Cumin, Camels, and Caravans Read online

  THE S. MARK TAPER FOUNDATION

  IMPRINT IN JEWISH STUDIES

  BY THIS ENDOWMENT

  THE S. MARK TAPER FOUNDATION SUPPORTS

  THE APPRECIATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE RICHNESS AND DIVERSITY OF JEWISH LIFE AND CULTURE

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Jewish Studies Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from the S. Mark Taper Foundation.

  The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation.

  Cumin, Camels, and Caravans

  CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN FOOD AND CULTURE

  Darra Goldstein, Editor

  Cumin, Camels,

  and Caravans

  A Spice Odyssey

  Gary Paul Nabhan

  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

  Berkeley•Los Angeles•London

  University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

  University of California Press

  Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

  University of California Press, Ltd.

  London, England

  © 2014 by Gary Paul Nabhan

  Compositor: BookMatters, Berkeley

  Indexer: Thérèse Shere

  Cartographer: Paul Mirocha

  Printer and binder: Maple Press

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nabhan, Gary Paul.

  Cumin, camels, and caravans : a spice odyssey / Gary Paul Nabhan.

  pagescm. — (California studies in food and culture ; 45)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-520-26720-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-520-95695-7 (e-book)

  1. Spice trade.2. Spice trade—History.I. Title.II. Series: California studies in food and culture ; 45.

  HD9210.A2N332014

  382’.456645—dc23

  2013032714

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 2002) (Permanence of Paper).

  To three mentors who showed me how the Old World and New World are deeply connected culturally: Agnese Haury, Juan Estevan Arellano, and Michael Bonine

  Contents

  List of Recipes

  List of Spice Boxes

  List of Illustrations

  Introduction: The Origin of “Species”

  1.Aromas Emanating from the Driest of Places

  2.Caravans Leaving Arabia Felix

  3.Uncovering Hidden Outposts in the Desert

  4.Omanis Rocking the Cradle of Civilization

  5.Mecca and the Migrations of Muslim and Jewish Traders

  6.Merging the Spice Routes with the Silk Roads

  7.The Flourishing of Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Iberia

  8.The Crumbling of Convivencia and the Rise of Transnational Guilds

  9.Building Bridges between Continents and Cultures

  10.Navigating the Maritime Silk Roads from China to Africa

  11.Vasco da Gama Mastering the Game of Globalization

  12.Crossing the Drawbridge over the Eastern Ocean

  Epilogue: Culinary Imperialism and Its Alternatives

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Index

  Recipes

  The recipes in this book open a window onto the people and communities who made and still make these foods. Even the varied names of the dishes give some sense of the paths they have taken over the centuries. The recipes also record the cultural diffusion of spices as they pass from one place to another: a chicken mole that fuses elements of the Persian, Arabic, and Moorish kitchens; tharīd, a bread-and-broth soup from the Arabian Peninsula that gave rise to açorda soup in Portugal, gazpacho in Spain, and perhaps even sopa de tortilla in Mexico; and mansaf, one of the oldest recipes in the world, a Mesopotamian stew seasoned with a mix of cumin, turmeric, and cassia cinnamon, which is still being made today.

  Harira • Carne de Cordero en la Olla: Lamb and Garbanzo Bean Stew

  Marak Minj: Green Lentil Curry with Frankincense, Ginger, and Omani Spices

  Dates Kneaded with Locusts and Spices

  Nabātiyyāt: Nabataean Chicken, Pasta, and Garbanzo Bean Stew

  Maqlay Samak: Fried Fish on a Bed of Coconut Rice

  Tharīd • Gazpacho al-Andalus: Soup with Unleavened Bread

  Oshi Plov: Persian-Tajik Rice Pilaf with Quince

  Berenjena con Acelguilla: Sephardic Eggplant with Swiss Chard

  Sibāgh: Abbasid and Andalusian Dipping Sauce

  Zalābiya • Shaqima • Buñuelos: Deep-Fried Cardamom-Spiced Fritters Soaked in Saffron Syrup

  Dajaj Gdra bil-Lawz: Spiced Chicken in Almond Sauce

  Pollo en Mole Verde de Pepita: Spiced Chicken in Green Pumpkin Seed Sauce

  Prehistoric Mansaf: Kid and Lamb Stew with Yogurt, Root Crops, and Herbs

  Spice Boxes

  The spices profiled in this book embrace an eclectic assortment of herbs, incenses, gums, fruits, musks, and teas. Some are esoteric, such as frankincense and mastic, while others are familiar and beloved, like cumin and chocolate. Some might come as a surprise, since they are not widely thought of as spices, like pomegranate, caper, and Damascus rose. But what all of these have in common is that they were in high demand throughout history as flavorings, fragrances, and pharmaceuticals. Because many aromatics were specific to certain geographic areas, they had to be traded for rather than produced locally. These valuable commodities gave their names to the roads by which they were traded, which became collectively known as the Spice Routes. The spice profiles give an overview of the vernacular names, folk uses, medicinal applications, and local lore surrounding each of these global travelers.

