REFACE. 



rPHE BOOK OF NABATH.EAN AGRICULTURE 

 was first introduced to the notice of 

 Europe by St. Thomas Aquinas, towards the 

 middle of the thirteenth century, though 

 it had already been cited by Moses Mai- 

 monides in the More Nevochim some hun- 

 dred years previously, from whence, no 

 doubt, it had become known to most of the 

 learned Spanish Jews who, at the period, 

 shed so great a lustre upon Hebrew Litera- 

 ture and Biblical Science. 



Startling as it is to find in its pages 

 mention of a literature and civilization so 



