Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/426

282 282 THE SPANISH ARABS. PART on the subject, and in the monuments which they . ^ — have everywhere left of their peculiar culture. The system of irrigation, which has so long fer- tilized the south of Spain, was derived from them. They introduced into the Peninsula various tropical plants and vegetables, whose cultivation has de- parted with them. Sugar, which the modern Spaniards have been obliged to import from foreign nations in large quantities annually for their do- mestic consumption, until within the last half century that they have been supplied by their island of Cuba, constituted one of the principal exports of the Spanish Arabs. The silk manu- facture was carried on by them extensively. The Nubian geographer, in the beginning of the twelfth century, enumerates six hundred villages in Jaen as engaged in it, at a time when it was known to the Europeans only from their circuitous traffic with the Greek empire. This, together with fine fabrics of cotton and woollen, formed the staple of an active commerce with the Levant, and es- pecially with Constantinople, whence they were again diffused, by means of the caravans of the north, over the comparatively barbarous countries of Christendom. Population. The population kept pace with this general pros- perity of the country. It would appear from a census instituted at Cordova, at the close of the tenth century, that there were at that time in it six hundred temples and two hundred thousand dwelling-houses ; many of these latter being, prob- ably, mere huts or cabins, and occupied by separ-