Though Arabic books on agriculture prior to the fifteenth century and the agricultural practices they describe have been studied in some depth, such scholarship has been circumscribed by the notion of a “golden age” that ended more or less, around 1400. This paper will discuss manuscripts, archival documents, and narrative sources showing that, to the contrary, a renewed interest in agricultural science emerged around 1500 in Cairo, Damascus, and Istanbul. My purpose is not to show the effects of the Ottoman-Mamluk transition itself on agriculture in these regions, but rather to explore the fluidity, mobility, and parallels that existed between Damascus, Cairo and Istanbul during and directly before and after the Ottoman conquest of Mamluk Syria and Egypt in 1516-17. Discussing a network of agricultural treatises, their authors and readers in these three cities, I will argue that the emerging discourse on farming displayed a heightened emphasis on practical knowledge and observation, and that this was related to increased investment in farming among both Mamluk and Ottoman urban elites. Agricultural production and the production of agricultural knowledge were closely related, and had parallel and related trajectories in late Mamluk and Ottoman cities. Of particular interest will be the agricultural treatise by Ra?? al-D?n al-Ghazz? entitled J?mi? Far??id al-Mil??a f? Jaw?mi? Faw??id al-Fil??a (Complete Rules for Elegance in all the Uses of Farming), the last Mamluk work on farming. Written in Cairo in 1510 by a scholar from Damascus, and quickly acquired by Ottoman scholars and brought to Istanbul before or soon after the Ottoman conquest of Syria and Egypt, this treatise exemplifies the new emphasis on observation as well as the mobility of agricultural knowledge in the last decade of Mamluk rule. Additionally, I will discuss how not only scholars and manuscripts but also agricultural products themselves increasingly flowed between these cities.