Water mills were located all throughout the territory of Al-Andalus, being installed wherever there was a river, creek or even just an irrigation channel. The spread of these devices had a very positive effect on economic growth in Al-Andalus, as well as the quality of its inhabitants’ lives. Co-existence with the other users in the water system which millers formed part of, namely farmers and lumberers, was sometimes disturbed. This led to the intervention of Muslim legal experts who analyzed each specific case in order to ensure that their rulings caused the least possible damage, thus not always giving preference to the mill upstream or to whichever had been installed first.

Inmaculada Camarero Castellano is an independent researcher. She has a PhD in Arabic Philology from the University of La Laguna and is a document specialist with a degree from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Her research projects revolve around the rural world in Al-Andalus and aristocratic properties in the Muslim West through its sources. She received the Special Award for her PhD in 2010, as well as being a runner-up for the International García-Diego Award given by the Juanelo Turriano Foundation, at its Sixth Edition (2012), for the work Water Mills (arha’) for cereals in Al-Andalus. The University of Seville Publishing House recently published her second book, titled: Sobre el ‘Estado de ya’iha’. Teoría y práctica jurídica de la calamidad rural y urbana en Al-Ándalus (ss. VIII-XV) (On the “State of Ja’iha’: Legal theory and practice in the rural and urban calamity of Al-Ándalus (eighth to fifteenth centuries)].