Rotten and useful
Compos(t)ing knowledge in Mongol Iran
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2391306 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Riaz Tony Howey (0009-0000-6247-607X, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 37-58 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Material Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13591835251318164 |
| OpenAlex | W4409018135 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 46 |
Knowledge of dung and manure materials in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mongol Iran was recorded in a variety of genres. This article engages primarily with Persian-language texts from the Ilkhanid period and examines political uses of gathering knowledge on manure and manuring practices during a crisis of sedentary agriculture. Focusing on a text rich in observations and local knowledge, the Ās̱ār va Aḥyāʾ ( Vestiges and the Living ) of Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī, the implications of authoring knowledge on manures are considered, contributing an agricultural perspective to a wave of recent scholarship on this figure. Engaging with methods and questions from waste and discard studies, wastes in the Ās̱ār va Aḥyāʾ are considered as materials between various fields of knowledge and practice. Manure was sometimes understood in the period as rejected nutriment in bodily cycles explained by natural philosophy, and at times in literary and religious uses as a mundane yet abject matter symbolic of worldly attachments. In the text of Rashīd al-Dīn, dung and manure are rather represented in terms of qualities, vital forces and local characteristics that manure producers and farmers observed and could manipulate in order to create and use more profitable manures. This case shows how, beyond a narrative of 'wastes' in a premodern context being treated as only resource materials for re-use, the putrid, fermenting and decomposing condition of particularly animal wastes in manuring was also very much kept in view. Knowledge of dung and manures in Mongol Iran was not static, but worked on in texts and practices embedded in local and transregional communities
Ancient history · Geography · Sociology · Anthropology · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
Purity and Danger
Economy, Family, and Society from Rome to Islam
The Āthār Wa Aḥyāʾ, of Rashīd Al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh Hamadānī and His Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturalist
The Socio-Economic Condition of Iran Under the Īl-Khāns
Discard Studies
From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History
Waste Siege
Faeces and the Old Sole of a Shoe
What type of problem is waste in Egypt
Treasure Nightsoil As If It Were Gold
The Empiricism of Avicenna
The Emergence of Verification (taḥqīq) in Islamic Medicine
The Great Khan’s Continent
The Forgotten Fear of Excrement
Les encyclopedies persanes, essai de typologie et de classification des sciences
Citations out of place (Respond to this article at http
Making Mongol History
Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran
Soils and Societies
The Islamic Traditions of Agroecology
Crises and the history of science
In the Folds of Time
Purity and Danger
Crisis
The Craft of Mud-making
Agriculture and Agricultural Practice in Roman Law
The Foul and the Fragrant
Material cultures
Materials against materiality
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |