Chapter Three
Preparing for and coping with droughts and famines
In his analysis of droughts in Israel from the mid nineteenth to the late twentieth century Gvirtzman says: “Drought is a frequent and ‘normal’ climatic phenomenon in our region, one should not treat it as an unex- pected ‘natural disaster.’ The necessary preparations should be carried out as best as one can.”1 The definition of famine is: A protracted shortage of total food in a restricted geographical area, causing widespread disease and death from starvation.2 Famines are rarely unpredictable unless the result of flash- floods, earthquakes or military causes such as sieges, civil war or invasion.3 Penkethman, who wrote about periods of severe shortage in England from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, claims the main causes of fam- ine were war and unfavorable weather. Unseasonable weather, extreme cold, frost and high winds was rated as second to war and violent acts by man.4 According to Dando “droughts do not lie at the bottom of most famines. Droughts can cause a crop failure, but man, by withholding life- supporting food from his fellow man causes famine. …famine is a cultural hazard—not a physical hazard.”5 Sen followed a similar line of thought: Drought-related famine, according to Sen, is often a result socio-political and bureaucratic inadequacy.6 The causes of famine have been divided into two. 1. Natural causes: flood, frosts, severe cold, hailstones, droughts and locust. 2. man-made causes: warfare or the calculated hoarding of grain.7 Unlike the modern Middle East which has managed to avoid the worst consequences of droughts and has remained off the list of regions suffering from acute famines,8 the potential for famine in the eastern Mediterranean
1 Gvirtzman,Water, 24. 2 Dando, Geography of Famine, 71. 3 Arnold, D. Famine, Social Crises and Historical Change (Oxford, 1988), 7. 4 Penkethman, quoted in Dando, Geography of Famine, 121-2. Sixty eight famines are recorded in England between 1066 and 1485. Dando, Geography of Famine, 120. 5 Dando, Geography of Famine, 11-12. 6 Ashley, J. Food Crops and Drought (London, 1999), 8- 9. 7 Arnold, Famine, 29. 8 Weinbaum, M. G. Food, Development and Politics in the Middle East (London, 1982), 3. 56 chapter three existed throughout the medieval period. Famines occurred in some of the richest agricultural regions in the Crusader, Ayyubid and Mamluk territo- ries. If the rains did not arrive on time or were not adequate; if locusts or mice consumed the year’s harvest or crops were destroyed as a result of floods or hailstones, the population suffered severely. Although many fac- tors contributed to famines it seems that neither war nor hoarding were the main reason for famine in the medieval Levant. The correlation between droughts and famines is such that the two are in many ways syn- onymous. Over half the droughts and crop failures recorded in this study developed into famines (see table 1). A chronicler’s description of famine will often begin by noting that the rains failed, crops were poor, prices were high and there was a severe food shortage—the basic conditions for the development of famine. Sickness soon became rife and the death toll rose at an alarming rate. In most cases the epidemics that followed in the wake of famines caused more deaths than the famine itself.9 Food shortages were dealt with by combining sev- eral methods: cultivating larger tracts of land, building and securing gra- naries and establishing a network outside the country that would sell the quantities of food needed in times of scarcity. On a private domestic scale each family unit, whether urban, rural or nomadic, kept supplies for times of shortage.
Granaries and Storage Conditions: Fortresses in the Levant and their Role as Granaries
The methods of grain storage and the quantities involved often reflect the social and economic policies of rulers.10 Centralized regimes frequently saw to the grain harvests. They were clearly aware of the need to maintain large well-stocked granaries, and the potential power behind grain sur- pluses. While even well-organized regimes found it hard to cope with long periods (more than two years), of food shortage weak rulers and loosely organized polities were often caught unprepared, leaving their subjects to fend for themselves. Few rulers showed outstanding resourcefulness and
9 Barret, “Climate change,” 142. 10 Ilan, D. “The socioeconomic implications of grain storage in early Iron Age Canaan: The case of Tel Dan,” in Bene Israel, Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant Dur- ing the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein, eds. A. Fantalking and A. Yasur- Landau (Leiden and Boston, 2008), 87.