The Euphrates

by Vavilov on June 8, 2009 · 0 comments

1926

And there was the beautiful valley of the Euphrates, where once upon a time the Assyro-Babylonian civilization flowered, where the fate of the Near East was settled and where the Codex of Hammurabi determined the standards of economy, justice and responsibilities. Ordinarily, the agricultural crops are not irrigated. The waters of the Euphrates flow without restraint all way to the Indian Ocean. [1] Waterwheels are built for lifting the water and irrigation is practiced only where water is nearby or where small streams run. Basically the agriculture is of a nonirrigated type. In the past it was no doubt richer, fuller and more interesting than the present type. There is no question that it is possible to return to the earlier conditions by a rational use of the water and the excellent soil. There are plenty of opportunities for this. Owing to the exploitation of its many colonies this is not necessary for the French and the suppressed Arab population is forced to be satisfied with primitive utilization of an enormous natural wealth.

The time was the very best for collecting. There was still much wheat and barley, not yet cut. The harvest was at its peak. The specific composition here is definitely different from that of southwestern Asia and the Irano-Turkestan region. The wheat is exclusively of a hard type, the barley always distichous. There is no doubt at all about the distinctiveness of this territory, its independence and its sharp distinction from southwestern Asia. Also, the leguminous plants of this territory are special. As demonstrated by research later on, the strains from the steppes of dry, northern Syria are particularly interesting for the drought-stricken areas of Ukraine.

Notes:
  1. Not so much any more. [↩]
Geotag Icon Show on map

{ 0 comments }

Where is the granary of Syria?

by Jeremy on June 5, 2009 · 0 comments

This entry is very confusing; Vavilov says he is traveling north from Damascus, north of Aleppo in fact, to the “granary of Syria”. But all accounts I have been able to find reckon that the Hauran, a volcanic plain east of the Golan Heights, is the granary of Syria. What were the borders of “Syria” in 1926? Where was he when he made these notes about wheat in Syria?

Geotag Icon Show on map

{ 0 comments }

The granary of Syria

by Vavilov on June 4, 2009 · 0 comments

1926

After collecting a large sample of different varieties and mailing them, I went to northern Syria, via Homs, Hama and Aleppo, from where I intended to go by car in the direction of Mesopotamia (Iraq) to the Euphrates river. This large area is the granary of Syria. It is inhabited by typical, slender Arabs in burnooses and turbans. The fields of wheat reach as far as the eye can see. Enormous areas are sown.

Syrian threshing floor, picture by Frank Hurley, from National Library of Australia

Syrian threshing floor, picture by Frank Hurley, from National Library of Australia

Already there are attempts here at a kind of mechanization, e.g. utilization of peculiar, primitive threshing machines. In general the ordinary Mediterranean kind of agriculture dominates, including the use of the Latin type of plow, which does not turn over the soil strata, and threshing by means of wooden boards with flint pieces driven into them, which thresh the grain spread out with spades. The sowing is done during autumn. This is a monoculture. Mainly hard wheat and distichous barley are cultivated.

Geotag Icon Show on map

{ 0 comments }

Are Bsous and byssus related?

by Jeremy on June 3, 2009 · 0 comments

Researching the silk industry in Lebanon, I happened across a reference to the Bsous Silk Museum. [1] Mollusk Silk, the blogger who led me there, asks an interesting question that might have tickled N.I. Vavilov’s love for languages and words.

I am now curious about the name of the town itself. I understand that “Bsous” comes originally from a Syriac word, and wonder whether it might be linked to the word “byssus”, which appears in the Old Testament – in Exodus, where it is often translated as “linen” or “wool” or even “yarn”. Byssus is the term for the silk-like threads that some types of mollusks … secrete to anchor themselves to the sea-floor.

Merriam-Webster tells me that byssus comes from Middle English bissus, from Latin byssus, from Greek byssos flax, of Semitic origin; akin to Hebrew būș linen cloth. …

You can probably figure out my question. Do any of you know whether “Bsous” the town derives from the same word as “byssus”, and whether there was any ancient connection between its land-based silk-making and sea silk? Bsous isn’t a coastal town, so I’m guessing that the term “byssus”/Bsous was used by analogy, but I’m curious whether it was applied first to silk worms and then to silk clams, or vice versa.

Nobody answered Mollusk Silk at the blog; anyone here care to comment?

More fascinating still, I had no idea that fabric could be made from bivalve byssus. It can. Not only that, it is still apparently being made on a small island off Sardinia. Must visit.

Notes:
  1. Be warned; the site plays music at you. [↩]

{ 0 comments }

From breadbasket to basket case

by Gary Paul Nabhan on May 29, 2009 · 0 comments

It was dawning on Vavilov that he had arrived in Lebanon in the absolute worst of times. Over the previous two decades, these lands had suffered from wars, locust plagues, economic disruptions, and out-migrations that had reduced the pre-1900 population by more than 60 percent. But the worst problem facing the Arabian farmers and herders whom Vavilov visited stemmed from their country’s forfeiture of food security over the previous half century.

