الذُّرة حبٌ لم تعرفه العرب .. كتاب في سبيل موسوعة علمية .. الدكتور أحمد ذكي

Corn is a love that the Arabs did not know

Maize is a common grain in Africa and Asia. In Egypt in particular, it is the grain on which the farmer relies to make his day’s bread, after mixing it with what makes it suitable for cohesion after baking.

The farmer undoubtedly believes that corn has existed since the time when his fathers existed in the Nile Valley, and that it must have been known since agriculture was known in that ancient time.

There is no doubt that he was astonished and rushed to...
It is a lie when scientists hear Western people saying that corn was not known in the ancient world, that is, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, until after the year 1492 AD, after Columbus conquered America. With this conquest, corn was first transported to Europe, and from Europe the Portuguese carried it in their conquests to Africa and Asia.

The story goes that corn was the mainstay of food in the new world, in America, when Columbus conquered it. The people of Europe, who were displaced to the new world, when they first saw it, called it Indian Corn because the American Indians were its growers.

Research is being conducted and discovering ancient civilizations
In America before Columbus landed there, then it was wiped out. Including the Incas civilization in Peru, South America, in the Andes Mountains. Then it reveals that perhaps the cultivation of corn moved from South America to Central America, and to Mexico, where the other ancient civilization was located, the Aztec civilization.
The Aztecs then spread north.

Modern scientific dating using carbon revealed
Al-Mashaa reported on the history of some of the grains revealed by drilling. Some of them were dated to 1,000 years ago, and others were dated to 2,000 years ago.

Columbus entered America, and other Europeans entered with him, and they found corn cultivation extending from the lake regions in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south. It became clear to them that corn was the mainstay of living there.

The strange thing about corn is that in France it is called wheat
Turkish Ble de Turkey, in Italy it is known as Turkish Granoturko, in Turkey as Egyptian Grain, and in Egypt as Durra, and perhaps these names were formulated like this because they preserved the sources of their first entry into all these countries.

- The Americans borrowed from the Native Americans the cultivation and harvesting of corn;

The American conquerors borrowed from the Native Americans, the inhabitants of America, everything related to corn, its cultivation, harvesting, and subsequent storage and use. Their methods to this day are basically based on this and have not changed much.

A generation after the conquest of America passed, and corn reached Africa, India, Tibet, and China, and its cultivation spread in China until the Emperor of China imposed a tax on it.

The first botanical description of corn appeared in European sources in 1542, and in Chinese sources in 1578, and it is the first reference to it in manuscripts.

We searched in the Arabic sources, and we found mention of corn in the article (Dharu), which states that corn is a well-known grain. But this does not indicate that the atom we are talking about here is that well-known love. Perhaps it is another love that was called atom, from dhara yadhru. When the Indian corn came, and it did not have a name, they gave it this name, the name of corn, and it spread about it, and it had nothing to do with that ancient thing.

This is confirmed by what our late friend Prince Mustafa Al-Shihabi mentioned in his book (Dictionary of Agricultural Terms). He said about corn that it is of American origin, and therefore the Arabs did not know it and it has no mention in their books.