Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
medical authorities recognise in honey its
richness in dietetic elements, its beneficial
action in cardiac equilibrium, its hepato-
protective and sedative role, its antiseptic
properties and its effectiveness in increas-
ing the rate of haemoglobin of the blood.
The same authorities conclude that the
regular use of honey is a ticket to health
and that it should be made part of the
daily diet of sportsmen. We may thus con-
clude that the urānic statement “From
the bodies of the bees comes forth a drink
of various hues which is a healing for men”
is amply confirmed. In current usage, the
bee has only been made the subject of
two proverbial metaphors; owing to its
remarkable sense of direction, it has been
said
ahdā min nala
“a better guide than
a bee”, and its untiring activity in going
and coming has led it to be compared to
the traveller exhausted by long journeys
who returns
anal min nala
“thinner than
a bee”. Finally, the contradiction, in an
individual, between his words and deeds
has been stigmatised in this image:
kalām
ka 'l-asal wa-fil ka 'l-asal
“language [sweet]
as honey and action [violent] as the point
of a pike”.
following the Islamic conquest, but it was
possibly known somewhat earlier; papyrus
evidence indicates that sugar cane was
grown in Egypt by the mid-2nd/8th cen-
tury and diffusion across North Africa was
steady although its entry into areas of the
Iberian peninsula under Muslim domi-
nation may not have occurred until the
5th/11th century. From Crusader times,
the eastern coast of the Mediterranean
and later Cyprus, were important sources
of supply for Christian Europe.
Plant terms in Arabic frequently varied
from region to region and possibly over
time as well. Supposed synonyms can
further lead to confusion. The same is
true of the by-products of the sugar-cane
resulting from different stages of prepa-
ration and refinement, that is, pressing,
filtering and decocting. For example, two
common terms for types of sugar are (
suk-
kar
)
abarzad
and
sukkar nabāt
. Maimonides
states they are the same, the latter replac-
ing the former in Egypt, while Ibn al-uff
lists them separately as distinct varieties.
The difference appears to be that
abarzad
set hard in moulds (sugar loaf ) while
nabāt
set on palm sticks placed in the recipient
where it was being prepared;
nabāt
was
also produced from other substances such
as rose syrup or violet syrup. Al-Anākī, on
the other hand, describes
abarzad
as pro-
duced by adding to the sugar one-tenth of
its bulk in milk while the mixture cooked.
This, however, may only have reflected a
practice in Syria. Another common type
of sugar was called
fānīd
, made in elon-
gated moulds and which “melted quickly
in the mouth”; its highly refined state
was produced by adding the oil of sweet
almonds or finely-ground white flour to
the process of decoction. Finally, a sugar
called
sulaymānī
, was made from hardened
“red sugar” (
sukkar amar
) broken into
pieces and further cooked to remove any
impurities.
(F. Viré)
Sugar
In Arabic
sukkar
, from Pers.
akar
or
akkar
, from Skr.
carcarā
, Prakrit
sakkarā
,
the sap crushed from the sugar-cane (
aab
al-sukkar
) and solid sugar.
The origin of sugar cane and its early
domestication cannot be precisely deter-
mined, but it evidently derived from the
family of large
Saccharum
grasses which
grow in India and Southeast Asia. From
India, cultivation of the plant spread west-
ward. Clear references to cultivation in
Persia belong to the period immediately
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