Cumin, Camels, and Caravans Read online

  And yet, like certain groups of Jews after their departure from their Promised Land, the Arabs who left the well-watered oases of southern Yemen became a restless lot, relatively unattached to any place other than the mythic motherland from which their ancestors had come. Of course, they were intelligent enough and resilient enough to physically and economically make a new home nearly anywhere, but in doing so, they severed the psychic umbilical cord that attached them to their mother country. They were able to build houses, dynasties, and economies in many climes, but they could never go home anymore.

  MAP 2. Spice trails of the Sahara

  Many became listless drifters. Perhaps that is the inevitable personality profile for a spice trader.

  In the sand seas of the Rub‘ al-Khali, they marked their ancient trails out of Yemen by leaving stone triliths as tall as a man. As their name suggests, the obelisklike stone cairns were three to a cluster, and were tall enough to rise above the drifts of sand that accumulated after storms. They marked the pathways that one might need to follow away from Arabia Felix and into the larger world.15

  These weather-worn triliths can still be found today, their edges softened by centuries of sandstorms but standing exactly where they were originally erected. They serve as some of the earliest surviving evidence of one of the greatest mass migrations in history—that of Semitic tribes, of Minaean, Arab, Jewish, Phoenician, and Aramaic, away from Arabia Felix. Once the dam broke, they left their peninsular homelands in hot pursuit of the most pungent spices and potent incenses that money could buy anywhere . . . and everywhere.

  I will follow them wherever their fragrant trails lead.

  • • •

  • TURMERIC •

  A cousin to ginger and galangal, turmeric is an intriguing source of sharp, earthy aromas and pleasantly bitter flavors. The pale green, pencil-thin rhizomes of young Curcuma domestica (also known as C. longa) dry to a yellow-orange and are even more richly colored beneath their skin. Clearly of South Asian origin, most turmeric used today is grown in India. Early on, its trade beyond the Indian subcontinent utilized overland caravans to reach the Assyrians and Sumerians of Asia Minor.

  By the eighth century CE, turmeric was being traded westward across the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea in dhows, reaching both Yemen and East Africa, including the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues. It was transported across Sub-Saharan Africa along caravan routes controlled by Berber, Bedouin, and Jewish traders. Dhows had also carried it eastward to China by the seventh century, where both its cultivation and use spread. Marco Polo saw it growing not only in China but on Sumatra and along India’s Malabar Coast, as well.

  There appears to be a different route for the diffusion of the names for turmeric, however, one that likely involves Ashkenazi Jews in its journey along more northerly routes. Terms cognate with the Hebrew kurkum appear in Yiddish, Greek, Italian, Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Korean, Finnish, Norwegian, German, Estonian, Czech, Croatian, Dutch, Breton, Catalan, Spanish, and even Korean. The notion that the English term turmeric comes through French from the Latin terra merita, or “meritorious earth,” because of the visual resemblance of turmeric powder to precious minerals seems to me to be apocryphal. Turmeric and kurkum are likely related etymologically by their reference to the yellow root, as terms for this plant in other languages signify.

  Green, Aliza. Field Guide to Herbs and Spices. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2006.

  Hill, Tony. The Contemporary Encyclopedia of Herbs and Spices. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2004.

  Katzer, Gernot. “Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages.” http://gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/index.html. Accessed May 8, 2013.

  Sortun, Ana, with Nicole Chaison. Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean. New York: Regan Books, 2006.

  • CARDAMOM •

  After saffron and vanilla, cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) is the most expensive spice in the world. The essential oils terpinene, cineol, and limonene make it intensely aromatic. The twenty-five jet black seeds in each green-and-white lanternlike pod simultaneously conjure up the flavors of sassafras, eucalyptus, allspice, cloves, camphor, and pepper. It is amazing how their fragrance can be astringent and offer a delicate warmth at the same time.

  This distant relative of ginger appears to have originated in the Kerala Hills in the Western Ghats of southern India, and references to it in ancient Sanskrit texts date back five thousand years to the Late Vedic period. It reached Babylon by 7000 BCE and arrived in Greece no later than 50 CE. Today, the cardamom shrub is widely cultivated from India to Guatemala. There is another variety with larger fruit from Sri Lanka as well.

