Cumin, Camels, and Caravans

by Nabhan, Gary Paul

  The only fresh “spice” I found in the Old City that day was growing on its ancient walls. A sprawling caper plant towered over all of the tourists, who rarely acknowledged its persistence.

  Except for the next morning, when I had a joyful foraging excursion for capers, sage, sumac, mustard seeds, pine nuts, and wild pistachios in the Ben-Gurion Urban Forest with chef Moshe Basson, I felt a palpable tension wherever I went in Jerusalem. So I made my way to Bethlehem in the West Bank not so much for a change in scenery as for a break from the Old City’s intensity. Although Bethlehem is merely six miles from the heart of Jerusalem, it took me nearly two hours to get through the traffic-riddled streets and the road blocks and checkpoints to reach the edge of the area’s “other” sacred city.

  It was there that I met Marwan, a Palestinian seed trader and nursery manager who had some of the most desert-adapted traditional spice and vegetable seeds remaining in all of the Middle East. He called them seeds of the biladi— “of the country and its peasantry”—true heirlooms of the desert, passed down from hand to hand for generations. Marwan was a quiet man, more prone to speak of plant propagation than of geopolitics, but one topic inevitably spilled over into the other.

  “These biladi seeds can grow with our scant rainfall. . . . Sure, I select them for quality, but they have been with us here for hundreds of years. It is necessary that they can grow without much irrigation, you know, because our water lines are regularly cut off by the Isray-eli soldiers. The groundwater has been pumped out from beneath us, and at most we are left to use sewage to keep our fruit trees and crop plants alive. But even if these seeds can survive on minimal water, I hardly have any customers anymore to buy them.”

  “No customers?” I asked. I looked at the beautiful quality of his seeds. “For good desert-adapted herbs and spices like these? Have all the farmers and gardeners left Palestine?”

  Marwan looked tired. He was quiet for a moment. Then he replied with barely a whisper: “I am afraid you don’t understand. Farmers still try but they don’t make money. Even if their plants survive until the harvest with the little water we have, well . . . The farmers here would load them on their trucks early in the morning to take them toward the market in Jerusalem, but they would be stopped at the checkpoints . . . And they would sit there in the traffic, unable to move, waiting to move up to be inspected. Sit and sit, hardly moving . . . the salad greens, the herbs, they wither . . .”

  He sighed, looking pained, then continued. “Sometimes the farmers have been forced to wait so long that their entire truckload of produce rots while they are in line. They come back discouraged. They give up on being farmers, and they no longer buy my seeds.”

  I said farewell to Marwan and left his seed shop and nursery saddened, humbled. I decided that I must see where Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity stands, for it is one of the oldest continuously operated Christian churches in the world. But in all the clutter of gift shops and bus parking lots, I found it hard to imagine what this place might have looked like some two thousand years ago, around 4 BCE, when some foreigners guided by a star—possibly magicians or astrologers who also carried incense—arrived on camels from some distant land to look for a newborn baby.

  An ancient text recently translated from Syriac suggests that these Magi were not necessarily three Zoroastrian “wise men” from Persia, but an entire caravan of magicians or shamans originally from Shir, a land in the Far East, by the sea.26 They came westward during the era of Herod the Great, an Idumaean Jew who had been born of a Nabataean mother. There are few clues about who these visitors to Herod’s land actually were, but we have been left with a couple of recognizable names for them that were recorded in Syriac. One of them was called Gudaphar (or Gandapor), almost certainly from a surname long used within the Indo-Parthian kingdom on the northeast side of the Arabian Sea. It was a country where Aramaic and Greek as well as Sanskrit and Pali were spoken over the centuries, and where both Zoroastrian and Buddhist influences spread along the southern routes of the Silk Road.

  The Syriac text recently translated as Revelation of the Magi includes no mention of frankincense and myrrh being offered as gifts from the East. And yet, these aromatics were clearly in currency in northern reaches of the Arabian Sea, and perhaps as far east as the North China Sea during that era. Such aromatics would have been valued gifts of their day, whether brought by land or sea.

