Cumin, Camels, and Caravans

by Nabhan, Gary Paul

  Later on, that model changed, for the spice trade triggered an economic and ecological revolution that rippled out to every reach of the human-inhabited world. It is the revolution that we now call globalization. And yet, it has been difficult for many of us to imagine its origins, for we live and breathe within it unconsciously, as if it has always existed and will always continue to exist as it does today.

  As I ponder that thought, ahead of me I spot the destination—a precious part of the origin of that revolution—that initially motivated me to travel nine thousand miles from my home. I am now far enough up the slope finally to touch, for the first time in my life, the very spark that may have jump-started the engine of globalization.

  I reach my hand out and gingerly lay it on the limber branches of a tree that is about as tall as I am. It has a voluptuous trunk covered in a jacket of ashy-hued bark. I reach farther into its canopy and grasp a thicker branch around its girth, as if I am feeling the bulging biceps of an iron-pumping friend. These sinuous branches are laden with small clusters of slightly crumpled but highly aromatic leaflets. I notice that the trunk is indelibly marked with scars, scorings in the bark made by intentional slashes with a knife, and on these scars are dried droplets of a pale white resin that forms perfect tears.

  Just beneath the bark are microscopic tear-duct-like structures that can be stimulated to shed their resin by scoring, the very same means used by our primate ancestors to obtain acacia gum, gum trag-acanth, mastic, or myrrh from other woody plants. Like them, this resin has long been valued as a medicine, vermifuge, flavorant, spice, and incense.

  But that is where the comparisons among gummy incenses stop. For close to four millennia, this particular gum has been regarded as the highest-quality incense in the world. It was once the most economically valuable and most widely disseminated plant product on the globe: frankincense, food of the gods.

  Even the stuffiest of scientists begrudgingly acknowledge the sacredness of this tree every time they recite its scientific name, Boswellia sacra. I have some familiarity with its distant relative, the elephant tree of the Americas, for I have often collected the copal incense from its trunk. And many winter days, when I suffer from inflammation and pain from an old horseback-riding injury, I rub my muscles with the salve of B. serrata, the so-called Indian frankincense, or salai.

  I dip beneath the canopy of the gnarly tree and pull a small but recently crystallized lump of gummy sap from a scar on its central trunk. It looks as if in the spring prior to my arrival the trunk’s bark had been scarified in two or three places, probably by a Somali migrant harvester. He likely slashed at the bark with a mingaf, a short-bladed tool that looks much like a putty knife, then came back a month later and cleaned the wound. At the end of spring, he did so a second time as well, and then the wound wept for several more weeks.

  The milky sap flowing out of the tree’s phloem has already begun to congeal into a semiliquid resinous latex. Frankincense tappers call the creamy sap “milk,” or lubān in Arabic, shehaz in mountain talk. But this is the sweetest, whitest, and milkiest of all frankincense, the internationally acclaimed hojari fusoos. Its quality is found nowhere in the world except here, in the highlands of Dhofar.

  During the height of its use in the Roman Empire, more money was spent on acquiring this superlative form of frankincense than was spent on any other aromatic—incense, spice, or herb—whether traded long distances by land or sea. In Babylon, those rich enough to afford it would bask in its smoke, purifying and imbuing their bodies with its fragrance prior to bouts of lovemaking.

  When I find another bit of sap that has begun to harden, I pinch the viscous substance until it pulls away from the trunk like taffy. I hold it in my hand and let the sun shine on the dried globule, which has turned amber. It shines dully back at the sun, a cloudy droplet of oleoresin resembling a freshly made curd of goat cheese. A bluish hue is hidden deep in the sap’s pearly clouds, as if shards of fallen sky are waiting to be sent up to join the rest of the heavens.

  For millennia, people have been doing just that: they have made a burnt offering of the sacred milk so that its smoke can rise beyond this world. Believers say that smoke from the best frankincense forms a single white column that flows straight into the sky. If its vapor trail is strong enough to ascend into the heavens, this gift will inevitably reach, nourish, and delight the Creator, the Prophet, or particular saints—whoever is meant to receive these fragrant prayers.