  Linguistically, we can trace the cardamom trade overland into Asia Minor, and by sea to the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. The terms for cardamom in the Middle Eastern and East African languages are all quite similar: habbu al-hayl in Arabic; hel in Hebrew, Farsi, and Amharic; and hil in Azeri and Tigriniya. These cognates are derived from the ancient Sanskrit eli, ela, or ellka, which likely gave rise to the Hindi and Kashmiri elaichi, the Bengali elach, and the Gujarajati elchi or ilaychi, as well. Curiously, European terms, particularly those in the Romance languages, exhibit a total break with the terms from East Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. They all have their root in the ancient Greek kardamomom, which, according to spice scholar Gernot Katzer, is of uncertain and inexplicable origin. Kardamomom was often linked to a presently unidentified spice, amomon, as was cinnamon, or kinnamomon. One possible hypothesis is that amomon referred to Amomum subulatum, the large cardamom of Nepal and of Sikkim in northeast India, which may have dropped out of use in Europe after Roman times.

  The use of cardamom by Bedouins on the Arabian Peninsula is ancient, but it has remained strong to this moment. In fact, many contemporary Bedouin nomads carry coffee pots that have a small chamber in their spouts for holding cardamom pods. Although my close Arab relatives in the Middle East are not Bedouins, they are no less attached to cardamom. When I am in any home in the Bekáa Valley of Lebanon, it seems as though cardamom has insinuated itself into every coffee cup, many rice puddings (roz bi haleeb), and even some morning man’oushé pastries. In fact, “regular,” or mazbûta, coffee in Lebanon is typically served with a pinch of ground cardamom and a drop or two of orange blossom water.

  Cardamom is a key ingredient in many of the great spice mixtures of the world, including Yemeni zhoug; Syrian, Turkish, and Iraqi baharat; Indian curry powders; blends for chai and khorma; and Malaysian masalas. Cardamom pods are once again finding their way into specialty gins, where they keep juniper berries and cassia bark company.

  Gambrelle, Fabienne. The Flavor of Spices. Paris: Flammarion, 2008.

  Green, Aliza. Field Guide to Herbs and Spices. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2006.

  Hill, Tony. The Contemporary Encyclopedia of Herbs and Spices. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2004.

  Karaoglan, Aida. Food for the Vegetarian: Traditional Lebanese Recipes. Beirut: Naufal Press, 1987.

  Katzer, Gernot. “Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages.” http://gernot-katzers-spicepages.com/engl/index.html. Accessed September 1, 2011.

  Ravindran, P. N., and K. J. Madhusoodanan. Cardamom: The Genus Elettaria. London: Taylor and Francis, 2002.

  • DATES KNEADED WITH LOCUSTS AND SPICES •

  Nomads of the Arabian Desert were opportunistic in their foraging for foods, looking for windfalls or unanticipated bumper crops that they could harvest, dry, and store for use over the lean months that would inevitably follow. The food had to be compact and nonperishable, for it would ride in a camel saddlebag for months. It was often traded for staple cereals grown by oasis dwellers such as the Minaeans.

  The following recipe combines the locust recipe in the compilation made by Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq, identified by Lilia Zaouali as the author of one of the oldest surviving Arabic cookbooks, with the ancient practice of kneading locusts into date pulp. I have incorporated spices that have been found on the Ara
bian Peninsula or obtained through trade with India for millennia, in particular, fennel and asafetida. Chef Ana Sortun finds that the addition of fennel seeds imparts a sweet, warm, almost mintlike flavor to fruits and vegetables. According to Tony Hill of World Spice Merchants, the ground powder of asafetida (a member of the parsley family) emanates an unbelievably strong sulfurous odor until exposed to heat, which transforms it into a curiously complex set of onion and garlic flavors. For this recipe, wild dates are historically preferable, though Medjools or many other widely available domesticated varieties will do. Avoid the more perishable types, such as the Black Sphinx, for this dish. If you cannot find a swarm of locusts (or are wary of capturing it if you do), you can substitute salted roasted grasshoppers, which are available as chapulines in some Mexican American spice shops importing their supplies from Mexico City.