  If they did indeed arrive in Bethlehem in 4 BCE, they arrived at a time when the trading of aromatics was spanning the far reaches of the known world, from China, Morocco, India, and Socotra to Zanzibar in present-day Tanzania and the Lamu Archipelago off the coast of Kenya. It was a moment in history when both land and sea trade in aromatics was ushering in an era of truly unprecedented globalization. Intercontinental trade had already become the norm, not the exception. It depended, in large part, on people’s fascination with “the exotic” as a way to escape the drudgery and redundancy of their own increasingly domesticated lives. The spice trade had become a means to capitalize on a kind of psychic hunger that was developing within various civilizations scattered around the world, a craving that came less from an empty stomach and more from a dissatisfied mind.

  • • •

  • SAFFRON •

  It may seem odd that the most expensive spice in the world comes from the tiny sexual parts of a small, lilac-colored flower with grasslike leaves, one that offers only a rather acrid, bitter, haylike aroma and a golden yellow colorant for which there are less expensive substitutes. But true saffron (Crocus sativus) remains the gold of the spice trade, with one kilogram of its threadlike red stigmata selling for more than a thousand dollars wholesale and ten thousand dollars retail. The harvest of saffron threads remains labor-intensive: one kilogram of threads requires handpicking the stigmata from 150,000 flowers. The production costs are also significant, as it takes a full acre of flowers to yield a single pound of dried threads. But the real reason for the exorbitant price of saffron may well be that no other spice looms as large in the imaginations and olfactory memories of the cultures that have traditionally relied on it.

  Of course, none of saffron’s surrogates have the magical mixture of crocin, safranal, and picrocrocin to give them the same brilliance and pungent punch. Saffron gets its bright gold color from crocin, a pigment-rich chemical compound. Its intense fragrance comes from the essential oil safranal, and its flavor from picrocrocin, a glucoside, which delivers its slightly bitter aftertaste and its medicinal qualities. It is one of the few water-soluble spices, and soaking the threads in water overnight will yield a sunny gold liquid by dawn. Combined with a color-stabilizing mordant, saffron has served as a golden dye for garments of many of the religious and political elite over the millennia, including Buddhist monks.

  As a medicine, saffron’s usefulness as an antispasmodic, sedative, and abortive has been documented in the treatment of scores of illnesses. In a highly concentrated form, it can be poisonous, but it would be an expensive way to die.

  Because several Crocus species have been harvested historically for use as a spice, colorant, and medicine, it is difficult to attribute all of the ancient drawings and writings about saffron use to C. sativus, which is easily the mostly widely utilized and highly prized of all the crocuses today. Botanists have long debated the origins of this domesticated crop, since wild plants similar to it are not found in the natural habitats within the crop’s geographic range. Recent studies have partially resolved this problem, however, establishing that C. sativus originated from the natural hybridization of two other Crocus species, one of which was C. cartwrightianus, a plant that grows on mainland Greece and some of its islands, among them Santorini, where it is still actively harvested for its saffron.

  The other parent of C. sativus may be C. thomasii, which also occurred in the Mediterranean region, where it still survives in Italy and on islands in the Aegean Sea. Although it is likely that polyploid forms of C. sativus were first domesticated for saffron somewhere
adjacent to the Aegean, another area of possible domestication is the arc running from Turkey, through Iraq and Iran to northwestern India. Archaeologists studying rock paintings in Iran have recovered fifty-thousand-year-old flower pigments from the Crocus genus, though these almost certainly were extracted from a wild species. Iran remains the largest producer of saffron for exports, but Fabienne Gambrelle claims that the best product is harvested from Kashmir.

  Some historians have speculated that saffron-bearing plants were first cultivated on Crete, simply because there are three-thousand-year-old depictions of a crocuslike flower in the Palace of Minos at Knossos. But neither these images nor the famous fresco of saffron gatherers on one of the palace walls necessarily confirms early domestication. Alas, all the pieces of the puzzle regarding the origins of saffron have not yet been put into place. Much more remains for archaeologists and other history detectives to explore.

