Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 182

myrtle ( al-ās al-barrī al-abya ), the leaves,
blossoms and berries of which occasioned
positive therapeutic results. The scent
of the myrtle mitigates headaches and
invigorates the heart. The extract is suit-
able for hipbaths which cure ulcers of
the fundament and uterus; as a beverage
it calms down the spitting of blood and
cures coughs and diarrhoea. Dried and
pulverished leaves of the myrtle remove
putrescent boils and facilitate the growing
of new flesh. Rāzī, otherwise critical and
not given to superstition, curiously enough
declares in his Kitāb al-awā (preserved
in Latin; of the Arabic text, only quota-
tions are known) that a man, suffering
from a boil in the inguinal region, may
find mitigation by putting the stalk of a
myrtle around his finger by way of a ring.
The manifold symbolical meaning attrib-
uted to the myrtle on festive occasions by
the Israelites, Greeks and Romans seems
to have remained unknown to Islam;
according to an Arab legend, it was
brought from Paradise by Adam.

gin (very probably Abū Abbās al-Nabātī
b. al-Rūmiyya, 561-637/1166-1240):
“There are three kinds of al-bābūna , the
stalks, leaves and general form of which
are similar to each other. The distinction
between them is to be found in the colour
of the blossom-leaves which enclose the
yellow, situated in the middle of the blos-
soms, for the blossoms of these three kinds
are yellow in the middle. In the white
kind they are enclosed by small leaves
which are white inside and outside, in
the purple-coloured kind by small leaves
which are blue inside and outside, and in
the yellow kind by small leaves which are
yellow inside and outside. The distinc-
tion between the white and the chrysan-
themum ( al-uuwān ) lies in the scent, for
the chrysanthemum assumes [extraneous]
scents, and all these kinds have a pleasant
scent”. In general, bābūna corresponds to
the άνθεμίς of Dioscorides, and appears
therefore also transcribed as anāmis
(and variants). Uuwān just mentioned,
which is uncommonly often equated with
bābūna , is otherwise used by the Arabs
to render the παρθένιον ( barāniyūn , and
variants) of Dioscorides, by which we
should probably understand the medical
Matricaria chamomilla , still in use today. Ibn
al-Bayār, on the other hand, says that
the “white” kind of camomile described
by Dioscorides and called uuwān by the
Arabs, has been replaced by bābūna . The
blossoms of the camomile, which contain
an oil that checks inflammations, were
used as a medicine for loosening spasms
and for stimulating easily the peristaltic
motion; infusions made from the blossoms
(“camomile tea”) were utilised externally
for baths, compresses and rinses at inflam-
mations of skin and mucous membranes,
in both antiquity and in Islam in a man-
ner similar to present practice.

(A. Dietrich)

Camomile

Bābūna ( Babūnak ), from Persian bābūna ,
is the common camomile, primarily
Anthemis nobilis L. (Compositae), also called
Roman camomile, but also Matricaria
chamomilla L. (Comp.) and other varieties.
The nomenclature is rather confused; it
can indeed hardly be expected that the
various kinds of the camomile were kept
apart with precision. The term is derived
from χαμαίμηλον (“apple of the earth”)
and was known to the Arabs partly in a
transcribed form ( amāmālūn , and vari-
ants), partly as borrowed translation ( tuffā
al-ar ). The relatively clearest determina-
tion is perhaps offered by an anonymous
pharmacobotanist of Spanish-Arabic ori-

(A. Dietrich)