Beginning in the 1860s, when Napoleon III had landed six thousand troops on the Lebanese coast to intervene in internecine disputes on the side of Christians, the French had encouraged Lebanon’s Maronite Christians of the highlands and valleys to abandon their subsistence crops in favor of growing mulberry trees for silk production. Spurred on by their own merchant class, the small shareholders in the Mount Lebanon highlands and the Bekaa Valley had planted nearly half of all their arable lands in mulberry trees, forsaking the wheat grains that had offered them bulgur for tabbouleh and the chickpeas from which they had made hummus over countless centuries. [1]

As the number of silk mills in the region increased up through 1885, Lebanon began to gain half of its gross national product from the silk trade and was therefore able to purchase two-thirds of the bulgur, flour, dried legumes, and dairy products its peasants consumed from Syria, Turkey, and even North African countries. As Lebanese agricultural scientist Rami Zurayk has deftly summarized: “All this required the planting of large areas of mulberry trees, thereby displacing the traditional food farming systems, with the result that wheat and other foods had to be imported and were sold to the very farmers who had once grown them as staples.”

With both the Ottoman War and World War I taking their tolls in the decade prior to Vavilov’s visit, however, the silk-for-food trade network came unraveled. The resulting tragedy of food insecurity is the reason that some fifteen million people of Lebanese descent now live beyond Lebanon’s borders, and only five million Lebanese remain in their native land. [2]

In November of 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany, disrupting the trade of silk to France and leading the Ottomans to mandate that every Lebanese farmer who could carry a gun join the army. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese men and boys were forced to leave the mulberry groves and remnant grain fields, though roughly a fifth of them deserted their compulsory military service and fled the country. The shortage of silk leaf harvesters alone would have thrown the country into an economic crisis, but blockades also prevented the women who worked in the silk factories from getting their products to high-end French markets, and the silk trade collapsed. [3] With a locust plague devastating the remaining cereal fields in the summer of 1915 and no money to purchase staple foods from Syria or Africa, the food security of the Lebanese peasantry evaporated before their eyes. They were left with only locust-damaged mulberry leaves, which silkworms can eat but humans cannot. The mulberries themselves had little market, and their food value did not sustain many families.

Extracted from Where our Food Comes From by Gary Paul Nabhan
and used with permission.

Notes:
  1. I don’t know how much of this story is recounted at the Bsous Museum, an attraction little-known outside Lebanon. [↩]
  2. It should be noted that Nabhan himself is the descendant of Lebanese emigrants. [↩]
  3. Photograph from Shemali. [↩]

{ 0 comments }

An amusing event

by Vavilov on May 15, 2009 · 0 comments

1926

Since Damascus is at an intersection of many roads the cultivated plants here have an alien character. But no doubt there are also endemic plants here. I had never expected to see such large, thick-skinned grapes as I encountered in the markets of Damascus. The composition of wheat strains turned out to be extremely varied, reflecting influences from both southwestern Asia and the Mediterranean area. Peculiar endemic peas of a montane and Mediterranean type were present there in large amounts. There are important forage plants, which replace barley in the fodder of horses.

barbershop
According to documents, Damascus has existed for not less than 4000 years. It is possible that its history goes even farther back. This antiquity is demonstrated by the durability of its streets, which seemed to be paved with stones that are rooted in the ground. Even the shops in the market have a character of permanence. In the typical Arabian restaurants, there is unfailingly an irrigation channel with babbling, running water passing under the tables, providing coolness during the summer season. There was also an amusing event. For some reason, after a haircut in the barber shops of Damascus, it is considered good manners to sprinkle the head with alcohol and burn off the facial hair with a flame. The first time this operation is carried out without warning it produces a stunning impression that the whole head is set afire and the client jumps up in terror. However, the affair in general ends happily, to the amusement of the barber.

Geotag Icon Show on map

{ 0 comments }

Wheat in Lebanon

by Gary Paul Nabhan on May 13, 2009 · 0 comments

The cultivated variety that Vavilov described near the village of Hawran is still grown to some extent, as are a few varieties such as Salamouni, which is ideally suited for making bulgur, a cracked cereal used in tabbouleh. [1] However, while the locally adapted varieties suited to bulgur and another traditional dish, kishk, have persisted in Lebanon, bread wheats had largely been lost in the decades just prior to Vavilov’s visit, when the Lebanese began to import their flour from Syria and Africa.

Extracted from Where our Food Comes From by Gary Paul Nabhan
and used with permission.

Notes:
  1. Someone should perhaps talk to Slow Food Beirut about wheat taxonomy. [↩]

{ 0 comments }

Damascus

by Vavilov on May 13, 2009 · 0 comments

1926

There we were in the oldest city in the world, famous Damascus. Its geographical location is really remarkable. It is situated in the centre of desertlike mountains at an altitude of 1500 metres and in a depression where water streams down the slopes. Surrounded by a sterile desert, Damascus itself is like a sea of green. Everywhere it is full of gardens and surrounded by fertile fields. After completing long caravan routes lasting for days through the desert, the traveller enters Damascus and finds there a kind of ‘Eldorado’ with water and greenery. The ancient city is strongly built with a large number of mosques and minarets and a multitude of caravansaries. All crops there are irrigated. This is in the fullest sense of the word an oasis in a mountainous desert. Thanks to its elevated situation, the climate is temperate and favourable for the production of fruit trees, grapes and cereals.

