Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to describe how people from different cultures, including Indigenous peoples, use plants for food, shelter, medicine and clothing. The museum offers only one piece: farming as a source of food. Medicine, shelter, clothing and the plant uses of Indigenous peoples your class must bring from elsewhere. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- B2.6 describe ways in which people, including Indigenous peoples, from various cultures around the world use plants for food, shelter, medicine, and clothing
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
Which of our foods were once plants?
Farming is a way of living from plants. Think of the foods you eat in a day and trace each one back to the plant it came from.
Go deeper
In the record, al-Maraghi presents farming as the oldest way of making a living. He follows Ibn Khaldun, who calls it the simplest of crafts and the closest to nature 2 3. Al-Maraghi says Islam urges farming as the source of food for people and animals, and warns against working land taken by force 3. He adds that land left idle for three years may be farmed by another person, if the ruler gives leave 4.
Think about it
Al-Maraghi calls farming the source of food for people and animals. If a town's farmers stopped for one year, who would notice first, and why?
Into the museum
- Agriculture in Islam: what al-Maraghi says about farming, idle land and water.
- Ibn Bassal's soil, water and crop assessment: a farmer's handbook that sorted waters and kinds of land.
Try this
List five foods from your kitchen and write the plant each one came from. Then read the record Agriculture in Islam and compare: which of your foods fit the source of food for people and animals that al-Maraghi describes?
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Agriculture in Islam have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
The oldest way of making a living. Al-Maraghi presents agriculture as the oldest livelihood, which Ibn Khaldun, he reports, sees as the simplest of crafts and the closest to nature. He holds that Islam encourages it because it is the source of food for people and animals. It is, then, a way of living from plants. Which foods in your own home were once plants that someone grew?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: Science and Technology, Grades 1–8 (2022)
- 2. Issues of Work and Wealth in Islam — Abu al-Wafa al-Maraghi, p. 27
- 3. Issues of Work and Wealth in Islam — Abu al-Wafa al-Maraghi, p. 28
- 4. Issues of Work and Wealth in Islam — Abu al-Wafa al-Maraghi, p. 29