Date palm production in Rasulid Yemen

There is a rich corpus of texts about agriculture during the Rasulid era (13th–15th centuries CE) in Yemen. One of the most important crops at the time was the date palm (nakhl), which was grown in the Tihāma coastal region, Najrān and Ḥaḍramawt. This essay provides a translation and analysis of the section on date palms in the 13th century agricultural treatise Milḥ al-malāḥa fī ma‘rifat al-filāḥa, written by the Rasulid sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf ‘Umar. Details are provided on the varieties of dates, their cultivation, pollination and protection from insects and diseases.