Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 195

the other ( ummāiyya ). These fruits could
also be salted and preserved. One of the
major scented waters obtained by distilla-
tion continues to be orange blossom water
( māzahr ), an effective means of enhancing
the flavour of desserts. Finally, the buds of
the blossom of the bitter orange provide,
in perfumery, oil of Neroli ( ir al-aā,
duhn al- . . .) first extracted, in the 17th cen-
tury, by an Italian princess of this name.
Arab agronomists, geographers and
travellers of the Middle Ages have men-
tioned, in their works and accounts, cit-
rus fruits and the places where they were
cultivated. Thus following al-Idrīsī, in
the 7th/13th century the Andalusian Ibn
al-Awwām, in his Kitāb al-Filāa, repeats
that the Hesperides emanate from India.
In the following century, the Moroccan
Ibn Baūa, having spent a considerable
period of time in that country, specifies
three varieties which are cultivated there,
one sweet, one bitter and one between the
two called anba , a kind of sweet lemon the
fruit of which is salted while still green.

Africa and Spain it was soon acclimatised
under the name of “Armenian apple”
( ἀρμενιακόν μῆλον , armeniacum malum ) and
“golden apple” ( χρυσομῆλον , chrysomelum ),
this last appellation being given also to
the quince ( safaral ). Nevertheless, in
Greece it was more commonly called by
the adjective “early” ( πραικόκιον , praecox ),
since it is one of the first of the juicy fruits
( fākiha , pl. fawākih ) to ripen in the spring;
and it was from this Greco-Latin denomi-
nation that Arabic derived barū which,
according to region, is also applied to
the plum ( iās, ayn al-baar) . This loan-
word al-barū yields in Kabyle aberkok , in
Mozarabic albericoque and in Catalan aber-
coc , whence Old Fr. aubercot (12th century)
and then modern Fr. abricot, Eng. apri-
cot, Ger. Aprikose.
As early as the high Middle Ages, the
Islamic lands which cultivated the apri-
cot distinguished two categories of this
fruit: on one hand, the varieties the ker-
nel of whose stone was sweet and edible
( mimi lawzī ) and on the other, those
where it was bitter ( mimi kilābī ). In the
first category, by far the most sought-after
and best-named variety was that called
amar al-dīn (“moon of religion”) and
aysī , which had large juicy fruits perfectly
suited for drying. In the 8th/14th cen-
tury, the famous traveller Ibn Baūa on
several occasions vaunts their excellence.
He first tasted them at amāt in Syria
(the amawī variety), then at Ifahān and
finally, in Anatolia where they are singled
out as a speciality of the towns of Konya
( ūniya ), Antalia ( Anāliya ) and Kastamonu
( aamūniya ). After drying, these fruits
were exported to Syria and, above all, to
Egypt. As foodstuffs, these dried apricots
offered several advantages since, as well
as keeping well, they also produced, after
maceration in water ( naū ) overnight, a
refreshing and sweet-smelling drink and a
tasty side-dish. It would be impossible to

(F. Viré)

Apricot

Arabic mishmish , more rarely mumu ,
in the Marib mimä , is a masc. sing.
noun with a collective meaning (singula-
tive mimia ), the apricot-tree and its
fruit ( Prunus armeniaca ), of the Rosaceae
family, and corresponding to Persian
zardālū, zardālūk and Turkish kayısı .
It was for long considered as indig-
enous to Armenia (whence its scientific
name), but in fact has been cultivated
in China for about two millennia before
our era and reached the Mediterranean
region of the West in the historical ages
of Athens and Rome via India, Persia,
Iraq and Turkey. In Greece, Italy, North