Cumin, Camels, and Caravans Read online

  Well over a half century ago, historian George Fadlo Hourani, himself the son of a Lebanese shipping merchant, began to wonder why Arabs were among the first people known to venture fully out across the seas. In his beautifully crafted classic, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times, Hourani boldly proposed that

  FIGURE 3. Dhows such as this one in the seas near Lamu, Kenya, were essential seafaring vessels for early spice traders. (Photo by Karl Ragnar Gjertsen. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

  geography favored the development of sailing from Arabian shores. A very long coastline bounds the peninsula on three sides, stretching from the Gulf of Suez round to the head of the Persian Gulf. Near these coasts lie the most fertile parts of Arabia: al-Yaman, Hadramawt, and ‘Umūn; communication between them by sea was no more formidable than the crossing of the deserts and mountains which separated them on land. Commerce with neighboring countries was invited . . . so that across the enclosed waters of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf the Arabs might be in contact with two of the most ancient centers of wealth and civilization—Egypt and Iran—not to mention Mesopotamia. . . . Most important of all, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, supplemented by the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, are natural channels for through traffic between the Mediterranean basin and Eastern Asia; the Arabs were astride two of the world’s great trade routes.6

  It is thus plausible that certain of the Semitic peoples of the southern and eastern reaches of the Arabian Peninsula were no longer satisfied with staying put, for they had come into more frequent contact with many other cultures through long-distance trade. This may be conjecture, but it seems that their belief systems soon departed from those of the many pantheistic and polytheistic place-based cultures of the era.

  These restless souls probably became more cosmopolitan, but at the same time, more emotionally and morally displaced, or “placeless.” The pioneering human ecologist Paul Shepard has suggested that the emergence of this peculiar Semitic mindset in the deserts of the Middle East marked a turning point in human history: “On the most ambitious scale in the history of the world, the ancestors of the Old Testament made virtue out of their homelessness. . . . In a Semitic storm god they found a traveling deity who was everyplace and therefore not bound by location.”7

  Curiously, perhaps because they chose to bring their God along with them wherever they traveled and even settled in other lands, the various Semitic tribes did not necessarily lose their cultural identity by moving away from home. That is, their identity appears to have become somewhat independent of where they actually lived, although many of them may have kept a nostalgic connection to the mythic place in which their ancestors were presumed to have lived.

  Although not as cynical about this placeless tendency as ecologist Shepard was, the great Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel conceded that at some point, the core Semitic beliefs radically shifted away from those of other Near Eastern cultures. In their minds, Heschel maintains, several Semitic tribes began to reject the very notion “that the deity resides in space, within particular localities like mountains, forests, trees or stones, which are, therefore, singled out as holy places; [that] the deity is bound to a particular land.”

  Instead, Heschel himself conjectured that most Semitic religions gradually came to accept that “there is no quality that space [or a presumably sacred place] has in common with the essence of God.”8 If God could be found anywhere in space or time rather than in particular places, so could economic opportunities.

  As if to establish that possibility as a fact, the seafaring Semitic tribes of Oman launched sixty- to seventy-day expeditions into lands where other people were eager to purchase their novelties. Journeys of one thousand to two thousand miles suddenly became commonplace. By thirty-two hundred years ago, written records in Mesopotamia were noting that loads of frankincense had been arriving from Oman or Yemen in an ever-increasing frequency and volume.

  As a result of the new challenges posed by managing caravans and cargo ships for long-distance transport and cross-cultural exchange, a distinctive multilingual merchant class began to emerge. These business-people forged solutions to the logistical difficulties that were integral to caravanning or seafaring. But they became adept at learning different languages, as well, allowing them to tell others compelling stories about the potency of their products and the adventures that had occurred while in transit. They also began to negotiate for the sales of not just one cargo load but many.

