Los tratados de agricultura como fuente para el estudio de la propiedad aristocrática andalusí

The set of agricultural treaties that were drawn up in al-Andalus has been exploited so far as a source for aspects related to botany and the history of agricultural techniques; however, it has been little used as a historical source, which we have tried to emphasize in this article. To this end, we have tried to place the eclosion of agricultural books in their historical context: that of the High Middle Ages economic and demographic revolution, one of whose most significant aspects was the agricultural expansion driven by a landowning urban aristocracy that launched a production oriented basically to the market. It is precisely this privileged class that was interested in geoponic books and had the resources and training to take advantage of them, as we have tried to demonstrate. Once we recognize the agricultural books as authentic manuals of these landowners, that literature can be recovered as a first-rate historical source to know about the operation and organization of the land ownership of the Andalusian aristocracy.