  What strikes me wherever I travel is how strongly saffron is linked to the culinary identity of particular ethnicities. Whenever I have been invited for a homemade dinner among Indian immigrants to Europe or America, they proudly serve me saffron-infused rice. When my Spanish friend chef Francisco Pérez learned that I loved paella, he took a three-hour “Sunday break” from his professional duties to show me how to prepare his signature dish properly, producing enough to feed forty of our friends. But my favorite example of saffron being embedded in cultural identity comes from the Basque immigrants to the Great Basin of western North America. When I have gone to gatherings in the Basque country of Idaho, Nevada, or Utah, it is inevitable that the evening celebrations feature enormous quantities of paella colored and seasoned with the finest saffron that the hosts have been able to import from the Basque country in Spain. As I enjoy a savory plate of this paella, I have secretly wondered to myself what it means for saffron, mussels, clams, and shrimp to have been transported from the shores of the Iberian Peninsula to a dry, landlocked basin in North America thousands of miles away.

  When Jewish and Muslim families were expelled from Spain beginning in the late fifteenth century, they took their grandmothers’ recipes and spices with them as they fled to elsewhere in Europe and to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. In the families of Sephardic Jews in particular, the practices of kosher cuisine were further blended with Arab influences to forge new traditions that reinforced their distinctive identity. Meatballs (albóndigas) in saffron sunset sauce is just one example of an Arab recipe adapted by Sephardic Jews who relocated to Venice. The Arabic name of the dish, chems el aachi, means “setting sun,” because the golden color of the sauce is reminiscent of a glorious sunset in the Maghreb and Andalusia.

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

  Goldstein, Joyce. Saffron Shores: Jewish Cooking of the Southern Mediterranean. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002.

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

  Grilli Caiola, Maria, and Antonelli Canina. “Looking for Saffron’s (Crocus sativus L.) Parents.” Functional Plant Science and Biotechnology 4 (2010): 1–14.

  Musselman, Lytton John. Figs, Dates, Laurel, and Myrrh: Plants of the Bible and the Quran. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2007.

  Schneider, Sally. “From the Saffron Fields of Spain.” Saveur, March 23, 2007. www.saveur.com/article/Travels/From-the-Saffron-Fields-of-Spain.

  • CASSIA CINNAMON •

  Considerable confusion has surrounded discussions of the scientific identities and the cultural origins of various “cinnamons” found in the historical records of the spice trade. However, Cinnamomum cassia (formerly known as C. aromaticum) has a flavor and history distinctly different from the rest of its namesakes. Best known as cassia or Chinese cinnamon, there is no reason to refer to it in English as a “bastard cinnamon,” as some have in the past, for it is in no way inferior to the others. Although many would agree that its array of flavors is a bit simpler than that of so-called true cinnamon, it is also more straightforwardly intense, due to the higher oil content in its reddish brown bark. Like other extracts derived from the tall cone-shaped evergreen trees of the genus Cinnamomum, its warm and savory notes are derived not from true wood but from the inner bark of the trees, where most of the potent aromatic oils are found.

  An extremely high concentration of cinnamaldehyde in its essential oil is what gives cassia and most other cinnamons their spicy sweetness. But unlike true cinnamon from Sri Lanka, cassia also contains significant amounts of coumarin, a blood-thinning agent. Some Asian populations have genetically adapted to coumarin in their foods in beneficial ways, but particularly vulnerable individuals could suffer dangerous health effects if cassia is taken with other blood-thinning agents. Most people who consume cassia sparingly find it to be delicately, rather than cloyingly, sweet, with a pleasantly woody aftertaste.

  Cassia cinnamon grows wild in a few southeastern Chinese provinces, such as Guangdong and Guangxi, although much of its production today is from managed cultural landscapes rather than truly natural habitats. But it is also native to Assam and Myanmar and has long been cultivated in Vietnam. When the trees reach harvestable age, a square of inner bark is massaged by harvesters before being incised. It forms a thick, scroll-like tube often referred to as a cork, which is then left to dry and age. The inner bark of cassia is thicker and rougher than the bark of other cinnamons and has a coarse, dark brown surface that exudes the slightly bitter aroma of camphor, though cassia, unlike Sri Lankan or Ceylon cinnamon, doesn’t contain eugenol. Less commonly sought outside the areas in which the trees are grown are the caperlike floral buds, which echo the flavors of allspice and pepper in addition to cinnamon, and the leaves, the oils of which are distilled.

