ABSTRACT
Civilization in the Middle East has always been synonymous with irrigation. The empires of the past have had as their bases the irrigated areas of the Fertile Crescent and the Nile, and the technology of the irrigated agriculturist was of an extremely high order. Agriculture, though, has always been a duality with, on the one hand, the sedentary farmers practising irrigated agriculture along the rivers and in the scattered inland oases, and on the other, the nomadic livestock herders. The latter were reliant upon the sedentary farmers for considerable quantities of foodstuffs, notably dates, and, in some cases, owned date gardens in the oases.