  Mastic

  Frankincense

  Turmeric

  Cardamom

  Saffron

  Cassia cinnamon

  Capers

  Sesame

  Cloves

  Damascus rose • Rose of Castile

  Melegueta pepper • Grains of Paradise

  Musk

  Ginger

  Pomegranate

  Sumac

  Anise

  Coriander • Cilantro

  Star anise

  Sichuan pepper

  Tuocha pu-erh • Camel’s breath tea

  Cumin

  Chile peppers

  Annatto • Achiote

  Allspice • Jamaica pepper

  Vanilla

  Chocolate

  Illustrations

  PLATES

  1.A selection of spices

  2.Frankincense gum oozing from a tree trunk in the nejd of Southern Oman

  3.A Yemeni spice trader

  4.Depiction of a camel caravan from the Middle Ages

  5.Muslim women in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, selling vegetables, fruits, and spices

  6.The facades of tombs cut from the rock cliff in Petra, Jordan

  7.Ships arriving for trade in the harbors of the South China Sea

  8.A stand selling mole preparations at the Flower Festival of San Angel, Mexico City

  9.An Arab transformed into a taco vendor at a mobile food stand in Baja California Sur
>
  FIGURES

  1.An Omani forester approaches a frankincense tree

  2.The al-Balid ruins near Salalah, Oman

  3.A dhow near Lamu, Kenya

  4.Bahla Fort in Oman

  5.An oxen-driven water wheel being used for irrigation

  6.Harira stews at Siwa Oasis in Egypt

  7.A well in the Negev

  8.Ruins of an ancient Omani trading center below the Jabal al-Akhdar plateau

  9.Cloves spread out to dry in Zanzibar

  10.Salman the Persian meeting merchants from the Quraysh tribe

  11.Merchants in Timbuktu

  12.Symbols carved above doorways in the Jewish section of Essaouira, Morocco

  13.Herbal Viagra in a market in Dushanbe, Tajikistan

  14.A camel train in Mongolia

  15.Francisco Pradilla Ortiz, The Capitulation of Granada, 1882

  16.The eastern part of the Anping Bridge, China

  17.Qingjing Mosque in Quanzhou, China

  18.A three-masted junk

  19.Vasco da Gama delivering the letter of King Manuel of Portugal to the samuthiri of Calicut

  20.The processing of cacao pods in the West Indies

  MAPS

  1.Spice trails of the Arabian Peninsula and Arabian Sea

  2.Spice trails of the Sahara

  3.Spice trails of the Desert Silk Roads and Maritime Silk Roads

  4.Spice trails of the New World

  PLATE 1. Clockwise, from top left: annatto, cardamom, melegueta pepper (also known as grains of paradise), dried frankincense gum, star anise, long pepper, sumac, turmeric, fennel, and coriander. (Photos by Lia Tjandra.)

  PLATE 2. Frankincense gum oozing from a tree trunk in the nejd of southern Oman. This fragrant resin, popular as a spice and incense, was one of the most coveted objects in the early global aromatics trade. (Photo by the author.)

  PLATE 3. Yemeni spice trader. (iStockphoto.)

  PLATE 4. Depiction of a camel caravan from the Middle Ages. (Color lithograph by J. Coin from L’Art arab d’après les monuments du Kaire, 1877. Art and Architecture Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.)

  PLATE 5. Muslim women in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, selling local and imported vegetables, fruits, and spices. (Photo by the author.)

  PLATE 6. View of the facades of tombs cut from the rock cliff in Petra, Jordan, a Nabataean trade hub that once received tons of spices annually. (Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002698303.)

  PLATE 7. Ships arriving for trade in the harbors of the South China Sea. (Photo by the author of an exhibit at the Quanzhou Maritime Museum.)

  PLATE 8. Stand selling mole preparations from San Pedro Atocpan at the Flower Festival of San Angel, Mexico City, 2009. (Photo by Thelmadatter.)

  PLATE 9. The “crafty” Arab is transformed into a taco vendor at a mobile food stand in the desert oasis of San Ignacio, Baja California Sur, Mexico. (Photo by the author.)

  Introduction

  The Origin of “Species”: Trading Spices to the Ends of the Earth

  Perhaps my lifelong love of aromatics—from allspice to za’atar—served as the genesis of this reflective inquiry. But somewhere along the line, I realized that one could not truly love spices without conceding that their use is never politically, economically, or even culturally neutral. It is impossible to reflect on the significance of aromatics and their history without acknowledging that imperialism, cultural competition and collaboration, religious belief, and social status are embedded in every milligram of cardamom, cinnamon, or cumin.

  And so, this book is less the story of any single spice or spice trader and more about the cultural, economic, and political factors that propelled spices across the face of the earth, depleting some species while causing others to proliferate. It is a multilayered narrative that is as much about alchemy as it is about chemistry, cultural history as it is about natural history, and culinary imperialism as it is about transcontinental and multicultural collaboration. In short, the history of the spice trade is an object lesson in how, step by step, globalization has developed and sealed off other formerly prevalent options for business and cross-cultural negotiation among the world’s diverse peoples.