  Of course, some people are natural polyglots, and gifted storytellers have emerged in nearly every culture around the world. But Semitic spice merchants somehow prepared their youth to combine these two talents, in order that some stay-at-home members of a foreign cultural community in a distant land might be touched by the mythic dimensions of the merchants’ peregrinations in the foreigner’s own tongue. After all, the best spice merchants knew full well that they were not merely selling calories, cures, or scents but also the stories that came along with them that might magnify the value of each item.

  One of the first of these merchant cultures that we can put a name to is that of the Minaeans from the land of Punt, the place name that certain Europeans used for the Sayhadic incense kingdoms that once spanned most of present-day Yemen and the Dhofar region of southern Oman. Punt is where Biblical scholars suggest that the legendary Queen of Sheba resided, though that particular incense kingdom is correctly referred to as Saba, not Sheba. Although most of the finest frankincense came from the Hadhramaut and Dhofar highlands, the Minaeans who lived to the west of these regions in their own kingdom of Ma’in were among the pioneers who moved it into broader trade. At first, they likely swapped frankincense for the cultivated food crops farmed in the irrigated oases closest to their seasonal camps. Later, they traded it for other products from the world at large.

  Of course, little doubt exists that they and others had long been trading locally in wild fennel seeds, cinnamon-like barks, indigo dyes, and even myrrh, all items within a few days’ reach of the more northerly encampments in the kingdom of Ma’in. These wildcrafted goods could be bartered for the grain, pulses, dates, and herbs grown in the oasis villages in the more southerly, better-watered kingdoms of Saba, Timna, and Shabwa. Leather goods and metals were also transported down various paths, not just one Frankincense Trail.9 Most of the Minaeans lived deeper in the hinterlands, on the ecological boundary between Arabia Felix and Arabia Deserta.

  For much of their history, the Minaeans controlled the last small, stone-walled oases where sedentary Arabs dwelled: Yathrib (later called Madinat Rasul Allah, or Medina) and Qarnaw. That was before their own caravans began to venture out to where nomads roamed the sand seas of the Rub‘ al-Khali or gathered gums in the groves of frankincense or myrrh on the edge of the nejd.

  The Minaeans soon became the regular go-betweens that linked two very different worlds: that of the nomadic tribes who wildcrafted fragrant herbs, aromatic incenses, and potent medicines from the desert itself, and that of the sedentary tribes who cultivated millet, dates, sesame seeds, and flax and used saffron and indigo to brighten their lives.

  Minaean storytellers developed countless ways to heighten the mystique of the nomadic cultures to the sedentary farmers, who seldom had time to explore beyond their irrigation ditches. Likewise, Minaean bards found ways to make the nomads envious of all of the wealth that the farmers accumulated in their permanent homesteads and villages. The Minaeans lived in both of these worlds, and they learned to play one against the other with relative ease.

  It was this group of intermediaries who gradually but firmly took control of the early spice trade in the southern reaches of the peninsula from 1200 to 650 BCE. Although they never achieved the full expansion of their domain to the entire peninsula, they set the stage for lasting interregional trade. Historian Caroline Singer notes their pivotal presence even in the crossroad communities of the Hadhramis (at the Shabwa oasis) and the Sabaeans (at the Ma’rib oasis) and
in Qana, the primary port for the maritime shipping of aromatics:

  The merchants themselves would probably not have been natives of Shabwa; there is no evidence for either Hadramites [Hadhramis] or Sabaeans acting as incense dealers. It appears instead that there was a very specific group of South Arabians who acted as long-distance traders, and who came from the kingdom of Ma’in. According to Pliny, the Minaeans [became] the best-known South Arabians in the Roman world. They took consignments of incense to Syria, Egypt and Assyria, as well as to the Greek and Roman world, and they established a dynamic network of traders, each under the supervision of a magistrate, in various key points along the route. There was a settlement of Minaean traders in the Qatabanian capital of Timna’, in the Hadramite capitol Shabwa; in the [outlying] oasis of Dedan, and in various cities of Egypt, including Alexandria.10

  Curiously, throughout the Arabian Peninsula, incense and spice traders like the Minaeans tended to keep their most valuable stores of incense away from port towns. Good ports were valuable, but they were also vulnerable, for they could be more easily raided by rakes and ramblers from the outside. Like the famous hidden city of Petra later populated by the elusive Nabataeans, the oases frequented by most spice merchants lay inland, where marauders would have had to cross difficult stretches of featureless desert to find the fortresses where the most precious caches were guarded. This held true for incense repositories located in what is now Oman, just as it was for such repositories in Yemen.

