Page 73 - Arabian Studies (I)

The Cultivation of Cereals in Mediaeval Yemen 59

it. After scatter-sowing it is gently ploughed over until covered with
earth but not so that it is choked[?]. 2 0 9 If it be in irrigated ground
drinking from running streams the ground is brought to a good state
of tilth for it, as above, and it is watered from the stream and left
[unwatered] until it dries, although moisture to make the seed grow
[still] remains in it, and it is ploughed. The sesame is scatter-sown as it
is in rainland. In ground which drinks from running streams the time
for scatter-sowing is two occasions - one in Tishrln I [ 14 October—],
as previously mentioned in connection with what is sown in the
Tihamahs, and another at the beginning of Shubat [14 March-]. 2 i o
When it sprouts and two months pass over it, it is irrigated
with water from the running streams and left unwatered until the
seed forms. Once its seed grows firm and forms it is re-watered and
left until it ripens. The period it stands, from the time it is
scatter-sown till it is plucked up, is five months. Anyone who wants
it in a hurry will take it after four and a half months, plucking it out
by hand. It is bound into sheaves and stacked tentwise, each tent
[stook] a load at a time, or more. If the tent [stook] consists of a
load at a time it stands half a month stacked together. After that it is
pulled apart with a stick — whereupon all the sesame [-seed] it
contains comes down. If the tent [stook] be more than a load at a
time it stands over twenty days and is [then] pulled apart just as
previously mentioned. The way it is stacked tent-wise is that it is
arranged into sheaves, two-handfuls or more in size [i.e. in
circumference], with the heads meeting together at the top and its
roots at the bottom — just as it grew. Then these sheaves are stacked
tent-wise in a row, side by side with one-another, the roots next to
the ground and the heads to the top. Once the said period from the
time of stacking tent-wise has elapsed, it [the sesame] is pulled apart
by undoing the tie, the heads of it are turned downwards and its
roots upwards, and it is shaken, as I have said, until no more sesame
remains in them21 1 — until [the work] comes to its end.’

NOTE: You must know that the threshing-floor, baidhar (i.e. mijran
in the Yemen dialect), should be on an elevated place, removed from
dwellings, vegetable-plots, cucumber-beds, vines and trees. The
elevation is for the winds (to winnow it), and water, if it rains, flows
away and none remains. Its being removed from dwellings is lest it
(i.e. the fine chaff dust) harm people’s eyes, their living and cooking.
The distance from cucumber-beds is so that it should not harm the
fruit, although dust from the threshing floor when it reaches the
roots and branches of plants is beneficial to them in the same way as
manure, but it is harmful to the leaves and fruit.