Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 187

one called araba plundered from the wild
lavender ( Lavandula vera ; azam, uzāma ).
From Morocco to India, each region
favourable for beekeeping had its famous
honey, traded locally and exported. The
Moroccan Sous also produced the excel-
lent matānī rivalling the honeys of Kabylia,
Egypt and Persia. Besides, the geographer
al-Idrīsī (6th/12th century notes the com-
mercial activity in honey and wax from
Fās, Tahert, Algiers, Constantine, Dji-
djelli, Mostaganem and Bône. He also
mentions the important apiarist work
of the rural populations of the region of
Bara and the mountains of Cyrenaica,
whose honey used to go directly to the
market in Alexandria. In Egypt, further-
more, Cairo used to receive, at the begin-
ning of summer and by river, the honey
of ū and Lower Egypt; the Egyptian
beekeepers each year were able to carry
out a removal of the hives, by boats, to
areas where selected plants were the most
abundant. The Egyptians used to consume
large quantities of honey; it was, with dry
raisins ( zabīb ), a principal element in the
drink called amsī of which they were
very fond as well as in another alcoholic
drink, bit , a mixture of honey and wine.
In the 4th/10th century, at the court of
the Fāimid caliph al-Azīz bi'llāh (366-
86/976-96), the annual consumption
of honey was five inārs (about 225 kg).
In the same period, the geographer Ibn
al-Faīh al-Hamaānī reports that the
Egyptians “gain glory from their mead
( arāb al-asal ) which is preferred in their
land to the wine of Babylon on account
of its sweetness, its perfume and its heady
power”. Later, he adds: “The Egyptians
say, It is in our country that there are
the most slaves, honey in combs, sugar
and candy and money . . . They also say,
We have wax, honey and ostrich feath-
ers”. Within the Near East, Irā, Syria
and Arabia equalled the Mediterranean

countries in honey production, but, like
that of Cairo, the scale of consumption
of the large towns and capitals, Badād
and Damascus, necessitated additional
imports from Persia, with its famed honey
from Ifahān, whether in combs with the
wax, or virgin and pure or in an extracted
dry form ( ukanubīn ). It is known,
moreover, that in Persia, in the 7th/
13th century, the tax on beekeepers was
paid in kind, in the form of so many thou-
sands of litres, which shows production at
a very high level.
We are not able to enumerate all the
pastries, side-dishes and sweets in which
honey formed an essential ingredient, each
land of Islam having its own specialities.
It was the main sugary substance along
with dates, for sugar cane ( aab hindī,
aab al-sukkar) was only cultivated in the
delta regions of the Euphrates and Nile,
and sugar from beet ( amandar, awandar,
banar, awala , Marib lift ūrī, lift alū )
was not made until the beginning of the
13th/19th century. A very early Arab
foodstuff was talbīna , a mixture of honey
and flour or bran and which, according
to a adī reported by Āia, was “a
tranquilliser ( maamma ) for the sick”. It
is certain that honey possesses many spe-
cific virtues, and ancient Greek and then
Arab therapeutics recognised almost all of
them. Al-Damīrī cites some of them for
us, the majority of which are recognised
by modern medicine. In the words of the
Ancients, honey, a hot and dry element,
is diuretic and laxative; it is a powerful
tonic, an effective antidote against poison
and rabies and an excellent preserver of
perishable goods, meats and fruits, when
they are brushed with it. Mixed with musk,
it is a beneficial eye-lotion to cure cataract
and other eye infections and, made into a
salve, it gets rid of nits and lice. Finally,
massaging with wax or chewing it helps to
relieve worries and anxieties. Nowadays,