  Accompany with hot mint or iced hibiscus tea. Serves 6 to 8.

  4 cups live locusts

  4 cups water

  ¼ cup sea salt

  2 tablespoons coriander seeds

  2 tablespoons fennel seeds

  2 tablespoons ground asafetida

  For the Brine Solution

  5 quarts plus 1 cup water

  3 cups rose water

  6 tablespoons salt

  8 cups Medjool dates, pitted and chopped

  Find a swarm of locusts resting after a long flight and gather them in a covered basket. Under the shade of a date palm, carefully pick out and discard the dead locusts. Place the live ones in a large bowl, add the water and salt to drown them, then drain off the water and return the locusts to the basket.

  In a stone mortar, combine the coriander seeds and fennel seeds and grind together to a fine to medium-fine powder. Stir in the asafetida.

  To make the brine solution, combine the water, rose water, and salt in a 6-quart container and stir to dissolve the salt. In a ceramic or other pottery dish, arrange the locusts in a layer ½ inch deep. Ladle 4 cups of the brine solution over the locusts and sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the spice mixture evenly over the top. Top the layers with a heavy plate, pressing down on the plate, and let stand for 10 minutes. Drain off the brine, then repeat the layers of locusts, brine solution, and spice mixture 5 more times, pressing down on the plate and letting the layers stand for 10 minutes each time. Each time you drain off the brine, it should be lighter colored. The final batch should be nearly clear. Transfer the drained locusts to a crock and seal the top so the container is airtight. Let the locusts ferment at room temperature for at least a few days or up to a couple weeks.

  Transfer the locusts to a large bowl, add the dates, and knead them together with your hands until fully combined and a soft mixture has formed. Pat the mixture into disklike cakes about 2 inches in diameter and ¼ inch thick. Store in a saddlebag of camel leather.

  Hill, Tony. The Contemporary Encyclopedia of Herbs and Spices: Seasonings for the Global Kitchen. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2004, pp. 42–43.

  Sortun, Ana, with Nicole Chaison. Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean. New York: Regan Books, 2006, pp. 72–73.

  Zaouali, Lilia. Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World: A Concise History with 174 Recipes. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, p. 140.

  CHAPTER 3

  Uncovering Hidden Outposts in the Desert

  The desert shimmered before me, chimerical by its very nature. After days of visiting the spice souks of Alexandria and Cairo, Father Dave Denny and I were making our way across the Sinai with two Cairene van drivers in an old Volkswagen bus. It was the time of year when the Sinai is hot, dry, and desolate, with barely a cloud or a caravan in sight. For hours, we gazed out the window and saw sandy swales on the edges of hamadas, regs, and limestone ridges where it seemed as if every cobble was covered with a shiny black desert varnish. The sun’s heat reradiated off of the sheen. The road ahead was drenched with mirages of water that suddenly pooled up before our eyes. As we approached one of the pools, we realized that it was not filled with recently fallen rain, but with inky black asphalt from the ancient beds of bitumen excavated near Gaza.

  As the van bounced along its bumpy surface, I tried to read a coverless, out-of-print British guidebook to my old friend Dave. It noted how archaeologists had been deciphering inscriptions about the spice trade on a twenty-three-hundred-year-old sarcophagus found in Egypt. The inscriptions detailed a Minaean trader’s account of following a route similar to the one on which we were traveling, but in the opposite direction. The trader was carrying perfumes and spices from the southern stretches of the Arabian Peninsula that were to be used in a prominent Egyptian temple.

  Later, Callixenus of Rhodes recorded seeing one such caravan as it sought to go beyond the peninsula in search of better prices for its goods: “There marched three hundred Arab sheep and camels, some of which carried three hundred pounds of frankincense, three hundred pounds of myrrh, and two hundred of saffron, cassia, orris [an aromatic iris root], and all other spices.”1

  I glanced up from the book in time to see a few Bedu on camelback, heading toward the coast of the Red Sea. Soon, I was looking out over the beaches and coral reefs along the shoreline and across the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba to the northwestern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, where low coastal ranges seemed to waver and wriggle with the heat. The highway ran roughly parallel to the coast, sometimes nearer to the water, sometimes farther, for another hour. If this route seemed tiresome to me as I sat in a van that lacked air-conditioning, I wondered what the journey must have been like on the back of a camel, barely buffered from the desert sun?

