The Barakah of Water

Imagine a valley where orange trees nestle among gnarled, millennia-old olives; where figs, mulberries and pomegranates hang heavy with juice; where almonds are studded with nutty goodness in summer and burst with delicate pink-white flowers in early spring; and where channels of snowmelt ribbon their way from majestic peaks around mountain flanks, rushing into smallholdings and keeping the land alive. 

One sunny autumnal afternoon, wearing a kufi hat and a long grey beard, Abu Bakr hoes a plot of land, turning over clods bright with yellow wood sorrel flowers to sow broad beans, cabbages, cauliflowers and pumpkins. Chickens strut about officiously. Bees buzz. A few sheep baa behind a fence. From the mosque on the land below, the adhan for ‘asr can be heard. 

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a page from a history book from some faraway Middle Eastern land, but this is Spain, in the 21st century. Welcome to the Alpujarra mountains, halfway between Granada and the Mediterranean Sea. 

This area was practically untouched when, about 1,000 years ago, Andalusi Muslims began cultivating the land in ways that would still define traditional agriculture today. They hand-dug terraces into steep slopes so that the rain wouldn’t wash the earth away into the river below. Then they planted trees on these terraces and watered them with a sophisticated network of irrigation channels: as-saqiyyat, Hispanicised as acequias. It’s one of thousands of Arabic words that have remained in the Spanish language, among them the Qur’anic word for a seed, habba – related to hubb (love) – a word that has survived as haba: the humble broad bean.

 Órgiva, the hub of the Alpujarras, was known to the Greeks and described by the Arab chronicler Al-Udri in the eleventh century. In the last few decades, it’s become a haven for alternative communities fleeing rat races all over the world, seeking health in body and mind and the chance to raise their families in harmony with nature. Among these newcomers are a diverse bunch of Muslims, mainly with Sufi leanings, who share the concerns of their multinational neighbours.

Abu Bakr is a Spanish convert who has been farming near Orgiva for 25 years. “When I first came here, the climate was very different,” he says. “The winters weren’t so stormy, or the summers so hot.” In spite of the dam that was built in 2004, to which locals attribute the muggy summers and mosquitoes, the land is becoming gradually drier. The peaks of the Sierra Nevada used to be covered in snow all year round, but now it’s dry for months during the summer. It might seem strange to think of mountains like these as desert, with their wild rosemary, lavender, and yellow broom on slopes too steep or dry to cultivate, but land doesn’t need to look like the Sahara to be desertified. 

Sustainable farming is a complex balance between many factors: respecting the soil, allowing it to rest at times and replenishing nutrients with manure and green fertilisers; sowing a range of plants that support one another; and careful animal husbandry, to name but a few. Andalusis were master agriculturalists: between the tenth and fourteenth centuries they wrote a huge number of treatises, which included Khayr al-Din ibn Ilyas’s Kitab al-fallah (The Successful Farmer) and the Kutub al-Filaha (Books on Husbandry) – canonic texts for an ‘Islamic Green Revolution’. 

In a place where rains can be absent for months and then come in torrents that cause landslides, the key to this delicate balance is water management. This sophisticated skill, borne of the dry land farming of Arab lands, created a veritable Eden in the Emirate of Granada – home to about a million people at its zenith – and has been passed down over generations to present times. The villages of the Alpujarras were all built around springs, for instance the spa town Lanjarón, whose name is probably derived from ‘Aynu Harun: Haroun’s Spring. The same story is found all over Andalusia: irrigation disputes are still adjudicated on the steps of the main church in Valencia, as they were in the Islamic period, when it was a mosque.

From 1567-1616, a group of Moriscos rebelled against the new political order. These Spanish Muslims, whose forced conversions to Catholicism were always suspect, were rounded up and exiled from the Granada Emirate, dispersed all over Spain – if they survived the weeks of travel on foot. As many as a million were eventually deported, mainly to North Africa. But a few families remained: one to tend the mulberry groves, the source of Granada’s lucrative silk trade (silkworms can only feed on white mulberry leaves), a few to preserve trades such as shepherding and blacksmithing, and one to maintain the acequias. 

