Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 177

this monopoly system, but imposed addi-
tional heavy taxes on the merchants.
Hopes of cutting out Egyptian middle-
men were the decisive inducement for
the Spanish and the Portuguese to search
for a direct sea-route to India; but after
the conquest of the Moluccas in 1607, the
Dutch snatched the monopoly of the spice
trade away from the Portuguese.

in all the mines of other countries, fairly
deep mining was necessary to reach and
extract the salt; the author thus reveals
to us a very important factor regarding
the exploitation of rock salt. Salt was also
obtained from certain salt marshes ( sibā ,
sing. saba ) near Bara, where a great
number of slaves were employed in the
production of salt. Near Alexandria, on
the sea coasts, according to a 17th century
traveller, “holes and channels were made
into which the sea water ran, and then the
sun's heat evaporated this water and in
the end turned it into salt”, whilst another
traveller in the same century describes
how quantities of salt were derived from
the Nile's bed (probably in the Delta; the
exact region is not pinpointed), for “when
the Nile recedes, one finds salt on the sur-
face of the ground like a white covering”.
He adds that Egyptian salt is the best in
the world and is cheap. In 1320 the Egyp-
tian authorities levied a tax on the sale of
salt. Despite its low price, it is related that
a certain person gave a box full of salt to
someone as a present, but it appears that
the originality of the idea was much more
important than the present itself and indi-
cates that it was an isolated case.
As in other languages, the word denot-
ing salt contains several senses in Arabic:
not only that of table salt (sodium chlo-
ride), but also several kinds of natron and
other substances resembling salt. There is
found tanners' salt ( mil al-dabbāa ), naph-
tha salt, goldsmiths' salt ( mil al-āa ), etc.
The medical qualities of salt, with or with-
out garlic, etc., are well-known in medical
literature and in adī . It is called “the
king of spices”; it was added to several
items of food and used to preserve the
freshness of fish and other products, and
mixtures of salt and spices were prepared
called mil muayyab (lit. “perfumed salt”).

(A. Dietrich)

Salt

1. In the mediaeval Islamic
world
In pre-Islamic times, the ancient Arabs
were already familiar with salt and used it,
not only for seasoning their food but also
in certain rites, e.g. for the oath which
cemented an alliance, made around a fire.
But it appears that certain tribes were not
able, or did not want, to utilise salt for
these rites, Now following their custom,
even when the salt used symbolically to
seal this alliance was substituted by milk,
the latter substance continued to bear the
name of mil .
The two types of salt known in the
Islamic world were sea salt ( mil barī )
and rock salt ( mil barrī , lit. “earth salt”).
Certain salt mines were well-known: e.g.
in Africa, Awlīl was called “the salt town”.
In the Persian province of Fārs, salt was
produced; thus it was extracted from the
fringes of the ankan lake. Mountains of
salt which remained unexploited are men-
tioned in the sources, near the Dead Sea,
whilst near Dārābird in Persia, the “salt
mountain” was situated; its deposits con-
tained salt (probably in a sense wider than
that of table salt, see below) in a very solid
form, from which various objects were
carved, e.g. trays, platters, etc., which
were exported to other countries. Speak-
ing of these deposits, Yāūt explains that,

( J. Sadan)