From Our Heritage: Ibn al-Awwam

From Our Heritage

He was an Arab scholar who lived in Seville. He left us his precious work, “Agriculture” — translated into Spanish in 1802 and into French in 1864 — which raised its author to the scientific summit, and which remains to this day a distinguished agricultural reference.

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Among the Arab scholars the details of whose lives have remained buried is a great scholar who lived in Seville in the second half of the twelfth century: Abu Zakariya Yahya ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn al-Awwam al-Ishbili. Ibn Khaldun mentioned him, but did not do him justice, for he had not read Ibn al-Awwam’s book on agriculture. And it is truly regrettable that Ibn al-Awwam’s name occurs nowhere in the writings of Hajji Khalifa and Ibn Khallikan.

Ibn al-Awwam was an Arab to the core and a lover of reading. He was a wide-ranging investigator of the works of the scholars who preceded him in the sciences of botany and agriculture and their branches. After studying attentively the production of his own people, he turned to the works of the Greek and Roman scholars, extending his reading and study of them, and he did not neglect to read what the ancient Indians had written on these subjects. Ibn al-Awwam was distinguished by his keen, penetrating observation and his sound thinking, and he composed the book “Agriculture,” which immortalized his name among scholars. The book is divided into thirty-four chapters, thirty of them on agriculture and four on the raising of livestock. The book remained unknown, or narrow in its circulation, until its translation appeared in Madrid in the Spanish language in 1802; its circulation then increased after its translation into the French language in 1864. This book aroused the interest of scholars; many of them read it, and it prompted some of them — the critics — to study it, and they aimed the arrows of their criticism at Ibn al-Awwam and at the translator of his book.

Ibn al-Awwam concerned himself with the diseases of fruit trees and vines. He described the symptoms of many of their diseases in a description that was brief yet precise; then he offered the reader advice for treating the diseases or guarding against them, with a fullness and comprehensiveness in which none of the ancients had preceded him.

Scholars the world over acknowledge that this scientist was the first to describe the pigment disease that afflicts citrus trees. Ibn al-Awwam reached the scientific summit of his age, and his book still reflects his scientific importance at that time. Had it not been important for the study of the history of plant diseases, it would not have been translated into Spanish and French.

I have further proof of the book’s importance: a not inconsiderable number of Western scholars advise their students of plant pathology to read Ibn al-Awwam’s book, and certain great professors have counseled their students to acquire this book.

If it is given us to boast of the most brilliant of our scholars of old, then I place Ibn al-Awwam of Seville in their front rank. He is the unknown, the stranger, among his own people — but well known among others!