History of saffron
Crocus cartwrightianus, a plant native to mainland Greece, Euboea, Crete, Skyros and some islands of the Cyclades has been used as a wild source of saffron.
In Syria the stigmas of an unknown wild species were collected by women and children, sun-dried and pressed into small tablets which were sold in the Bazaars.
[13] The saffron crocus is now a triploid that is "self-incompatible" and male sterile; it undergoes aberrant meiosis and is hence incapable of independent sexual reproduction—all propagation is by vegetative multiplication via manual "divide-and-set" of a starter clone or by interspecific hybridisation.
[14][7] If C. sativus is a mutant form of C. cartwrightianus, then it may have emerged via plant breeding, which would have selected for elongated stigmas, in late Bronze Age Crete.
The resulting saffron crocus was documented in a 7th-century BC Assyrian botanical reference compiled under Ashurbanipal,[16] and it has since been traded and used over the course of four millennia and has been used as treatment for some ninety disorders.
The Latin form safranum is also the source of the Catalan safrà, Italian zafferano,[18] but Portuguese açafrão, and Spanish azafrán come from the Arabic az-zaferán.
It is adapted from the Aramaic form kurkema via the Arabic term kurkum and the Greek intermediate κρόκος krokos, which once again signifies "yellowish".
A saffron harvest is shown in the Knossos palace frescoes of Minoan Crete,[27] which depict the flowers being picked by young girls and monkeys.
[30] Ancient Greek legends tell of brazen sailors embarking on long and perilous voyages to the remote land of Cilicia, where they traveled to procure what they believed was the world's most valuable saffron.
[32] The tragedy and the spice would be recalled later: Crocus and Smilax may be turn'd to flow'rs,And the Curetes spring from bounteous show'rsI pass a hundred legends stale, as these,And with sweet novelty your taste to please.
Hermes accidentally killed his lover during a game with the discus, and thus turned the dying Crocus into a saffron flower, in an aetiological myth explaining the origin of the plant.
Herodotus and Pliny the Elder, however, rated rival Assyrian and Babylonian saffron from the Fertile Crescent as best—to treat gastrointestinal or renal upsets.
[38] Urinary tract conditions were also treated with an oil-based emulsion of premature saffron flowers mixed with roasted beans; this was used topically on men.
Their customers ranged from the perfumers of Rosetta, in Egypt, to physicians in Gaza to townsfolk in Rhodes, who wore pouches of saffron in order to mask the presence of malodorous fellow citizens during outings to the theatre.
[41] The ancient Greeks and Romans prized saffron as a perfume or deodoriser and scattered it about their public spaces: royal halls, courts, and amphitheatres alike.
[44] Such evidence suggests that saffron was an article of long-distance trade before Crete's Minoan palace culture reached a peak in the 2nd millennium BC.
Saffron was also honoured as a sweet-smelling spice over three millennia ago in the Hebrew Tanakh: Your lips drop sweetness like honeycomb, my bride, syrup and milk are under your tongue, and your dress had the scent of Lebanon.
These suggest to many experts that saffron, among other spices, was first spread to India via Persian rulers' efforts to stock their newly built gardens and parks.
[26] On the other hand, traditional Kashmiri legend states that saffron first arrived in the 11th or 12th century AD, when two foreign and itinerant Sufi ascetics, Khwaja Masood Wali and Hazrat Sheikh Shariffudin, wandered into Kashmir.
The Chinese medical expert Wan Zhen wrote that "[t]he habitat of saffron is in Kashmir, where people grow it principally to offer it to the Buddha".
One theory states that Moors reintroduced saffron corms to the region around Poitiers after they lost the Battle of Tours to Charles Martel in AD 732.
[55] By the 14th century, the wide use of saffron for spicing and coloring food is documented in recipe books such as the "Viandier de Taillevent", written by the King's cook.
[57] The finest saffron threads from Muslim lands were unavailable to Europeans because of hostilities stoked by the Crusades, so Rhodes and other places were key suppliers to central and northern Europe.
The merchants of Venice continued their rule of the Mediterranean sea trade, trafficking varieties from Sicily, France and Spain, Austria, Crete and Greece, and the Ottoman Empire.
Adulterated goods also made the rounds: those soaked in honey, mixed with marigold petals, or kept in damp cellars—all to add quick and cheap bulk.
Rowland Parker provides an account of its cultivation in the village of Foxton during the 16th and 17th centuries, "usually by people holding a small amount of land"; an acre planted in saffron could yield a crop worth a kingly £6, making it "a very profitable crop, provided that plenty of unpaid labor was available; unpaid labor was one of the basic features of farming then and for another two centuries.
[64] Its mysterious decline started during the 18th century, possibly due to pandemic fungal diseases destroying bulbs and crops, to particularly cold winters, and to competing market from the Mediterranean countries.
[66] He was concerned about the steady decline in saffron cultivation over the course of the 17th century and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution; the introduction in Europe of easily grown maize and potatoes, which steadily took over lands formerly flush with corms, did not help.
[67] In addition, the elite who traditionally comprised the bulk of the saffron market were now growing increasingly interested in such intriguing new arrivals as chocolate, coffee, tea, and vanilla.
[70] Pennsylvania Dutch saffron was soon being successfully marketed to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean, while healthy demand elsewhere ensured that its listed price on the Philadelphia commodities exchange was set equal to that of gold.
