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, agriculture. Falḥ , the act of cleaving and cutting, when applied to the soil has the meaning of “to break up in order to cultivate”, or “to plough”. Fallāḥ “ploughman”, filāḥa “ploughing”. But from pre-Islamic times the word filāḥa has assumed a wider meaning to denote the occupation of husbandry, agriculture. In this sense it is synonymous with zirāʿa , to which the ancients preferred filāḥa (all the earlier writers called their works on agriculture Kitāb al-Filāḥa ). At the present time this latter word is very widely used in North Africa, both …

The ethnic name Jaṭṭ enters historical record with three Brahmi inscriptions found on both sides of the upper Indus River in the vicinity of Chilas, within the erstwhile Gilgit Wazarat. All three inscriptions were left there by a notable, Jīvavarma the Jaṭṭ, who had been traveling along the left side of the Indus with his party before crossing over to the right bank. They are paleographically datable to the 4th or 5th century (von Hinüber, 1989, 47). We do not know which region of India Jīvavarm…