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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 …