  If this story line occasionally strays away from the trajectory that particular incenses, gums, and culinary and medicinal herbs took as they traveled around the world, so be it, for I am ultimately trying to answer a series of much larger questions. When, where, how, and through whose hands did the process of globalization begin? What have we gained and what have we lost by entering into this Faustian bargain? And finally, how has globalization irrevocably changed the human condition? How has that thirteen-letter word come to be perhaps the most pervasive expression of the current cultural tendency to trade a place-based existence for one that is essentially placeless?

  I was encouraged to ponder this issue after reading “The Dawn of the Homogenocene,” a fascinating essay by the deeply thoughtful environmental historian Charles C. Mann.1 Mann, like another fine contemporary writer, David Quammen, likes to use ecologist Gordon Orians’s term homogenocene, which refers to the present era in geological history, one in which the world’s biota has become blandly uniform in place after place due to “recent” biological and cultural invasions on every continent. In his essay, Mann suggests that the roots of globalization and homogenization can be traced back to 1493 and the Casa Almirante (Admiral’s House) of Cristóbal Colón (our Christopher Columbus) on the island of Hispaniola.

  Indeed, the initiation of the Columbian exchange of plants, animals, and microbes between the Old World and the New World was a bench-mark in the onset of “ecological imperialism” that not only reshaped life in the Americas but on all other continents as well.2 It is a “rupturous” moment in history that I have elsewhere referred to as the Great Colónoscopy.3

  Nevertheless, I believe that while Mann understands and writes eloquently of the socioeconomic and ecological processes associated with globalization, he has grossly erred in dating its onset. So has Felipe Fernández-Armesto in his lovely 1492: The Year Our World Began.4 It certainly did not emerge from humanity’s economic endeavors as late as 1493 CE, nor even as late as 1493 BCE. Depending on what we might use to date the earliest evidence of spice (or copper) trade occurring between regions or continents,5 Fernández-Armesto, Mann, and I would likely agree that the initial phases of the inexorable process that led toward ever more pervasive globalization occurred at least as early as thirty-five hundred years ago.

  I would argue that the same mentalities, skills, and economic drives that led to the colonization of the Americas were already well articulated by the time the inhabitants of the Middle East colonized regions of Africa, Asia, and southwestern Europe. After 1492, they simply extended their base of operations to two other continents, using many of the same entrepreneurial and political strategies employed first to capture transcontinental trade in spices from the New World and then to expand their hegemony over other arenas of economic activity. And although none of us would necessarily grant its “invention” to an Italian-born immigrant such as Christopher Columbus, I believe that we could agree that Semitic peoples such as Phoenicians, Nabataeans, Arabs, and Jews left legacies of navigation, geographical exploration, culinary imperialism, and globalization that clearly informed Columbus.

  For almost anyone who has lived on earth over the last four millennia, it is difficult to imagine a world without extra-local herbs, spices, incenses, infusions, and medicines next to our hearths or in our homes. It is as if their fragrances have always been wafting into the culturally constructed spaces where our saints and sinners, prophets and prodigal sons come together to be healed or to celebrate a communal meal. The aromas of leafy herbs, dried fruits, crushed seeds, ground roots, and droplets of tree gums lodge deeply in our memories. Although we have difficulty verbally describing what distinguishe
s one fragrance from another, the most memorable of them nevertheless insinuate themselves into the holiest of oral histories and the most sacred of ancient scriptures we have shared as a species.

  The words species and spices come from the same roots in Latin, spec (singular) and species (plural), which referred to kinds, forms, or appearances of items within a larger assortment. But according to etymologist Walter W. Skeat, by the time Middle English was in use, spis, spyses, or species more particularly denoted different kinds of aromatic plants or drugs in trade.6 Following Skeat, our current usage of the Modern English term species seems to have evolved out of the need to speak collectively of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and saffron, and then to be able to distinguish among them as distinctive aromatics; only later was this sense of species extended to other non-aromatic plants and to animals. Thus, the origin of species as a construct within English may very well be rooted in the economic or aesthetic need to discern various kinds of spices from one another. Spices and our own species have certainly traveled together and shaped one another as far back as our surviving mythic narratives reach.

  In the Hebrew scriptures, a Jew named Joseph is sold off to a caravan carrying spices out of Palestine into the ancient Egyptian cities along the Nile. In the Christian scriptures, in the part known as the godspel among Christian speakers of Old English, we hear the “good news” that three traders of incense came from the East to encounter another Joseph, his young wife, Mary, and their newborn baby, Yeshu, one winter night when the stars were bright. In the Qur’an, we learn that before receiving his call to be the Prophet, Muhammad assisted his uncle Abu Talib and his own first wife, Khadijah, with their spice caravans, riding dromedaries from Mecca to Damascus and Aleppo. They became used to guarding from pirates and competitors their camel-hair bags burgeoning with herbs, dates, frankincense, and other exotic aromatics long enough to sell them for higher prices when they envisioned that such opportunities would soon emerge, leading to our current practice of speculation. A spice speculator was considered a visionary, someone who could anticipate when a new story (or market) was emerging and help to shape it.