much more to this story.
herbert was hired to write an article about how oregon was using grasses to stabilize their dunes, and the article, 'they stopped the moving sands', was never published, but inspired the novel to come
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-dune18-2010apr18...
see also this article about arabic words & islamic themes in the book
https://baheyeldin.com/literature/arabic-and-islamic-themes-...
90s pastiche fantasist robert jordan borrowed herbert's technique and even some of his lexicon