  While still in Oman, Laurie and I were taken to Bahla Fort, one of the most representative and intact fortresses historically used by spice traders, including my own Banu Nebhani clan. This mythic fortified city was situated a considerable distance inland from the several ports where my clansmen once controlled the trade. We traveled back across barren coastal plains, then down dry gravel riverbeds and up and over low limestone ridges before we glimpsed the still-stunning site of Bahla. It edged a steep-rising limestone plateau, Jabal al-Akhdar, where many of my kinsmen took refuge once their hegemony over the fertile valleys ultimately declined. I first caught sight of a dense patch of towering date palms, and then saw other soaring profiles rising above the horizon, like a mirage in the blistering hot sun. Protected with ten linear miles of high stone walls, the castlelike fortress rose above the fields and groves.

  Here was where the spices, incenses, dates, and precious metals were kept before they were taken to the coast by camel caravan during the cooler hours of the night. And here is also where the cinnamon and cardamom, the black and white peppercorns, the saffron and sandalwood—goods that had been purchased from sailors who had ventured as far as Socotra, the Malabar Coast of India, Sri Lanka, or Indonesia—were hoarded.

  We spent much of the day wandering along the irrigation ditches that watered the plots of fava beans and hedges of roses, the groves of dates and the orchards of citrons, pomegranates, and figs. They had been nurtured by a falaj, an irrigation system of hydraulic structures that harvested and stored rainwater from the barren limestone slopes above the walled oasis. We visited stone-lined pools for prayers, pools for baths, and canals that meandered through a shady and verdant world that bore no resemblance to the sunbaked desert beyond the walls.

  Later, when we arrive at the souk in nearby Nizwa and enter the marketplace where vegetables and fruits are sold, we are joined by Ali Masoud al-Subhi, a local resident. Ali tells me that he may have something special to show me. He marches us right up to a produce vendor’s booth where an old man is dozing—his face is partially hidden by a white jalabiyah—as if he has been unable to stay attentive to his customers during the midday heat. Before him on a white countertop is a two-foot-long palm raceme harboring a cluster of freshly harvested dates. “Try one,” Ali whispers to me, “and don’t worry about stealing. I will leave some coins for the old man to find when he awakens.”

  FIGURE 4. Bahla Fort served as an inland hub for trade out to the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, and Indian Ocean. It is now a World Heritage Site. (Photo by the author.)

  I pinch a few ripe dates off of the palm inflorescence and give one to Sulaiman, another to Laurie, and then take a third one for myself. My teeth cut through its dark chocolate skin and rich, sugary caramel-colored flesh. It is overwhelmingly sweet but delicious.

  I look up. Ali has left a few coins on the counter and is now pinching another date off of the cluster. He holds it up between his index finger and thumb, as if it is a scientific specimen of some sort. “This, my friends, is called the Nebhani seedling date, and I believe it grows only here. Perhaps it exists in no other oasis. Perhaps it was named long ago for your family.”

  Of all of the irrigated date palm oases on the Arabian Peninsula, including Nizwa and Bahla, perhaps the one at Ma’rib on Wadi Adhanah, in north-central Yemen, has the greatest primal significance to the history of Arab peoples. Indeed, it is often considered to be the earliest exemplar of hydraulic civilizations, for when it was first built some four thousand years ago, it was the site of the greatest irrigation engineering achievement of its time, watering more than four thousand acres of food and fiber crops.

