persuasions. From at least the third century BC , Arabs rode camel caravans from the south-eastern tip of the Arabian peninsula to Gazan
souqs
like the one I’m browsing right now – along the legendary Frankincense Trail.
Frankincense and myrrh are both gum resins. They are harvested from shrub-like trees that still thrive in the Dhofar region of southern Oman, the world’s richest frankincense garden – and in the mountains of neighbouring Yemen, where these precious shrubs are so grasping, they have been known to grow straight out of solid rock. Omani and Yemeni farmers still harvest frankincense the old way – gouging deep, thin ‘wounds’ into the bark and peeling away narrow strips that bleed a milky liquid, which solidifies on contact with the air, forming resin ‘tears’ that are slowly dried out in the sun.
Back in the third century BC , merchants would descend on Dhofar and southern Yemen in the spring and autumn, when the frankincense harvest was ready. These merchants were Minaeans, one of the ancient Yemenite peoples who transported incense across Arabia by camel. When they had bartered hard, the Minaeans loaded up their beasts and set out north-west along the Frankincense Trail. Avoiding high mountain passes that harboured feuding tribes and throat-slitting bandits, they followed an inland trail roughly parallel to the Red Sea coastline, which then led them through the Rub’ al-Khali, ‘Empty Quarter’, an ocean of sand and shifting, orange-red dunes stretching for some 250,000 square miles across the southern Arabian peninsula. The Minaeans also passed by pre-Islamic cities like Ma’rib and Timna, where they were obliged to pay hefty local ‘spice taxes’.
The ancient Roman philosopher, Pliny the Elder, recorded the distance between Timna and Gaza as sixty-two days by camel. The entire Frankincense Trail – from Dhofar to the port at Gaza – was some 2,100 miles, more than two and a half times the length of Great Britain. But for the Minaeans, men as dry and unyielding as the Empty Quarter, it was well worth their while. Myrrh, and especially frankincense, were literally worth their weight in gold; every temple and wealthy home across Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Jerusalem and Rome required these precious resins to please their gods.
The vast majority of spices, apart from gum resins, originated far east of the Arabian peninsula; but frankincense was so cherished that poets wrote that all Arabia exuded ‘a most delicate fragrance’, and sailors on the Red Sea were rumoured to be able to catch its astringent scent from offshore breezes. It was not only spices that the Arabs traded; merchants made fortunes from selling olive oil, wheat, fish, wine – and Gaza traded heavily in slaves as well. But the majority of Gaza’s international trade was over land, not by sea, and the overland incense trade was still going strong when Gaza was conquered by the Romans in 63 BC . At that time, some 1,000 camels were arriving here every month, each weighed down with sacred spices. Frankincense was so plentiful in Gaza that these ancient, narrow streets must have been awash with the stuff. Maybe even pungent old Souq al-Zawiya was fragrant, back in those days.
I walk on through the
souq
, passing a crippled old Bedouin lady selling small bunches of fresh mint for a shekel (15 pence) each, and buy one from her. Just ahead of me is the al-Umari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza. As a non-Muslim, I cannot go inside, but an open side door offers me a glimpse of a spacious, light sanctuary, with a vast wall-to-wall carpet – smooth, flat and emerald as a bowling green. Running along one side of the mosque is the local gold market: just one narrow passage of bare-bulb-lit stalls, where fat men with bloodhound jowls and eyes like coal sell gaudy Jordanian gold to hard-bargaining mothers for their daughters’ dowries. The gold market has an atmosphere all its own, like the Hammam al-Samara Turkish
souqs
like the one I’m browsing right now – along the legendary Frankincense Trail.
Frankincense and myrrh are both gum resins. They are harvested from shrub-like trees that still thrive in the Dhofar region of southern Oman, the world’s richest frankincense garden – and in the mountains of neighbouring Yemen, where these precious shrubs are so grasping, they have been known to grow straight out of solid rock. Omani and Yemeni farmers still harvest frankincense the old way – gouging deep, thin ‘wounds’ into the bark and peeling away narrow strips that bleed a milky liquid, which solidifies on contact with the air, forming resin ‘tears’ that are slowly dried out in the sun.
Back in the third century BC , merchants would descend on Dhofar and southern Yemen in the spring and autumn, when the frankincense harvest was ready. These merchants were Minaeans, one of the ancient Yemenite peoples who transported incense across Arabia by camel. When they had bartered hard, the Minaeans loaded up their beasts and set out north-west along the Frankincense Trail. Avoiding high mountain passes that harboured feuding tribes and throat-slitting bandits, they followed an inland trail roughly parallel to the Red Sea coastline, which then led them through the Rub’ al-Khali, ‘Empty Quarter’, an ocean of sand and shifting, orange-red dunes stretching for some 250,000 square miles across the southern Arabian peninsula. The Minaeans also passed by pre-Islamic cities like Ma’rib and Timna, where they were obliged to pay hefty local ‘spice taxes’.
The ancient Roman philosopher, Pliny the Elder, recorded the distance between Timna and Gaza as sixty-two days by camel. The entire Frankincense Trail – from Dhofar to the port at Gaza – was some 2,100 miles, more than two and a half times the length of Great Britain. But for the Minaeans, men as dry and unyielding as the Empty Quarter, it was well worth their while. Myrrh, and especially frankincense, were literally worth their weight in gold; every temple and wealthy home across Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Jerusalem and Rome required these precious resins to please their gods.
The vast majority of spices, apart from gum resins, originated far east of the Arabian peninsula; but frankincense was so cherished that poets wrote that all Arabia exuded ‘a most delicate fragrance’, and sailors on the Red Sea were rumoured to be able to catch its astringent scent from offshore breezes. It was not only spices that the Arabs traded; merchants made fortunes from selling olive oil, wheat, fish, wine – and Gaza traded heavily in slaves as well. But the majority of Gaza’s international trade was over land, not by sea, and the overland incense trade was still going strong when Gaza was conquered by the Romans in 63 BC . At that time, some 1,000 camels were arriving here every month, each weighed down with sacred spices. Frankincense was so plentiful in Gaza that these ancient, narrow streets must have been awash with the stuff. Maybe even pungent old Souq al-Zawiya was fragrant, back in those days.
I walk on through the
souq
, passing a crippled old Bedouin lady selling small bunches of fresh mint for a shekel (15 pence) each, and buy one from her. Just ahead of me is the al-Umari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza. As a non-Muslim, I cannot go inside, but an open side door offers me a glimpse of a spacious, light sanctuary, with a vast wall-to-wall carpet – smooth, flat and emerald as a bowling green. Running along one side of the mosque is the local gold market: just one narrow passage of bare-bulb-lit stalls, where fat men with bloodhound jowls and eyes like coal sell gaudy Jordanian gold to hard-bargaining mothers for their daughters’ dowries. The gold market has an atmosphere all its own, like the Hammam al-Samara Turkish
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