556 hunting, fishing, and gathering: The Islamic World Gathering was ubiquitous in medieval Europe, as it is today in any rural community Seasonal berries, fruits, nuts, and mushrooms were collected by people throughout medieval Europe for the purposes of food, medicine, and, very likely, recreation Archaeological and documentary evidence, in the form of medieval cookbooks, herbariums, and books on medicine, illustrate this For example, the plant Angelica officinalis, a species found from Iceland through Scandinavia and into the Baltic regions, was gathered for culinary and medicinal uses High in vitamin C, it was a valuable in preventing scurvy in northern regions, where the diet might make people vulnerable to the disease Salt was a highly prized resource in the medieval period In the Mediterranean it was collected in estuarine areas that also contained large and exploitable numbers of fish This pairing allowed for the preservation of fish through salting, leading to the export of salted fish as a trade item This pairing of salt extraction and fish preserving also was found in the Black Sea region after the sixth century, around the mouth of the Danube, and at the mouths of the Russian and Ukrainian river systems in the Black Sea Salt was later collected in the coastal regions of the Atlantic as well Wood, of course, was valuable as a resource for building materials and fire Charcoal burners are noted in documents as well as in archaeological remains throughout medieval Europe Charcoal was used both for domestic consumption and as fuel for metallurgy and other craft industries Forestry rights were often legally defined Commoners might have the right to gather certain amounts of fallen wood for domestic purposes, while others might hold the right of live timber harvesting In areas where wood was scarce, the right to collect driftwood was regulated strictly In Iceland, where such debris can come in the form of large, whole Siberian trees, the medieval Icelandic Church retained the right of ownership to driftwood appearing on many specific beaches throughout Iceland The Islamic World by Kirk H Beetz In much of the medieval Islamic world, hunting was not important for supplying food In general, people much preferred the foods they could find in markets Such foods were almost always inspected and approved as halal (“that which is permitted” in Islamic law) The farther away from cities people lived, the more likely they were to depend on hunting for some of their food In some areas hunting was essential to supplying protein in people’s diets The rules for hunting were much debated by religious and legal scholars who tried to define what was halal and what was haram (“that which is forbidden”) In different places at different times the rules varied, but in general hunters were mindful of an injunction in the Koran against wasting what God provided God provided all the world’s blessings for humanity and therefore should be thanked for what he made available This meant, for example, that a sultan hunting with his falcon or hunting dogs were required to invoke God’s name when dogs were let loose or a falcon was released Failure to speak God’s name made whatever was killed haram There were rules for how hunters were to conduct their kills Hunting weapons were supposed to be decisively effective Bows and arrows and spears, for example, were permissible because they were designed to penetrate a vital organ and thereby kill quickly Hunters should focus on taking the animal only for good use, and it should have as merciful a death as possible If hunters used hunting dogs, they were to be only trained dogs that understood their duty Animals killed by untrained dogs were haram The rules could be very detailed For instance, if a hunter came upon prey that had been bitten by his hunting dog, he could use it for food if it had plainly been killed by his dog, even if the dog had eaten some of it If the prey was still alive and the hunter waited for the prey to die, then he could not use it for food To make the prey halal, he had to kill it himself with a blow that fatally penetrated an internal organ of the animal Authorities were divided on the matter of an animal found soon after it was wounded and then quickly slain Most seem to have believed that the prey would still be halal provided the hunter did not hesitate but quickly dealt the fatal blow Others thought the prey was already haram because of its suffering and because it had bled Failure to penetrate a vital organ, thus sometimes allowing prey to bleed to death, made the animal unacceptable as food Prey that was killed by a hunting dog but lay overnight before the hunter found it could not be eaten Many passages from the Koran and the Hadith (the record of Muhammad’s sayings and proscriptions) were cited by scholars to support this point, but in sum it was considered wrong for the prey to suffer a lingering death The same rules applied to the use of falcons and hawks Prey that was knocked out of the air by trained falcons or hawks or that had been taken down by hunting dogs had to be killed the instant the hunter came upon it Again, hesitation could make the prey haram Unlawful prey included all pigs at all times Animals that had once been domesticated but had become wild, had died of disease, or had been killed by wild animals were haram A distinction was made for animal skins Pigskin was unlawful to touch Some scholars believed that it was haram for