  The original name for cassia in at least some of the many Chinese dialects may have been kwei-shi. In 216 BCE, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, Qin Shihuangdi, renamed one of the most prized spots that he conquered for a cassia grove cultivated there, calling it Kweilin, or Guilin, the present capital of Guangxi Province.

  The extra-local trade of cassia dates back to antiquity, when it was carried along certain routes predating the appearance of other cinnamon species. It is identifiable in herbals from the second and third century BCE, and it is likely that the cinnamon referred to in the Bible is cassia and not true cinnamon. According to The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, written in Greek around the middle of the first century CE, cassia was being moved through Indian harbors and shipped past the Gulf of Aden to Somalia. But these maritime traders did not necessarily know where the cassia was harvested.

  In time, Sogdian and Persian traders on the Silk Roads did become aware of the source of the spice and named it dar-chin, with the chin referring to China and the dar possibly meaning fragrant or spicy wood. The Uighur in western China still use the term dar as a generic reference to spices. Cassia is also referred to as darchibi in Bengali, dal chini in Hindi, tarçin in Eastern Turkic, darichini in Georgian, and addarsin in Arabic.

  It appears that Jewish or other Semitic traders introduced cassia to Europe, for their Hebrew term ketsiah (also the name for Job’s daughter) is echoed in the Greek kasia, as well as in terms found in most of the Romance languages. By the time cassia and other cinnamons had been traded through Central Asia and India to the West, their origins had been wonderfully mythologized. In The History, the very gullible Herodotus wrote that huge birds in Arabia used cinnamon quills to build their nests, and in order for the Arabs to secure the cinnamon for themselves, they would put big chunks of meat on the ground under the nests. The birds, tempted by the food, would carry it up to their homes, thereby forcing the nests to collapse under so much weight. As the nesting materials fell to the ground, the cinnamon would be gathered by the ever-patient Arabs waiting below them. If that were not enough, Herodotus also believed that cassia grew in shallow lakes in Arabia, where it was protected by loud, pesky bats. Only Arabs fully covered in protective leather garb could shield themselves
from the bats’ wrath and collect sufficient cassia to make its transport to Europe worth the risk of having their eyes plucked out by the protective bats.

  Cassia finds its way into many of the great spice mixtures of the world, from five-spice powder in China to baharat and qalat daqqa in the Middle East to moles and recaudos in Mexico. Most of my Lebanese kin prepare kibbe, kefta, and lahem meshwi by first seasoning the lamb with cassia. But my most frequent encounter with cassia is far from its home and mine, in Latin America. From the semiarid Mexican Altiplano all the way to Guatemala, there are local communities who cannot imagine drinking hot coffee unless it is laced with cassia. In fact, for them, cassia is cinnamon.

  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.

  Katzer, Gernot. “Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages.” http://gernot-katzers-spicepages.com/engl/index.html. Accessed May 4, 2013.

  Musselman, Lytton John. Figs, Dates, Laurel, and Myrrh: Plants of the Bible and the Quran. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2007.

  Weiss, E. A. Spice Crops. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2002.

  • CAPERS •

  The primary product of the spiny, arid-adapted caper bush (Capparis spinosa var. spinosa) is an unopened flower bud, and a somewhat sharp, astringent, palate-punishing one at that. To rid the buds of their bitterness, they are cured in salt or pickled in a salt and vinegar brine. Once cured, the capric acid, quercetin, and kaempferol in the buds (the latter two are flavonoids) generate a powerful fragrance in the neverto-fully-bloom flowers.

  The caper bush also yields berries, the mature fruits of the plant. Like the flower buds, the delicately ribbed, olive green, teardropshaped berries are cured to reduce their pungency and then used in many of the same ways. Both the buds and the berries are harvested on islands and along coastlines around the Mediterranean, but the berries have never experienced the demand beyond their home ground that the buds have enjoyed. The tiniest buds, despite their size and ephemeral nature, command the highest prices around the world. Italy, Morocco, Spain, and Turkey serve as the largest producers.