  Timidly, I place a tiny piece of the sap in my mouth and gnash it between my teeth as I might do with any chewing gum. Hints of honey, lime, verbena, and vanilla well up and spread through the juices of my mouth. I smile as I remember that pregnant Bedu women also chew on frankincense gum, hoping that it will encourage the child in the womb to live an intellectually and spiritually elevated life. Both Shahri and Somali harvesters chew on this gum while they “milk” more lubān from one tree after another, depositing their harvests into two-handled baskets woven from the fronds of date palms.

  I quickly warm to this world of incense, camels, and date palms, for it seems vaguely but deeply familiar to me. I belong to a bloodline that traces its origins back to Yemeni and Omani spice traders of the Banu Nebhani tribe. It is plausible that my own ancestors wandered these same hills more than fourteen hundred years ago, before they spread north across the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. This possibility alone suggests why I have felt motivated—even destined—to come to one of the driest and most remote parts of the world. But frankly, I am after something far larger than that.

  I have come here to dig for the roots of globalization, if the roots of such an ancient and pervasive phenomenon can be traced at all. I wish to track them back to the very first bartering for tiny quantities of aromatic resins like mastic, bdellium, frankincense, and myrrh; for the stone-ground seeds of cumin and anise; for the fragrant musk extracted from the glands of deer; for the bitingly sharp leaves of mint or oregano; for the bark of cassia from China and true cinnamon from Sri Lanka; for the sun-dried skins of kaffir limes; for the shavings carved off the egg-shaped seed of the nutmeg tree; for the withered orange-red stigma of the saffron flower; for the willowy pods of the vanilla vine and the pungent ones of a myriad of chile plants.

  Collectively, these various plant and animal products are ambiguously referred to as “spices” in English, just as they were rather coarsely lumped together as aromatikos by the ancient Greeks. Perhaps these references build on the ancient Arab concept of shadhan, a term used to describe a particularly pungent herb, but one that can also jointly refer to strongly fragrant and flavorful substances of both plant and animal origin. A related word, al-shadw, is used to comment on the intensity of pungency in a pepper, a piece of cinnamon bark, or a lump of the hojari fusoos grade of frankincense.

  A third Arabic word, al-adhfar, relates to any pungent smell, from musk to human sweat.5 Indeed, some scholars have suggested that musk, pungent ointments, and rose waters have been routinely used in hot climes to mask the odor of human sweat, which would otherwise be the most pervasive smell in desert camps and cramped cities much of the year.

  Historian Patricia Crone once offered this litany to circumscribe the many faces and fragrances of aromatics: “They include incense, or substances that gave off a nice smell on being burned; perfumes, ointments, and other sweet-smelling substances with which one dabbed, smeared or sprinkled oneself or one’s clothes; things that one put into food or drink to improve their taste, prolong their life, or endow them with medicinal or magical properties; and they also included antidotes.”6

  By the early fourteenth century, the Italian merchant Francesco di Balduccio Pegolotti documented the arrival of at least 288 varieties of spices into Europe, mostly through Semitic merchants who sometimes referred to their origin in particular Arabian, African, or Asian landscapes. These spices ranged from asafetida to zedoary and included everything from gum Arabic to manna to the madder of Alexandria.7

  Such spices are the sensuou
s signposts that can tell us where the trails and rustic roads of globalization first ran and remind us why we have been so engaged with these aromatic products in the first place. And so a quest to understand the semiotics of globalization must begin with reading spices as signs of deeper desires or diseases that have been embedded in certain segments of humankind for millennia.

  For many years now, I have been preoccupied if not altogether consumed with finding out why some individuals, communities, or cultures have been content with staying home and savoring what immediately lies before them, while others have an insatiable desire to taste and see or even possess that which comes from afar. I have wondered why certain peoples culturally and genetically identified as Semitic—Minaeans and Nabataeans, Phoenicians and other Canaanites, Quraysh and Karimi Arabs, Radhanite and Sephardic Jews—have played such disproportionately large roles in globalized trade, not merely over the short course of decades or centuries but over the long haul of many millennia.

