Title: History of Turkish Spices
Categories: Info Turkish Spice
Yield: 1 Servings

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Spices were the commodity which lent momentum to the global trade of medieval times. For long centuries caravans carried their loads of spices and silks from India and China respectively overland, while ships plied the route across the Indian Ocean to the ports of Arabia.

Why were spices valued so greatly? Since eating is mankind's most fundamental need, ingredients which lent both flavour and fragrance were obviously important. Yet we cook many dishes using readily available herbs to give flavoure, without feeling a need for adding exotic spices. So we must look further for a satisfactory explanation.

Historians argue that the primitive technologies used to preserve foods, such as drying meat, diminished their flavour, hence the demand for spices.

This is the most widely cited explanation, to which we can add the fact that spices assisted in the preservation of food, like the spicy paste coating the Turkish pressed beef known as pastirma

In addition, I would guess that people hoped for therapeutic benefits from spices, as well as flavour.

Since many medicines were concocted from spices, it was natural to assume that they would do one good in food as well.. In addition spices were attributed to hawing aphrodisiac and similar elusive properties.

The Ottoman Empire arose at the most strategic hub of this international trade, and in doing so upset everyone's calculations. With the Ottomans usurping their own sway over the luctrative spice trade, the European powers resolved to discover a new route to the land of spices, and sent out ships, into the unknown.

As a result , their explorers ended up discover ing the New World as well as the sea route to the East Indies around Africa. In this way, the Ottomans found themselves bypassed in trade, and consequently isolated from the mainstream of world events.

Similarly the Italian city states such as Venice which had become rich on Mediterranean trade were drained of their former power. But spices retained their importance, and still do today.

Nations on the spice roads not only engaged in transit trade, but inevitably made use of these commodities themselves, which is why Turkey has significant spice culture. not perhaps comparable to India and the other countries of southeast Asia, but then no country outside that region uses spices to the same degree.

The areas of Turkey where the use of spices is greatest are those located on the spice trade route.

While the use of spices is moderate in northern, western and central Turkey, in the southeast region bordering on the Arab countries and extending down to the cities of Adana and Mersin on the eastern Mediterranean coast, spices play a key role in the cuisine.

And of course we must not forget Istanbul, a major port and trade mart which also figured eminently in the spice trade.

Throughout the middle ages consumers of spices in Europe were the rich; not unnaturally since spices were an expensive luxury. So no money, no flavour.

Since Istanbul was the capital of the Ottoman Empire and its wealthiest city, consumerism of all kinds was at its height there, and tons of spices of all kinds were transported here via the Arabian ports and Alexandria.

The Egyptian Market or Misir Carsisi where the spice sellers plied their trade was constructed in the 17th century as an appendage of the Yeni Mosque complex. Known to Europeans as the Spice Bazaar, the name Egyptian in the Turkish name referred to the fact that that country was a principal transit point in the transportation of spices.

Spice shops in various districts of Istanbul also refer to themselves as Misir Carsisi.

A second centre of the spice trade in Istanbul was Cemberlitas, near the Grand Bazaar. A few shops still remain, but their line in strange herbs laying claim to curative properties predominates over sales of spices for cooking.

Galingale senna, alkanet and some unidentifiable substance called minaret shadow are examples of the remedies offered.

By Murat BELGE TRKNWS-Ltrh@aimnet.com Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish

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