Unfortunately, Damascus was also under martial law; it was threatened with an assault by the Druse. The outskirts of the city were defended by barricades and to go far from the city into the surroundings was nor recommended by the authorities. I had to limit myself to studying the grain market in rhe city itself and to visit only a few fields.

Geotag Icon Show on map

{ 0 comments }

A white handkerchief on a stake

by Vavilov on May 12, 2009 · 0 comments

1926

Severe bouts with malaria hampered my own work considerably. Instead of trying to collect the crumbling wild wheat and wild barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum) under difficult circumstances, it was necessary to rest in bed for several hours a day. The warlike state of affairs in Khoran made it necessary to hasten the investigation and to head for where I could obtain medical assistance under emergency conditions. To my surprise, a French officer declared that since it was necessary for me to penetrate deeper into the area, there were no major objections to it. I had only to tie a white handkerchief to a stake as sign of peaceful intentions and I could go where I wanted, since meeting with the Druse [1] was dangerous only for the French but not for Russians or, even better, Bolsheviks.

Taking advantage of this exceptional advice, I proceeded, together with the teacher from the American University, into the mountains, to a Druse village. There we actually had a most cordial reception, obtained exhaustive information, went around on horseback over a considerable area of fields and peacefully, in the company of a Druse guide, rerurned to the railway station, where we took a train to Damascus.

Notes:
  1. These days usually written Druze. [↩]
Geotag Icon Show on map

{ 0 comments }

The source of Khoranka wheat

by Vavilov on May 8, 2009 · 0 comments

1926

The very first excursions to Arabian villages revealed fields which displayed wheats of a peculiar composition. Here I collected for the first time the basic subspecies which I later named the ‘Khoranka’. [1] This is a remarkable, large-grained, hard wheat with stiff straw and highly productive, compact ears. At present [2] the Khoranka has already been introduced on to tens of thousands of hectares of cropland in the highlands of Azerbaidjan. And right here, on the slopes and at the edges of the fields I saw for the first time stands of the wild wheat.

Herbarium specimen of wild emmer from a 1910 monograph by Aaronsohn published by the USDA.

Herbarium specimen of wild emmer from a 1910 monograph by Aaronsohn published by the USDA.

The entire problem is linked to the 1906 discovery by the botanist Aaronsohn of a wild wheat in Syria and Palestine. With exaggerations typical of an investigator of the East, he proclaimed in a flight of fancy a new era for the breeding of wheat. The wild wheat, distributed in semidesert areas, definitely drought tolerant and with comparatively large grains, was represented by Aaronsohn as a wonderful material for improving cultivated wheat and for raising its drought resistance. The modest requirements of the wild wheat (able to grow among stones on waste land) indicated that new opportunities had been opened up. No less enthusiastically, a representative of the US Department of Agriculture, Dr Cook, who in 1913 made a special trip to Syria and Palestine for studies of the wild wheat, also ascribed excessive importance to it. Wild wheat was sent to the USA in the form of ears in a great number of boxes.

Unfortunately we arrived at the site where the wild wheat occurs when the ears to a great extent had fallen off. It was only with difficulty that we could locate them by clearing away the stones, although they had fallen to the ground in large quantities. The drought tolerance and straw-stiffness of the wild wheat proved, however, to be considerably exaggerated. Detailed investigations showed that the wild wheat grew among the stones in soft, fertilized soil, retaining water. In this respect it is little different from cultivated wheat. It became necessary to make severe corrections of the exaggerated statements made by Aaronsohn and Cook. [3] Furthermore, the Syrian subspecies of wild wheat actually turned out to be small-grained and its ears were not very large either. No doubt the drought resistance of the locally cultivated wheat, widely grown by the Arabian settlers, was of much more interest and of course we concentrated our attention on it.

The wild species of wheat (Triticum dicoccoides [Koern.] Aarons.) was naturally of interest as an evolutionary link. Subsequently, however, when studying the wild wheat and experimenting with attempts at hybridization, we encountered still more drawbacks for its utilization for practical purposes. But, the exaggerations of Aaronsohn [4] had one positive effect: the generous Americans built up a special research station near Haifa, where great work on breeding field crops is done.

Notes:
  1. Usually called Triticum durum subsp. horanicum. [↩]
  2. That is, when he was writing up his field notes, some time after the discovery. [↩]
  3. Some of those claims can be read in contemporary accounts from 1912 and 1913. Were they exaggerated? The wild relatives have proved useful in breeding and research. [↩]
  4. Vavilov does seem to have it in for Aaronsohn; I am not expert enough to judge the comments, but it would be interesting to examine their interactions. Aronsohn is, in any case, a fascinating character, in his way as interesting as Vavilov. [↩]
Geotag Icon Show on map

{ 0 comments }

← Older Entries