Ibn al-'Awwam (Arabic: ابن العوام), also called Abu Zakariya Ibn al-Awwam (Arabic: أبو زكريا بن العوام), was an Al-Andalus agriculturist who flourished at Seville (modern-day southern Spain) in the later 12th century.
His citations of earlier authors have been analyzed with the following summary results: about 1900 direct and indirect citations altogether, of which 615 are to Greek authors (the great majority to the Geoponica of Cassianus Bassus), 585 are to Middle Eastern Arabic authors (the great majority to the Book of Nabataean Agriculture attributed to Ibn Wahshiyya), and 690 are to Andalusian Arabic authors (the great majority to Ibn Bassal, Abu ʾl-Khayr al-Ishbīlī or Ibn Hajjaj, all three of whom wrote books about agriculture in the later 11th century in southern Spain, copies of which have survived only partly and incompletely).
The first four chapters in the book deal successively with different types of soils, fertilizers, irrigation, and planning a garden layout.
One chapter is devoted to methods of preserving and storing foods after harvest, a topic which comes up intermittently elsewhere.
[1] Ibn al-Awwam's book, an agriculture encyclopedia of more than a thousand pages, is primarily a compilation of the writings of other authors.
But it is a compilation that is guided and informed by Ibn al-Awwam's own rich and non-bookish knowledge of the subject.