One of the recurring themes in medieval agricultural manuals, which are mainly based on ancient agronomic knowledge, centres around the correlation between the geography of a region and the effects of this geography on the growth of various plant types and their specific requirements. In Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya (Nabatean Agriculture), compiled in 291/903 in Lower Mesopotamia, Ibn Waḥshiyya (d. 318/930) proposed two reasons to explain this relationship. First, he argued that everything in the world possesses a nature (ṭabʿ ) composed of the four elements of fire, air, water and earth. The differences between the nature of each region and each plant explain, for instance, why the dust that covers a vine's leaves is harmful to the plant in ‘the whole clime of Bābil (Babylonia)’, while it might be beneficial in another region. His second explanation contends that the unique properties (khuṣūṣiyyāt) of each region are connected to its position ‘in respect to the rotation of the sun and the other stars which rotate in the sphere (al-falak)’. While the present book does not aim to provide an in-depth analysis of the various cosmological and philosophical aspects of agricultural manuals, such examples attest to the perception of agriculture as a human engagement with nature which is strongly dependent on the geography. A primary explanation for this concern, as mentioned by Ibn Waḥshiyya, is the recognition that the most crucial factors influencing plant growth include water, air, the ‘warmth of the sun’ and notably, soil. However, as several scholars have emphasised, the scholarly literature on gardens of Islamicate regions has often overlooked the relationship between gardens and their surrounding landscapes.This oversight is particularly evident in the conceptualisation of ‘the Islamic garden’, which as Petruccioli pointed out, ‘has been considered a specific, self-contained entity removed from its context – its surroundings, the city, and the environment’.

Problem: The idea of continuity in garden traditions

Studies on ‘Islamic’ garden history have followed two paradigms whose generalising and essentialist character has drawn criticism from various scholars over the years. The first argues that the concept and types of gardens in the Islamic period – drawing on extant examples only from the fifteenth century onwards – were of ancient Persian origin, thus presupposing the idea of a continuous tradition. The second paradigm brings together gardens from different regions with Islamic rulers as ‘Islamic’ gardens, foregrounding a religious attribute for gardens in an extremely large and disparate geographical area including Arab Spain, North Africa, Syria, Iraq, Iran and the adjacent Persian-speaking regions up to India, despite the diversity of their regional and cultural traditions.

The idea of an ancient ‘Persian’ origin of ‘Islamic’ gardens and its continuity into the early modern period has been voiced since the beginning of the twentieth century. It mainly relates to the interpretation of the term chahārbāgh, found in the Persian textual sources from the fifth/eleventh century onwards, as a formal type of garden, indicating a garden divided into four quarters by two cross-axial water courses or paths. It is argued that this type can be traced back to pre- Islamic Iran, continued throughout the medieval Islamic periods and was transferred to other Islamic-ruled regions as well. Some scholars have also related the fourfold layout and chahārbāgh to the mythical Garden of Eden, from which, according to some traditions, such as the book of Genesis, four cosmic rivers, two of which were the Euphrates and Tigris, flowed towards the four corners of the earth.

As an intricate interplay of architecture and nature, a garden comes to life through its plants, living creatures, and the sensory experiences of scents and sounds. In comparison to a garden's solid structures, however, even fewer physical traces of the organisms that once populated it have survived over the centuries. Archaeozoological and archaeobotanical findings, in some cases, can help to identify certain varieties of living creatures and discern the plantings within a garden or the locations of certain plants. Environmental studies, including soil analysis, also provide valuable insights into whether an area was exposed to sunlight or shaded, featured high-growing or low-growing vegetation, and embraced a dense or sparse plantation. However, so far, no such investigations have been carried out in the Abbasid palace gardens of Lower Mesopotamia. Nor has archaeological evidence regarding horticulture, such as soil contours that could reveal the potential remains of flowerbeds, been recorded thus far. Furthermore, unlike ancient Mesopotamia, no representations of the royal gardens, depicting their plants or living creatures, are known to exist from the Abbasid period. Consequently, literary evidence remains the only source of knowledge regarding the flora and fauna of the Abbasid palace gardens in Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, the textual sources also come with their own set of limitations. They do not provide a comprehensive list of all plants or living creatures that existed in the royal gardens, nor do they offer details of planting arrangements or density. These sources, however, offer vivid glimpses into various species in the royal gardens and shed light on the types of plants and animals that were particularly appreciated. They also contribute to our understanding of how two main factors – prestige and climatic conditions – influenced the choice and organisation of plants within these gardens.

Language change in American English started when the initial speakers of English landed in North America. During the foundational stage, founder dialects were established in regions such as Tidewater, Virginia, Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston and New Orleans, which still maintain distinct varieties. As migration patterns emerged, dialects expanded largely along an east-to-west route that is still evident to this day, but more recent changes have reflected different migratory routes, such as the south–north migration route of African Americans and the more recent movement of Northern transplants to large urban areas of the South. We consider recent shifts in vowel systems, including the development of vowels systems in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the Northern California Vowel Shift and the weakening of the Southern Vowel Shift in Southern metropolitan areas. Finally, we examine the intersection of social and interactional factors with socio-regional space as these factors have nuanced the advancement of change in progress.

