Crops such as sugarcane, rice, citrus and cotton spread west from India and Persia across the caliphate to Spain. How far this amounted to an agricultural revolution is debated.
Contested history
Consensus: New crops and irrigation methods did spread across the early Islamic world, but whether this amounted to a revolution is debated.
An Arab Agricultural Revolution, 700 to 1100Debated
Andrew Watson argued in 1974 and 1983 that crop diffusion and new rotations transformed farming across the caliphate.
Gradual change built on Roman, Persian and Indian practiceDebated
Critics note several of Watson's crops were already grown in the Mediterranean before Islam and that change was slower and uneven.