What Happened to Fertile Lands of EB Time?

[Barry Soteiro]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

[Shatov]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

That's seemingly the one thing all these areas have in common other than their long history of cultivation. Somehow I doubt that repeating the shahadah by itself turns lands into desert,though.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

You better back that up, or I am afraid all hell is gonna break loose here.

[KozaK13]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

Read up abit on what the islamic world introduced to us eg. proto-capitalism, irrigation, many crops such as citrus fruits to us and inspired the guitar
Not to mention thier expansion of industrialisation in the caliphate like using water mills for factories, tidal power, hydro power and wind power albeit in a more primitibe form. Basically they replaced a stale old christian empire and persian empire with a vibrant, innovative islamic one.


Plus Egypt and iraq import so much as the population is too large for the countries to support themselves agriculturally, in modern times, plus evidence points to the kingdoms of egypt collapsing due to the nile drying up and changing course occaisionally, and i think the same major event lead to the fall of i think the assyrian or akkadian empire around the euphrates and tigris...
An ancient example would be Rome using north africa as its grain basket becuase italy couldn't support its population on its own.

[Shatov]

I'd be surprised if the Rashidun or Ummayad Caliphates introduced irrigation or remarkably innovative agricultural techniques to the Mid-East; if anything the stability after five hundred years of constant Roman-Persian warfare and the end of the Justinian Plague had more of an impact on economic growth and innovation.

[KozaK13]

When i say us in my last post i mean western world sorry. Irrigation ahd existed in the east since ancient egyptians.

[Watchman]

A culprit commonly pointed at is the Mongols, who apparently managed to do something unusual and cause long-term damage to regional demographics by wiping out much of the hydraulic engineer corps that used to maintain the extensive irrigation systems much of the agriculture in the Asian regions concerned relied heavily on. One Tamerlane a century or two later did a fine job wrecking what was left...

[Shatov]

Egypt? Sicily? North Africa?

Are these areas somehow less worse off than I imagined?

[Watchman]

Egypt? Sicily? North Africa?

Are these areas somehow less worse off than I imagined?

Pretty sure Egyptian agriculture these days doesn't work on the Nile floods anymore, which used to be the main cause of its fertility (the Assuan Dam was partly built to control those IIRC, as they were kind of annoying for the rest of the infrastructure). Sicily and North Africa probably actually haven't changed too much since the ancient times, save of course for the changes in agricultural technology - it's just that the extensive cultivation of the much more fertile lands north of the Mediterranean Alps has totally overshadowed them.

[Codyos Vladimiros]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

Right idea, wrong religion. It was the MONGOLS who screwed pretty much everything--in fact they destroyed a lot of irrigation structures, on top the damage done in a few Abbassid Civil wars, IIRC.

[NeoSpartan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVh_eZkiTAI

---Now... for some reason I get the feel that too much blame is being put on the Mongols. Just a feeling I am getting..

True that the major irrigation systems fell into disrepair in Iraq (the general area between Baghdad and Basra) after 1258 (?). But then again, after that Iraq was constantly fought over 'till the Ottomans consolidated it to their own. And it wasn't until the late 19th Century that irrigation was being tended to again.

As for Egypt, a whole lot of people are living on top of fertile ground. Funny thing, after the Dam was constructed a lot of the land expected to be used for agriculture was taken up by people to live in.

[desert]

Well, the problem with North Africa is desertification. In a few dozen millenia, Central Africa will be screwed if the rate stays constant.

[desert]

Whoa, and according to Wikipedia Afghanistan and Kazakhastan are getting massacred be desertification. Half of all cropland abandoned in the latter country since 1980, apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification

Edit: Woops, double post. Meant to edit the first.

[Yyrkoon]

Siltification + desertification.

Siltification = making salty. Basically when you irrigate for a long time trace amounts of salt build up as water evaporates and the soil becomes more salty. Plants don't like salt. This advances desertification. Most of the middle east was heavily irrigated for thousands of years. Lots of salt built up. Ta da.

[KozaK13]

Desertification is probably the biggest threat to humans now considering the size of populations it will effect, inless another ice age sorts it out somehow...amazing to think desertification had begun even before eb's timeline..apparently grass land covered parts northern africa in 5000bc

[Cambyses]

And of course there are an awful lot more people, living longer and eating bigger meals, in those areas now...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It's not any one conquest, though the Muslim Caliphate did damage because it had a politcy of cultural destruction and Mongols because they were big on destroying resistance and actual... stuff. Then you have the Christians, who stated killing philosophers around 300AD or so, burning books and generall being a nuissence.

Overall that region has been fought over and screwed over since around 200 AD at best. Each invasion takes a bit away and more is taken away the harder it is to recover. I though it was salinification, but either, way it's a process I believe the Mesopotamians were aware of. Spreading ash and ground bone onto land to increase pH is as old as the hills. I imagine you pick those tricks up when people keep deliberately salting you cropland.

[Watchman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVh_eZkiTAI

Uh, it's nice, but how's it relate to much anything.

---Now... for some reason I get the feel that too much blame is being put on the Mongols. Just a feeling I am getting..

Why ? They pretty much nuked the Khwaramzian kingdom (which covered much of Central Asia) and did more or less the same to Mesopotamia, and probably much of the region inbetween while they were at it. Did a fine job killing the know-how to build and maintain the irrigation systems on the side AFAIK, as insofar as the Mongols were concerned the hydraulic engineers didn't rank among those useful people that were spared when a city was razed...

