Abstract
In 1974, Andrew Watson published an influential article titled “The Arab Agricultural Revolution” in which he argued that Muslim agri- culturalists transformed Mediterranean farming beginning shortly after the seventh-century conquests of most of the Middle East and North Africa. Watson elaborated his claims in another article, “A Medieval Green Revolution” (1981), and in a monograph, Agricultural Inno- vation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, yoo-1100.1 In these works, Watson proposed a medieval “Green Revolution” that entailed the spread of intensive methods of farming and irrigation technology and a rise in crop yields because of these farming techniques. Accompanied by a demographic upswing, intensive farming methods elevated labor requirements and yielded higher crop surpluses.
Source: Journal of World History
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