This chapter examines Canadian English from a nationwide point of view, complementing the regional views of the following chapters in this part. It begins with a brief statement of the current demolinguistic status of Canadian English, then reviews the history of English-speaking settlement that led to its establishment, growth and geographic diffusion. This review supports a discussion of the relation between settlement history and the most important linguistic features of modern Canadian English, especially its phonetic and phonological characteristics. A particular focus is on the relative contributions of eighteenth-century American Loyalist settlement and early nineteenth-century British immigration, as well as the later diffusion of those features to Western Canada. Examples of regional variation in vocabulary and pronunciation are then briefly presented, before the chapter concludes with a selective review of previous research on Canadian English.

Taking as a point of departure the seminal study of Newfoundland English by William Kirwin (2001), the current chapter examines afresh the role of regional inputs from south-west England and south-east Ireland in determining the linguistic ecology of English in Newfoundland, Canada’s most easterly province. The chapter reassesses Kirwin’s achievement in identifying relevant dialectal input and offers a consideration of the sociolinguistic status of the early English speakers on the island and the development of independent forms of English with the advent of permanent settlement there. The geographical distribution of settlers also represents a focus with the concentration of speakers in the capital St John’s and on the surrounding parts of the Avalon Peninsula. Features from all linguistic levels – pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary – are scrutinised, with the examination of vocabulary resting on the Dictionary of Newfoundland English with a view to determining the probable British/Irish sources of Newfoundland-specific lexis, independent developments in this part of Canada notwithstanding.

While the origins of African American English (AAE) have been the focus of debate among linguists for nearly a century, such interest has been aimed primarily at the vernacular end of the continuum, with dialectologists pointing to the retention of features from early British English, while creolists trace the origins to a Gullah-like creole spoken on the US plantations. Though no consensus has been reached regarding the origins of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a focus on the socio-historical evidence suggests that diverse ecological conditions likely yielded a range of linguistic outcomes within the context of the plantation economy. The modern-day development of African American Standard English (AASE), on the other hand, may be traced to the first half of the twentieth century, as the African American middle class emerged in racially segregated neighbourhoods, where increased economic opportunity was met by systemic efforts to disenfranchise upwardly mobile African Americans.

This chapter considers the English of the Southern United States with a focus on the ways in which past and present settlement histories, social structures and economic realities are reflected in the language and language variation of the region.  Despite persisting ideas of geographic and social insularity, the American South is a large region that has and has always contained great diversity. This chapter begins with identifying where is the American South, what are its subregions and what role regionality plays in variation. Further, we outline what are some of the traditional linguistic features that are associated with the South. A discussion of research into variation and how different social factors and groups follows. We conclude by looking forward to needed research.

The following chapter describes the varieties of English found in Canada’s eastern Maritime Provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island), which arose from a unique mix of American Loyalist, British, Scottish, Irish, French and German settlers. These varieties have been traditionally stigmatised for their divergence from inland Canadian norms, though this is changing as younger speakers in the region conform to more prestige varieties further west. Conversely, some traditional speech features, like the use of ingressive pulmonic articulation with the discourse particle yeah↓, are being recycled by those same young people to signal both local solidarity and resistance to hegemonic discourses surrounding vernacularity. This chapter draws on original research, linguistic descriptions of the region and its English varieties, as well as comedic performances/metalinguistic commentary in both popular and social media.

Once confined to the margins of discussion about linguistic variation and change in the history of American English, recent years have seen an explosion of work on language contact. We review and synthesise recent work and present original evidence on how contact has shaped many facets of American English across many regions, reaching from the lexicon and phonology through syntax and pragmatics. We draw especially on features less widely discussed until now and look at how these enrich our broader understanding of contact in American English. We pay special attention to the challenges of identifying features that do and do not come from language contact and begin to trace the paths by which features have found their way into American speech and writing. Ultimately, we argue that, in some sense, many distinct forms of American English have been and are being shaped by contact.

Most sociolinguistic research in American cities has focused on particular speech communities or communities of practice within cities. But cities are sites of contact between speech communities, and a sociolinguistic description of a city qua city would have to examine the results of such contact. Drawing on research conducted in Pittsburgh, PA, this chapter considers the sociolinguistic outcomes of urban encounters: immigrants’ language contact and the founder effect, the varied effects of African Americans’ contact with the speech of white people, the language ideological effects of mobility with respect to a city, and the role of visual artefacts in the circulation of linguistic features and language ideology across speech communities.

The New Cambridge History of the English Language is aimed at providing a contemporary and comprehensive overiew of English, tracing its roots in Germanic and investigating the contact scenarios in which the language has been an active participant. It discusses the various models and methodologies which have been developed to analyse diachronic data concisely and consistently. The new history furthermore examines the trajectories which the language has embarked on during its spread worldwide and presents overviews of the varieties of English found throughout the world today.