Previous conquerors in the area hadn't been quite so thorough and systematical about making object lessons, far as I'm aware of.

True that the major irrigation systems fell into disrepair in Iraq (the general area between Baghdad and Basra) after 1258 (?).

Yeah, wot a coincidence there.

[NeoSpartan]

Uh, it's nice, but how's it relate to much anything.

.....

Yeah, wot a coincidence there.

Its just a cool video I felt like posting since we were on the subject of Mongols.

As far as the last point is conserned I think I should have been a little more clear:
Yes the mongols did f*** the Caliphate and as a result there was no major gov't to maintain the irrigation systems. Even though the Ottomans held Iraq it was mainly a backwater provincial area when compared to, say, Bulgaria or Egypt. The lack of attention due to both, fighting to win over the area, and then weakening of the Sultan's power/control during the 17th & 18th Century.

[machinor]

Regarding Mesopotamia... AFAIK the Shat-el-Arab (spelling?), the delta of Euphrat and Tigris flowing into the Persian Gulf is still one of the most fertile regions on our merry green planet.
Regarding North Africa... some ancient historians wrote that the desertification in North Africa is caused by massive uprooting of once abundant North African forests.
Regarding fertility in general... one must take into account that today's irrigation systems are an absolute miracle compared to the possibilities of antiquity. By their standards, those regions might still be superfertile but compared to modern day standards they're below average. Take into account that for mediterranian standards, having a quite large water reservoir like a river of the size of the Euphrat means superexcellent fertility compared to the otherwise dusty and arid mediterranian flora.

[antisocialmunky]

The biggest cause is human mismanagement. The second biggest cause is natural process. When the natural processes are exacerbated by human mismanagement you get the loss of these great agricultural sites(deforestation -> erosion, over farming -> salinization and infertility). Its not a quincidence that the great historically fertile areas that gave birth to great civilizations have been reduced over the years and some are/have been turned into deserts.

Heck look at the situation in the American Midwest. I live in Kansas, here there's the problem of wet agriculture in the dry western half of the state. Instead of the traditional dry farming, people drain the fossil water supplies at an unreplenishable rate. This has/will turn western Kansas into a dryer area due to the lowering of hte water table. Look at the dust bowl because people left the fields fallow without any plants to bind the top soil together. The American Midwest has only been the subject of intense western farming techniques for about 200 years and despite still being the most productive land on the planet, its fertility has been greatly impacted.

[Ibrahim]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

first off, all that the others said wers correct. we muslims tended to irrigation, did in fact introduce capitalism (a version not too different from what is in europe today-rich give lots of money to the poor), and manage to maintain that system for centuries on end. We also invented a proto 3-meals a day concept (some Arab living in spain). we wrote beautiful poetry (even before Islam), transfered ancient knowlege to europeans from main sources, made androids, wrote sociology books (Ibn Khaldun), and put Alexander the great to shame....so I'd shut my mouth up if I were you..

Its also worth pointing out that the Mongol conquests did most of the damage, as they distroyed the irrigation, kiilled technicians, and threw entire volumes/books on agriculture into the rivers. then the areas fell into a period of anarchy, during which the irrigation systems were left in desrepair, as no one was able to unify and cooperate on the reconstruction. the ottomans didn't do too well, mostly because they were focused on Europe (that said, the area did remain somewhat prosperous enough till the 20th century).

@lobf: the Mongols do represent a religious movement/upheaval (sort of). they were known to play religions against one another, and often used their conquests to justify that the judeo-christian/ Muslim god was either non-existant, or that the losers deserved "divine wrath" (toppling the Khalifah, wiping out those eastern europeans, etc). Even Tamerlane, a muslim, attacked other muslims, saying they deserved divine retribution by himself. If you find a good book on the sack of baghdad, you'll see a gruesome example being made of the khalifah...not a pretty thing.

they also killed everybody save artists (for buildings), scribes, and siege engineers. they did in fact kill all other technicians (the ones for agriculture included). It was Mongol Policy to do that, so as to terrify all neighbors into submission, which backfired at the battle of 3ain jallut in 1260-something.

second, here's is my message to you Barry soteiro : *throws the rigid digit salute*. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipping_the_bird

[Mooks]

and put Alexander the great to shame....so I'd shut my mouth up if I were you..

Alexander the Great conquered the whole persian empire. The muslims coming out of arabia conquered the Persia and Byzantine empires (though slower for byzantine) after they had just got done with a serios war and were both depleted of manpower,capital, and will. Stop being a fanboy.

[Ibrahim]

Alexander the Great conquered the whole persian empire. The muslims coming out of arabia conquered the Persia and Byzantine empires (though slower for byzantine) after they had just got done with a serios war and were both depleted of manpower,capital, and will. Stop being a fanboy.

I'm not a fanboy. Its just that that is still a lot more land, at a similar rate-I'm well aware of the exaustion of of the two empires, especially Persia.

yes though I guess you do have a point though-the two empires were indeed tired after killing each other. that said, it wasn't any easier for the Arabs, especially with persia. If what accounts say is true, the persians actually put up quite a fight, and did possess some will to go on (though apperently, they lost hope in the king, especially after Nihavand).

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Bad language, off topic, and intractable arguments. Time to close.