Land set aside for needs

This lesson asks you to describe the major ways land is used and how each way meets what people need and want. The curriculum asks about land use in Ontario, including conservation and recreation; the museum links two examples, one of land kept for grazing and one of farmland, so your class will add the other land uses of Ontario. ¹

Look at the expectation: it pairs a type of land use with a human need or want. For each land use you meet, name the need it meets and say whether it is a need or a want.

In Ibn Hisham's biography, when the people of Jurash embraced Islam, the Prophet ﷺ reserved for them a hima around their village, marked by known signs, for the horse, the riding camel and the plough-ox ². The record defines a hima as land that the ruler reserves, so that none may graze it except those for whom it has been reserved ². Al-Maraghi presents agriculture as the oldest livelihood, and says Islam urges it as the source of food for man and beast ^{3 4}. He adds that whoever revives dead land has the best claim to it ⁵.

A hima was kept for the horses, camels and plough-oxen of one village. When land is kept for one group, who gains, and who might lose the chance to use it, and why?

• Hima: land that the ruler reserves for those for whom it has been reserved.
• Agriculture in Islam: what al-Maraghi says about farming and dead land.
• Shirb, water rights: how the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia treats turns at water between neighbouring fields.

Read the records on Hima (protected reserve) and Agriculture in Islam. Make a chart with two rows, one for each, and name for each the land use, the need it meets and who is allowed to use it. Then add a row for a land use near your school.