  And yet, for several centuries in the first millennium BCE, Minaean caravans had carried frankincense, myrrh, and spices along this route, northward from Hadhramaut in Arabia Felix, across the Arabia Deserta to the Gulf of Aqaba, and then up to Petra and Gaza, or across the entire Sinai to the Nile. Some of the caravans were lucky enough to avoid the raids known as ghazw, in which poor nomads captured food and other resources from richer tribes, thereby redistributing wealth. If a Minaean expedition was successful, its goods might reach Damascus and Jerusalem. Or they might find their way to Alexandria and Giza (near present-day Cairo) on the other side of the Nile. But whenever droughts or plagues affected the local nomads’ capacity to raise livestock or forage for wild foods, they reverted to stalking the spice traders. To avoid losing all of the goods they carried in their caravan, the Minaeans often resorted to paying bribes or protection fees so that they might pass safely through the territories of poorer nomadic tribes.

  I had become impressed by the tenacity and perspicacity of those prehistoric traders, but I was also getting road weary just thinking about the tediousness of their journeys across the open desert. The attitude that one must maintain to endure such a journey was well captured by explorer John Lloyd Stephens more than a century ago. After traveling in the company of Bedouins from the Red Sea toward Petra, he wrote, “We got through the day remarkably well, the scene always being precisely the same: before us, the long desolate, sandy valley, and on each side the still more desolate and dreary mountains. Towards evening we encamped; and after sitting for some time around a fire with my companions, I entered my tent [to sleep].”2

  A flat tire and a half-hour pit stop on the barren side of the Sinai highway provided me with sufficient time to consider the wide ripple of influences that emanated from the doggedly determined Minaean traders who had preceded Stephens by two to three millennia. During the years that their trading culture flourished, their envoys had reached as far as the Greek island of Delos, the port of Alexandria, the oasis of Palmyra and settlements of Chaldea, and even to the ancient harbor of Keralaputra on the coast of present-day India. They had maintained a string of oasis outposts across the Arabian sands, including Najran and Timna. But after centuries of dominating trade in aromatics, the Minaeans began to falter in their efforts to control all spices, incenses, dye, and minerals flowing in and out of Arabia Felix. One possible reas
on for this waning was that the costs of bribes and protection fees simply became too great.

  But a second possibility for their demise seems equally plausible: their competitors had learned to sail all the way to the southern port of Aden, both from the Red Sea on the west and the Arabian Sea on the east, thereby avoiding desert raiders.3 Ultimately, the Minaeans lost their competitive edge and economic niche. By 100 CE, their peculiar Semitic language, the now-extinct Madhabic tongue, was no longer the lingua franca of globalized trade.

  I was jogged out of my reverie on Minaean history by the driver revving up the engine of our Volkswagen bus. Now outfitted with a nearly bald but inflated tire, our aged vehicle limped into the Red Sea resort town of Taba, the easternmost settlement in all of Egypt. When it came to a stop, I paid the two Egyptian drivers in pounds, and they immediately began their return trip west. Without even purchasing a new tire or some food, they had chosen to hasten toward Cairo and the comforts of the Nile.

  Father Dave and I checked into two rooms in a modest hotel built just above the shoreline, and I took time out to soak my bones in the hypersaline waters of the Gulf of Aqaba. When the heat began to dissipate an hour before sunset, we left the crowded beach and hiked back from the highway into the shadows of a side canyon, where we found an encampment of forty to fifty Tarabin Bedouins who had moved up from neighboring Nuweiba.

  These Bedu had improvised shade shelters and storage sheds next to their tents and corrals. The structures were elaborated from the debris they had looted, retrieved, or rescued from construction sites along Taba’s boulevard of resort hotels. I was greeted by a couple of Bedu boys and one girl who had been herding Nubian goats and fat-tailed sheep into the corrals for the night.