 This was essential, as the ‘Old Christians’ who were brought from the north of Spain to repopulate this once-thriving area didn’t have a clue how to cultivate food in this often harsh mountain environment (geologically, the Sierra Nevada is related to the Rif mountains of Morocco). So the Muslims’ knowledge of land stewardship didn’t disappear, even though all memory of the Muslim period was suppressed. Only a few years ago, an elderly local advised his neighbour to plant her potatoes “facing Mecca”. 

Narrow strips of terraced land aren’t only a clever way of resisting erosion, they also lend themselves to varied smallholding agriculture rather than the economically-driven monoculture of the coast, which is blighted by a sea of greenhouses. These are an ecological nightmare in so many ways: the plastic it usually dumped when it wears out; plants are forced to grow out of season, boosted with artificial fertilisers (think of that next time you buy fresh tomatoes in January); and the staff are, more often than not, immigrants from North and West Africa who have no papers, and are therefore easily exploited – not to mention exposed to the noxious products being used. Yet when these chemicals are taken out of the equation, the produce can still be labelled ‘Organic’, even though the other systemic problems such as soil degradation and air freighting remain. 

It’s no wonder, then, that many people are turning to sustainable traditional agriculture, or the modernised version presented by Permaculture. As local teacher Ras John Cresswell of Supernatural Permaculture explained to me, it’s founded on a combination of Earth Care and People Care, enhancing soil fertility for future generations rather than exploiting the earth for short-term gains. Permaculture seeks to update ancient, holistic farming techniques with technological and scientific approaches, ‘regreening’ degraded terrains – with some phenomenal success stories.

My everyday Permaculture gurus are usually my neighbours, retired Spaniards who have turned their hands to small-scale horticulture and who are so generous in sharing their gluts of fruits and vegetables, seeds, cuttings, fruit tree grafts, and – especially – information on when to sow (always related to saint’s days, the moon phases, or the seasons). “When there’s enough, there’s enough for everyone”, as my neighbour Paco says. Even people living in town like to keep boxes of onions, lettuces and broad beans on their rooftops; self-sufficiency is a habit too deeply-ingrained to kick. 

The acequias are the veins of these mountains. Granada’s acequias run for 12 miles, carrying water to the city as well as the Alhambra and the farmlands surrounding the old Zirid city walls. These channels ran down the middle of the Albaicín’s cobbled paths, leading to cisterns or aljibes – vaulted underground chambers accessed via a hole at street level – that supplied the city’s many public baths. No prizes for guessing that the word aljibe also comes from Arabic – al-jubb – or that they have long been important features of Middle Eastern water management strategies.

Acequias are a serious business. A ‘community of irrigators’ pays a minimal yearly fee for the use and upkeep of their acequia, and each one has a turn with a set number of hours depending on how many square metres of land they have. Woe betide you if you water your land outside of your time slot! It’s caused more fisticuffs between farmers than you can shake an olive branch at. Standing ankle-deep in icy cold floodwater in the sweltering heat of summer, digging the earth with a hand hoe to let it reach every tree, moonlight glinting off the temporary ponds between the olives, is one of the most magical experiences I’ve had in the Alpujarras.

Flood irrigation has had such success in keeping this landscape abundant because it soaks the clayey, stony soil found here very thoroughly and deeply; even at the height of summer, when temperatures can soar well over 40 degrees C for weeks at a time, the soil stays damp for 5 days or longer, keeping thirsty fruit trees alive and plumping up green gems on the drought-resilient olives. Tony Milroy, an expert in the arid farming and UK’s advisor to Yemen’s Ministry of Agriculture, points out that flood irrigation also benefits the microflora of the soil, as it brings with it seeds and micronutrients from elsewhere. Of course, the downside of this is if your neighbours upstream are using chemical fertilisers and weedkillers, as inevitably some of it will run off into the acequia – which can be like a miniature waterfall at full power. 

