not conform tothe rules of classical Arabic anyway. Here, however, we find somethat are ill-conceived. Verbal nouns of the VIIth,VIIIth and Xthforms do not take an initial hamza (e.g., XII:22, IV:6,XI:12-12, and XII:19), and al-yamaniya as in the starnamesal-dhira' al-yamaniya (X:24) and al-shi'ra al-yamaniya(XII:15) does not &emdash; for various curious reasons &emdash;need a shadda on the iy, any more than do riyah(IV:19) and al-thaniya (XII:27). The number writtenth-l-th is not thalath (p. 17) but thalath witha dagger alif after the lam.
The inadequacies of the "standard socialscience method" for bibliographical references (p. xv), using authorsand dates, is well illustrated by the absurdities on p. 275: "Thenineteenth-century traveller Osgood (1854:157) noted that ... IbnMajid (1971:110) said that ... Ibn Battuta (1980:252) observed that..." There is no reason why sensible scholars should be slaves tosuch a barbaric system. Giving hijra dates for modern Arabicpublications in addition to Western dates complicates and confusesthe situation even further.
In the list of manuscript sources (pp.257-261) bibliographical references to catalogs &emdash; whereavailable &emdash; or surveys &emdash; al-Hibshi (general), al-Sayyid(historical), King (astronomical) &emdash; would have been useful. Then, for example, the significance of the curious titles "Miqat" and"Taymur" as the earliest known Yemeni (or indeed earliest knownIslamic) astronomical ephemerides would be clearer. The importantstudy by G. Tibbetts on Arab navigation in the Red Sea (p. 296) wasfortunately reprinted in 1981, and copies can still be found in thebookshops near the British Museum. A. Heinen's 1978 thesis (p. 274),which opened the doors to a new field of Islamic sacred cosmology,was published in 1982 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner). The articles"MATLA'" [rising points] and "Rih" [winds] in EI2have appeared since Varisco's manuscript was submitted forpublication and contain some relevant material. Together with thearticles "ANWA'" [divisions of the year], "LAYL WA-NAHAR"[division of the day and night], "MAKKA. As Centre of theWorld" [sacred geography] and "NUDJUM" [stars], thesearticles provide a guide for Islamicists to the main aspects of folkastronomy.
I conclude with a quotation on thedust-jacket, this from Prof. A. I Sabra of Harvard University. Hisclaim that "no library concerned with the history of science,economic and agricultural history, medieval technology, andanthropology can afford not to obtain a copy of this book" is asvalid as my own unconditional praise for Varisco's achievement. Varisco has rendered a few pages of obscure medieval Arabic into anexcitingly vivid and refreshingly lively tribute to the richdiversity of medieval Yemeni life and culture.
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