  Historians claim that many of the cultural traditions now associated with irrigated agriculture throughout the world emanated from the Mar’ib, first to Oman and Mesopotamia, then across the Mediterranean to the West and to China in the East, and finally, to the Americas. Even the term acequia, widely used in the Spanish-speaking world for an irrigation ditch, has its root in the ancient Yemeni Arabic term al-sāqiya, a word that can mean any kind of conduit for water.

  But when the Minaean culture was flourishing, it did so by forging a symbiotic relationship between the more sedentary al-Hadr tribes, engaged in irrigation agriculture, and the more nomadic Bedu and Jabbali tribes, which herded livestock or traded aromatics. While the oasis-dwelling farmers offered food security to all of the original tribes of Arabia Felix and many in Arabia Deserta, the camel drovers, incense gatherers, and spice traders offered both wealth and worldliness.

  The Ma’rib dam was actually built in phases over thousands of years and ultimately irrigated more than ninety-five hundred acres of annual crops, orchards, and date palm groves.11 Its ultimate span across the Wadi Adhanah plugged a six-hundred-yard gap in the Balaq Hills. When its final phase was completed in 715 BCE by Sheikh Sumhu’ Alay Yanuf and his son, the tightly fit stone and masonry blocks of its walls rose fifty feet above the original streambed of Wadi Adhanah. On the sides of the dam, sluice gates sent water down along twenty-five-foot-thick flood retention walls abutting the bedrock of the Balaq Hills. From there, mile-long “mother canals” channeled the stored floodwaters down to secondary and tertiary canals that entered the grain fields and orchard gardens of the Sabaean farmers.12 These farmers then traded their agricultural goods with the Minaeans. In exchange for frankincense, fennel, myrrh, and wild medicinal herbs, the Minaean traders received the grains of a half dozen cereals, four kinds of legumes, a dozen kinds of tree fruits, and vine crops such as melons, watermelons, and cucumbers.

  FIGURE 5. The sakieh, an ancient form of water wheel, was a highly prized innovation from al-Hadr Arabs and Persians. Typically driven by oxen, these water wheels were used for irrigation throughout the Middle East and Egypt. (Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.)

  Most of these fruits and vegetables were eaten raw while still fresh; the rest were sun dried for later use. The grains and even the legumes were toasted and ground, then made into harira, which often combined wheat, garbanzo beans, and lentils in the same dish. Spices, onions, and wild greens might be added. Unleavened breads were baked on woodfired ovens and used to mop up broths of grains, mutton, or goat meat, serving as precursors to dishes such as tharīd (a broth with bread, typically incorporating meat, but sometimes vegetarian) and maqluba (a boiled grain, meat and vegetable stew). Dates, fresh or pressed into thick pastes, were always available. This was des
ert peasant food at its most basic, and perhaps at its best.

  The Minaeans would be offered cotton and flax for their weaving in exchange for Sabaean-tanned hides of camel, goat, and sheep. The wild desert world and its nomads found a certain synergy with the tamed and tended world of the Ma’rib oasis for upward of twenty-eight hundred years, with regional trade providing prosperity to both.

  But then, some thousand years after Sumhu’ Alay Yanuf and his workers had attempted to control desert nature, the Ma’rib dam burst, releasing floodwaters.13 Overnight, the Sabaean Arabs witnessed the draining of the reservoir on which they had depended for more than forty generations. Their role in the world and that of their neighbors—the Minaean spice and incense traders—suddenly and irrevocably changed forever.

  Although some Semitic-speaking tribes had long before migrated out of Arabia Felix into other reaches of the Arabian Peninsula, by the third century, refugees from the Ma’rib flood joined them in a diaspora of unprecedented proportions for its era. The great Arab historian Albert Hourani marks the out-migration of proto-Arab Semitic clans from Yemen during this time as one of the pivotal moments of Arab history.14 Many of these clans left their southern motherland for good, fanning out across the peninsula and slowly transforming into the major Arab tribes that have dominated entire regions of the Middle East ever since. Some took the trails northward that had already been pioneered by the first mercantile caravans carrying frankincense to Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. A number of their descendants later entered the spice trade themselves.