 To collect the many gallons of allotted acequia water when it arrives at silly o’clock in the morning, farmers often build an alberca (from the Arabic al-birkah, or pond, related to barakah, or blessing). While tube irrigation sounds like the most sensible way to use meagre water resources, installing a timer and laying black plastic tubes is beyond many people’s means; besides, timers can break down, while the plastic of the tubes leaches hormone-like chemicals into the soil. It also encourages the use of weedkillers, as it’s too awkward to take them up before ploughing the land – a favourite technique for removing weeds and making mechanical harvesting easier. Sprinkler systems add the issue of superficial water on leaves turning to magnifying lenses for the sun to literally burn them alive. 

Today the acequias are still maintained by the same families that have cared for them for centuries, removing obstructions and rebuilding them when they’re destroyed by heavy rains. Some have been cemented, which unfortunately deprives the land along the acequia from the water that seeps into it along the way; otherwise acequias are visible from a distance as a strip of greenery along the mountain slope. 

But there are ways of preserving moisture that don’t depend on acequias. A neat trick for a cottage garden is to sink an unglazed terracotta pot into the earth between plants, fill it with water and cover it, allowing the water to seep out slowly. Old boys in Lanjarón chop up prickly pear cactus leaves and dig them into the soil for time-released moisture. These cacti are also handy as firebreaks. Whenever I stumble across the veins of desiccated leaves I can’t help but marvel at the exquisite beauty of their filigree mesh, like dry-land corals that once held the water alive in their leaves.

No matter how you manage water, the best way to keep it from evaporating is to make like a tree and (grow) leaves. Think of a forest, the thick layer of humus underfoot, the rich smell of decomposing leaves, and the dappled light filtering through the canopy. Forest farming aims to replicate these conditions, albeit maximising the edible output. I know what you’re thinking: surely leaves need the sun for photosynthesis! True, but UV light destroys beneficial microorganisms in the soil that help plants extract nutrients from the soil; plus it can bake the earth to a hard, dusty crust that not even the most enthusiastic root system can break through.

Canopied tree farming designs have been used in oases in the Middle East for thousands of years. Simply put, tall, hardy trees like palms and olives offer shade to more vulnerable trees like oranges, which in turn protect grapevines, bushes, ground crops, and finally root crops. Of course, the Alpujarras aren’t only exposed to the sun in summer, but below-zero temperatures in winter; this tiered system also helps protect plants from frost and wind.

At la Loma Viva, a nearby Permaculture project, they’re pioneering a system called Syntropic farming, adapting it from its native Brazil to a semi-arid Mediterranean climate. In this method, young trees are planted surprisingly close together to mimic the natural environment of a forest, in rows to facilitate harvesting. Beneath the surface, the trees’ roots share water, nutrients, even information about droughts and other phenomena to help one another to grow. Together with regular, heavy pruning, this leads to phenomenal growth. Their trees were planted as cuttings – figs, almonds, poplars, and the leguminous hardwood black locust – together with ground cover crops like chard, lettuces and artichokes, barely 18 months ago. When I visited, the trees were taller than me – and they’d recently been pruned.

Yet Syntropic farming has bigger ambitions than merely producing edible abundance: it aims to reduce the need for irrigation to zero. What’s more, it’s been shown to create humid microclimates that bring dried rivers and springs back to life. The ground is heavily mulched with bark chips from their own chipper to prevent transpiration, keeping the soil damp. At the base of each tree a prickly pear cactus has been planted, which gathers dew and mist on its spines and lets the water trickle down to the earth.

Unusually, La Loma Viva doesn’t have acequias but qanats, tunnels leading into the mountain to reach hidden water sources – the mainstay of water management in arid environments like that of the Arabian Peninsula. In Yemen, it is the qanats that ensure a water supply through the long rainless months, broken by a single monsoon season, during which the wadis suddenly burst into life. These downpours fill underground cavities in which the water is protected from evaporation, to be accessed via qanats during the rest of the year.

