Cinnamon (pronounced /ˈsɪnəmən/
SIN-ə-mən or /ˈsɪnəmʌn/ SIN-ə-mun) is a
spice obtained from the inner bark of
several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that
can be used in both sweet and savoury foods.
Cinnamon trees are native to South East
Asia, and its origin was mysterious in
Europe until the sixteenth century.
Nomenclature and taxonomy
The name cinnamon comes from Phoenician and
Hebrew through the Greek kinnámōmon. In
Malayalam, it is called Karuva. In Tamil, it
is called பட்டை Pattai.
In many other, particularly European,
languages it has a name akin to French
cannelle, diminutive of canne (reed, cane)
from its tube-like shape.
In Persian, it is called darchin (دارچین)
(literally meaning taken/picked from tree).
In Turkish, it is called "Tarçın". In
Telugu, it is called Dalchini chekka (దాల్చిన
చెక్క). In Kannada, it is called Chakke.
In Indonesia, where it is cultivated in Java
and Sumatra, it is called kayu manis ("sweet
wood") and sometimes cassia vera, the "real"
cassia.[1] In Sri Lanka, in the original
Sinhala, cinnamon is known as kurundu
(කුරුඳු),[2] recorded in English in the 17th
century as Korunda.[3] In Arabic it is
called qerfa (قرفة).
History
Cinnamon (canella) output in 2005
Cinnamomum verum, from Koehler's
Medicinal-Plants (1887)
Cinnamon has been known from remote
antiquity. The Old Testament makes specific
mention of the spice many times: first when
Moses is commanded to use both sweet
cinnamon (Hebrew קִנָּמוֹן, qinnāmôn) and
cassia in the holy anointing oil;[4] in
Proverbs where the lover's bed is perfumed
with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon;[5] and in
Song of Solomon, a song describing the
beauty of his beloved, cinnamon scents her
garments like the smell of Lebanon.[6] It
was so highly prized among ancient nations
that it was regarded as a gift fit for
monarchs and even for a god: a fine
inscription records the gift of cinnamon and
cassia to the temple of Apollo at Miletus.[7]
Though its source was kept mysterious in the
Mediterranean world for centuries by the
middlemen who handled the spice trade, to
protect their monopoly as suppliers,
cinnamon is native to Sri Lanka.[8] It was
imported to Egypt as early as 2000 BC, but
those who report that it had come from China
confuse it with cassia.[9] It is also
alluded to by Herodotus and other classical
writers. It was too expensive to be commonly
used on funeral pyres in Rome, but the
Emperor Nero is said to have burned a year's
worth of the city's supply at the funeral
for his wife Poppaea Sabina in A.D. 65.[10]
Before the foundation of Cairo, Alexandria
was the Mediterranean shipping port of
cinnamon. Europeans who knew the Latin
writers who were quoting Herodotus knew that
cinnamon came up the Red Sea to the trading
ports of Egypt, but whether from Ethiopia or
not was less than clear. When the Sieur de
Joinville accompanied his king to Egypt on
crusade in 1248, he reported what he had
been told—and believed—that cinnamon was
fished up in nets at the source of the Nile
out at the edge of the world. Through the
Middle Ages, the source of cinnamon was a
mystery to the Western world. Marco Polo
avoided precision on this score.[11] In
Herodotus and other authors, Arabia was the
source of cinnamon: giant Cinnamon birds
collected the cinnamon sticks from an
unknown land where the cinnamon trees grew
and used them to construct their nests; the
Arabs employed a trick to obtain the sticks.
This story was current as late as 1310 in
Byzantium, although in the first century,
Pliny the Elder had written that the traders
had made this up in order to charge more.
The first mention of the spice growing in
Sri Lanka was in Zakariya al-Qazwini's Athar
al-bilad wa-akhbar al-‘ibad ("Monument of
Places and History of God's Bondsmen") in
about 1270.[12] This was followed shortly
thereafter by John of Montecorvino, in a
letter of about 1292.[13]
Indonesian rafts transported cinnamon (known
in Indonesia as kayu manis- literally "sweet
wood") on a "cinnamon route" directly from
the Moluccas to East Africa, where local
traders then carried it north to the Roman
market.[14][15][16] See also Rhapta.
Arab traders brought the spice via overland
trade routes to Alexandria in Egypt, where
it was bought by Venetian traders from Italy
who held a monopoly on the spice trade in
Europe. The disruption of this trade by the
rise of other Mediterranean powers, such as
the Mamluk Sultans and the Ottoman Empire,
was one of many factors that led Europeans
to search more widely for other routes to
Asia.
Portuguese traders finally landed in Ceylon
(Sri Lanka) at the beginning of the
sixteenth century and restructured the
traditional production and management of
cinnamon by the Sinhalese, who later held
the monopoly for cinnamon in Ceylon. The
Portuguese established a fort on the island
in 1518 and protected their own monopoly for
over a hundred years.
Dutch traders finally dislodged the
Portuguese by allying with the inland
Kingdom of Kandy. They established a trading
post in 1638, took control of the factories
by 1640, and expelled all remaining
Portuguese by 1658. "The shores of the
island are full of it", a Dutch captain
reported, "and it is the best in all the
Orient: when one is downwind of the island,
one can still smell cinnamon eight leagues
out to sea." (Braudel 1984, p. 215)
The Dutch East India Company continued to
overhaul the methods of harvesting in the
wild and eventually began to cultivate its
own trees.
In 1767 Lord Brown of East India Company
established Anjarakkandy Cinnamon Estate
near Anjarakkandy in Cannanore (now Kannur)
district of Kerala, and this estate became
Asia's largest cinnamon estate.
The British took control of the island from
the Dutch in 1796. However, the importance
of the monopoly of Ceylon was already
declining, as cultivation of the cinnamon
tree spread to other areas, the more common
cassia bark became more acceptable to
consumers, and coffee, tea, sugar, and
chocolate began to outstrip the popularity
of traditional spices. |
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