Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the Indies to Spain and Portugal, whence
its current name
burtuāl/burtuān
(Turkish
portakal
) which has supplanted
naran
in
numerous local dialects; modern botanical
science has created
burtuāliyyāt
to define
these fruits. In Western Europe, the Cru-
saders are credited with the introduction
of oranges and lemons, whence, for the
latter, the old French name “poncire”
(from the Provençal “pomsire” = Syrian
apple).
From the scientific point of view, the
hesperideous or aurantiaceous fruits are
classed in the family
Rutaceae
, and as
fruitgrowers began, by artificial means, to
increase the number of types and variet-
ies, the latter were distinguished in Ara-
bic by local names other than
nāran,
which seems to have been applied origi-
nally to the Bitter, or Seville orange (
Cit-
rus aurantium amara
or
vulgaris
or
bigaradia
)
also called
naffā
. The Common orange
(
Citrus sinensis Osbeck
) is known, besides
nāran,
by the names
Abū uffayr, zuffayr
,
and in the Yemen,
am
. The Manda-
rin orange (
Citrus aurantium deliciosa, nobilis,
madurensis
) is known as
Yūsuf Afandī, yūsufī.
The Grapefruit tree or shaddock (
Citrus
decumana
or
macrocarpa
) is the
zunbū, zanbū
.
Among lemons, it is the Cedrate tree or
Adam's apple (
Citrus medica Risso
, var.
ced-
erata
) which bears the greatest number of
names with
utru, utru, turun, urun,
utrun, matk, mutk, mitk, kabbād, tuffā māhī,
tuffā māī
and, in the Marib,
ars, āri
.
As for the Bergamot orange (
Citrus berga-
mia
), native to southern Italy, although
called
laymūn aālya
, it is often confused
with
zunbū
, the Grapefruit tree; the per-
fume known as bergamot (
ir baramūt
) is
extracted from it. The varieties of lemons
are all included in the collective substan-
tive
laymūn, līmūn, līm
, differentiated by the
adjectives
āmi
for the Common lemon
(
Citrus medica
) and
ulw
for the Sweet lemon
tree (
Citrus aurantium aurantifolia
or
limetta
).
The
laymūn baladī
or
banzahīr
is the Egyp-
tian small lime (
Citrus limonum pusilla
).
The well-known legend of the “Golden
apples of the Hesperides” guarded by
the Nymphs, daughters of Atlas, and the
Dragon, plucked away and carried away
by Hercules for his eleventh “labour”, a
truly daunting task, has given rise to vari-
ous hypotheses regarding the location of
this fabulous orange-grove. It is suppos-
edly located in Mauritania Tingitana,
near the Phoenician trading-centre of
Lixus (Larache), or in Cyrenaica, in the
city of Hesperis (Benāzī), or in Spain,
near Gades (Cadiz), or, finally, in the
“Fortunate Isles” (
al-ālidāt
), the Canar-
ies. All these imaginary interpretations are
an invitation to contemplate the existence
of a distant memory of the introduction,
at a very early stage, of certain fruits of
this kind into the western Mediterranean
region, and the Phoenicians may well
have had a hand in this.
It is impossible to ignore the primal
place which citrus fruits of all types have
occupied and continue to occupy in culi-
nary preparations, as well as in baking,
confectionery, perfumery and the mak-
ing of refreshing drinks; orange-trees
and lemon-trees supply flowers, fruits
and leaves suitable for all these purposes.
Arab authors writing about the culinary
art in the Middle Ages have left us a
large number of recipes and descriptions
in which these fruits play a major role.
Thus in the range of perfumes, odiferous
powders include a powder made from
the Cedrate tree (
utruna
) and another
from orange-blossom (
zahriyya
). Among
drinks, orangeade and cedrate syrup were
known; acidic juices were obtained from
lemons and bitter oranges. Among cooked
dishes, familiar examples are chicken
with orange, meats with the juice of the
bitter orange (
nāraniyya
) or the lemon
(
laymūniyya
) or with the pulp of one or
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