After a lifetime of traditional farming, Abu Bakr is retiring. A few younger Spanish Muslims are taking up the mantle, including Ishaq, who has a certified Organic farm near Lanjarón. But he’s dubious about Permaculture: “It requires a big investment and it can take years to see a return. What about the little guys in the meantime? A traditional family would manage with a hectare of olive and fruit trees, some goats, a huerto [vegetable patch], and they’d share their excess produce, seeds, cuttings and so on with their neighbours. We need the human element too. That’s essential.”

Returning to subsistence farming isn’t an attractive choice for many farmers today. It might feed a family, if you’re lucky, but it isn’t usually that lucrative – and without responsible management it can even lead to desertification. From Mali to Jordan to China, overgrazing has seen entire panoramas turn to dustbowls; livestock such as goats or sheep nibble the young saplings of pioneer trees that would have shaded other plants, thus creating an ecosystem. 

The global agricultural tendency towards cash crops means that farmers have started giving preference to monoculture, in which one crop is grown over large plots of land. In the neighbouring province of Jaén, you can drive for hours and see nothing but rolling hills young olive trees in immaculate rows; about half of all the world’s olive oil is produced in Spain. 

There are many reasons to dislike monoculture, among them the precariousness of relying on a single crop; if it fails, the farmer goes out of business – and, if it’s an inedible crop like cotton, may even starve. The heavy machinery involved in ploughing, sowing and harvesting compacts the soil, reducing fertility. Besides, plants don’t naturally grow in huge swathes of single species; many beneficial plant associations have been observed, in which one species protects another from a certain parasite or mould. For instance, Tagetes calendulas are thought to help protect Solanaceas from pests and nemotodes (threadworms). 

The key problem with monoculture, however, is that it’s motivated by financial gain rather than care for the ecosystem of which we are an integral part. Is there any better mirror for the state of our souls than the slash-and-burn devastation of old-growth forest to make a quick buck, only to find that the land turns to dust within a generation? As Karen De Vries from La Loma Viva says, “The climate thing is just a symptom. What we need is a change in the climate of the mind.” And that begins with seeking deeper nourishment than merely food. 

For Muslims it’s not just an ecological no-brainer: Islam gives us the extra prerogative of humans being the khulafa’ (viceregents, deputies) of Allah on the earth. The 2017 and 2018 editions of the Zawiyah Retreat in Alquería de Los Rosales, an Islamic conference centre based in the Segura mountains north of Granada, were called ‘Tending the Earth: the Art of Living with God’s Creation’. Many Permaculture practitioners and teachers are Muslims; there is even a Permaculture Research Institute in Hadramawt, Yemen, on land donated by the Ba ‘Alawi Shaykh Habib ‘Umar, who is reported to have said “Permaculture is wajib [a duty]”.

There are so many parallels between the outer work of cultivating the land and the inner work of cultivating the soul. On a recent trip to Órgiva, the Qadiri Shaykh Muhammad Hydara al-Jilani from Gambia described this with marvellous simplicity: “Farming is a path to God. Nature is a path to God. All paths lead to Allah.” Tilling the earth, sowing, watering, and harvesting all bear fruits in patience, effort, gratitude, and sharing. 

Water is the key to this vitality. Alberca is related to barakah because the Arabic verb b-r-k means to kneel, the way a camel kneels to drink at a watering hole, or a person kneels to invoke a blessing in prayer. We need to be that close to the earth, so close we can see our own faces reflected in these blessed pools.

Citations

For translations of classic texts, such as Khayr al-Din ibn Ilyas’s Kitab al-fallah, see: filaha.org; for more on permaculture visit supernatural-permaculture.com. Permaculture Research Institute has a permaculture map of Yemen at:

https://permaculturenews.org/2012/01/04/yemen-on-the-permaculture-map/

La Loma Viva website is at: lalomaviva.com. You can subscribe to Zawiyah at thezawiyah.org.