I feel free to cite an email from Simon Fitzwilliam-Hall, sent on April 14th 2011 via the mailing list H-HISTGEOG. It was also circulated via the MEDMED-L and ASF List Serv:

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Filaha Texts Project and website at http://www.filaha.org which focuses on medieval Arabic farming manuals and their manuscripts. The FTP should be of interest to those engaged in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Historical Geography, Environmental History, Medieval History, Agricultural History and Traditional Knowledge.
The FTP sets out to publicise the latest research on the Arabic Books of Filaha, providing bio-bibliographic profiles on each of the authors, including notices of all existing manuscripts, published editions, etc. Also provided are a number of Arabic texts and English translations, as well as various scholarly resources (bibliography, glossaries, articles, etc). At the heart of the Project lies a collaborative translation platform that allows a text to be translated by multiple translators at the same time. Ultimately, we hope to be able to publish facsimiles of the manuscripts themselves and full English translations. We encourage all those interested to register as members of the FT Network (see Community page) allowing them to participate in the Forum and Translation Platform. The FTP is conceived as a collaborative project. Any corrections/suggestions and contributions in terms of articles, images, content, etc. will be most welcome.

This project is in many ways interesting for our project but especially because it makes available Arabic medieval texts  which are perfectly suited to add to our own research but also because of its community based research approach, which is something the MPS also wants to build on. We will follow the growth of this project with excitement!