  As I stand on the dry ridge, panting and sweating my bodily fluids into thin air, I remind myself why I have decided to begin this journey on this particular ridge in southern Oman, even though it is one that bears a name known only by a handful of tribesmen living in the region of Jabal Samhan. It is because some 250 acres here have been set aside as a frankincense reserve by the Omani government of Sultan Qaboos—250 acres that in my mind loom far larger.

  This spot is the perfect launching pad for a spice odyssey, one that will take us to the ancient port of Zayton on the China Sea, to the Turpan Depression that edges the Gobi Desert below the Tian Shan range on the border between China and Kazakhstan, to the Panj River that separates the Hindu Kush of Pakistan from the Pamirs of Tajikistan, to the coastal ports of Oman, Egypt, Turkey, and Mexico, to the slot canyons of Petra in Jordan, and to the sprawling souks, çarşısı, bazaars, and mercados of Syria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, and Mexico. We will wander down the Incense Trails of the Middle East, the Silk Roads of Asia, the Spice Trails of Africa, and the Camino Real of Central and North America. It will take us back in time, and possibly, it may launch us into considering our future.

  But first we must pay homage to the spindly frankincense tree here in its primordial nejd habitat, for it was once the most expensive and widely traveled cargo in the world, its antiseptic, culinary, medicinal, and magico-religious uses well regarded by dozens of cultures.

  How odd it is that the unforgettable fragrance of frankincense comes not from its flowers or fruits but from its wounds, as if it were one more saint like Francis of Assisi or Jesus of Nazareth with stigmata that drip with blood, sweat, and tears. Whether wounded by the whipping of branches during seasonal windstorms, bruised by the browsing of camels, or cut open by the crude mingaf knives of Omani, Yemeni, and Somali harvesters, this injured bush offers up a few grams of gum as its only useful product. If it is too badly injured or too frequently milked by greedy tappers, the bush will succumb to a premature death. These stunted perennials already struggle to survive on sun-scorched scree where rainfall is scant; it does not take very much additional stress to hasten their demise.

  For that reason, and because there are few other lucrative products that can be derived from the nejd barrens in the Dhofar highlands, frankincense stands have been traditionally owned, carefully protected, and diligently managed for millennia. In his great Naturalis Historiae, Pliny the Elder wrote descriptively of the frankincense groves that he called “the forests of Arabia Felix”: “The forest is divided up into definite portions, and owing to the mutual honesty of the owners, is free from trespassing, and though nobody keeps guard over the trees after an incision has been made, nobody steals from his neighbor.”8

  Outside of Dhofar, I listen to an Omani forest steward explain to me that his job is much like that of a game warden. His task, he says, is to “keep watch over what is precious.”

  His name is Ali Salem Bait Said. He comes from a family and Jabbali tribe that functioned as traditional owners of a particular frankincense gathering ground until the late 1960s. All such historically controlled lands were divided into parcels called menzelas. When the paternal bloodline inheritance of the right to manage and harvest a grove, or menzela, of frankincense finally broke down, it terminated a centuries-old land tenure tradition. But Ali Salem Bait Said still remembers his family’s stories of how to care for a productive stand of frankincense properly: “In the past, [my] people thought of themselves as friends of the tree. They don’t scratch down to the bone. They go and cut closer to the bark—not deep—so that they will not hurt the tree. Now [with the suspension of traditional ownership] there is no one to take care of the trees. And so there are people who come here that think of them as wild [not managed] and milk them for all they can give, until the trees dry up. [Those migrant harvesters] may not even know the traditional songs for lubān, the ones which we sang in celebration of God.”

  Ali points out trees that have had branches broken by feral camels and others that he believes have been milked too frequently. He suggests that at least in his tribe such occurrences would have been uncommon when the centuries-old practices of menzela management were still intact.

