Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness...It means, in fine, that you are to see imperatively that everyone has something nice to eat.
- John Ruskin
The history of spice is almost as old as human civilisation. It is a history of lands discovered, empires built and brought down, wars won and lost, treaties signed and flouted, flavours sought and offered, and the rise and fall of different religious practices and beliefs. Spices were among the most valuable items of trade in ancient and medieval times.
As long ago as 3500 BC the ancient Egyptians were using various spices for flavouring food, in cosmetics, and for embalming their dead. The use of spices spread through the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean and Europe. Spices from China, Indonesia, India, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) were originally transported overland by donkey or camel caravans. For almost 5000 years, Arab middlemen controlled the spice trade, until European explorers discovered a sea route to India and other spice producing countries in the East.
A walk through the old souk or as its called the spice souk in Deira, a much older part of Dubai than the shinier futuristic side, is something I would recommend to anyone coming to Dubai. If you want history, you won’t see it in modern Dubai which is in a hurry to build the future. But come to the spice souk, and haggle and have some chai, and you can smell the history of the old Arab spice trade.
For a gourmand like myself who loves to cook with spices, this is a taste of heaven.
