“Acknowledging these long pasts of tensions around waste can help us to write more critical persuasive histories.”

IMPRS researcher and Project Coordinator Riaz Howey presents his recent work on a Persian-language agricultural manual written by Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī in 1310 describing theories and practices of manuring in detail. This pre-industrial text contrasts with negative portrayals of manure in other contemporary texts as well as present studies that “often assume that for premoderns there was no such thing as waste.”

Publication

• Howey, R. T. (2025). “'Rotten and Useful': Compos(t)ing Knowledge in Mongol Iran.” Journal of Material Culture, 30(1), 37-58. doi:10.1177/13591835251318164.