  Later, I have the opportunity to learn about more ancient frankincense gathering and management traditions from a remarkable field scientist and observer of frankincense culture, Mohamud Haji Farah, who received his doctorate in desert studies from the same University of Arizona program where I obtained mine. Although Somali by birth, Dr. Farah has spent several years near Dhofar documenting how indigenous Omani tribal herders and migrant Somali harvesters work with frankincense. Ironically, he focused on Jabal Samhan, the same area that I was fortunate enough to visit. Of slight build and quiet voice, Farah speaks and writes with discerning authority on the indigenous traditions that have evolved around this much-revered spiritual and economic resource. Among his observations is that “frankincense trees are presumed to possess or house supernatural powers associated with both good and evil spirits. . . . [And so, it was] a sacred commodity, and its harvesters worked under ritualistic constraints.”9

  FIGURE 1. An Omani forester approaches a frankincense tree near Sohar, a port of departure for the Arabic spice trade. (Photo by the author.)

  I had heard that harvesters were not allowed to sleep with their wives or eat certain foods during the harvest season. Farah neither confirms nor denies this for me. Instead, he notes how the chanting of prayers and the burning of incense are still enacted at the beginning of the tapping season. Some harvesters believe that frankincense trees could not survive, thrive, and yield incense in such harsh and desolate arid environments if they did not have sacred powers.10

  The rituals, Farah surmises, are means of showing respect to the trees and perhaps even pacifying them. He has found that such beliefs were widespread among Arab harvesters, not only in Oman but in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as well. Farah and other scientists who have surveyed the persistence of these traditions guess that such beliefs and rituals promote self-constraint among harvesters. It seems that they discourage would-be trespassers from entering someone else’s menzela patch in order to milk their trees clandestinely.

  In listening to both Ali Salem Bait Said and Mohamud Farah, I am struck by just how vulnerable frankincense is on its home ground, and yet how long the harvesting of its incense has persisted—perhaps four thousand years—without widespread decimation of its populations. I wonder whether the ritual constraints and the prayerful gathering of its precious resins have somehow kept frankincense populations from being overexploited, even though the incense has been in transcontinental trade for thousands of years.

  Or perhaps the harvesters in Yemen, Oman, and Saudi Arabia recognize that if they eliminate their most valuable resource, they would have few other desert plants, animals, or minerals to trade for food. Especially during times of drought or political disruption, the trading of frankincense has been one of the few hands they could play. Yet another reason for the longevi
ty of frankincense was suggested to me by a second Omani forester, who explained, “It would not be right to fail to protect this plant, for it is the source of our history.”

  I begin to think about other desert dwellers I have known, especially herders and hunter-gatherers who have not had the food crops produced in irrigated oases to fall back on during the worst of times. Having a mythical medicine, spice, or incense to trade was perhaps all that kept them from starvation during the harshest periods.

  The nomadic Seri Indians with whom I have lived and worked in Mexico’s deserts offer such an example.11 As soon as European missionaries arrived on the edge of their traditional territory, the Indians opportunistically engaged these Jesuit priests in unwittingly supporting two of their economic strategies. First, the Seri obtained food by trading incense such as copal, medicines such as jojoba, and spices such as oregano to the priests to send back to Europe. Then, once they knew what the outsiders had in store, they would clandestinely raid their trading partner’s pantries for additional food and drink.

  As I leave the highlands of Jabal Samhan for the port town of Salalah, I take a handful of frankincense beads along with me to burn ritually that night. They are modest in size and sit lightly in my palm. And yet I have heard that they command respectable prices in the souks and tourist shops along the Omani coast of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, perhaps as high as fifty dollars per kilogram, or twenty to twenty-five times what a harvester might be paid in the desert for the same quantity. I decide to go into a souk to see if this is true.

  When I enter the souk, I realize that there is one secret of frankincense commerce that I have already surmised: such a little thing, as diminutive and nearly as weightless as a single grain of wheat, is the perfect commodity to trade over long distances. Of course its economic and mythic value must be made to loom larger than the trade item itself, as well. This, I guess, has been the trade secret shared by most spice traders over the last four millennia: if you can, carry to the far corners of the earth something as light as a feather that can linger in one’s memory forever, but eschew anything as dull and as heavy as lead. In other words, whenever feasible, trade in potent fragrances and flavors, for they are the tangible corollaries of visions and dreams. They are intermediaries between the physical and spiritual domains, reminding us that there is more to the world that what we can absorb through our eyes.