The spread of saffron in Europe can be largely attributed to the spread of the Roman Empire, but when the empire collapsed in 476 CE, ushering in the Middle Ages, saffron production declined. It took another three hundred years before the Moors – Muslims from North Africa – brought saffron to Spain, where they had established hegemony in the Iberian peninsula that would last for eight hundred years.
During this period, considered the “Dark Ages” throughout Europe, arts, culture and science in the Islamic empire flourished. With their arrival in Spain, the Muslim conquerors established irrigation systems that dramatically increased productivity of native produce but also allowed for the import and cultivation of the foods of their homelands – notably the saffron crocus. Areas like La Mancha became centres of saffron production, with fortunes being built upon its trade. Several family coats of arms and municipal crests from this area of Spain prominently feature the saffron crocus, and the Spanish word for saffron, azafrán, comes from the Arabic word for the spice: zafaran. Both words are pronounced very much like “saffron”, with either a harder “z” sound at the beginning of each and more pronounced “ah” sounds in the middle, or with a “th” sound.
The Moors’ use of saffron was both culinary and medicinal. Evidence of their influence in Spain can still be seen in saffron-infused paella, perhaps the most recognisable and traditional of Spanish dishes and one which bears a close resemblance to the layered rice dishes of the Middle East.
Physicians throughout the medieval Islamic world were very clear on saffron use as a curative, often dedicating whole texts to the specifics of its medical properties. In the twelfth century, the Persian physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna) noted its usefulness in everything from diseases of the eye and liver to respiratory distress and gynaecological problems. Ibn Sina’s Arabic contemporary Ibn Nafis Qarshi also recommended saffron as a cardiac tonic, to improve complexion and even as a hypnotic and cure for headache and melancholy. Even today, saffron pickers and packers often speak anecdotally about how saffron’s heady aroma can induce a euphoric state, leading modern researchers to scientifically explore its well-documented historical use as an antidepressant. In the Middle Ages, it was also universally known to be an astringent that was ideal for purifying ill-humoured organs, skin lesions and the like.
While the Iberian Peninsula remained dedicated to the use of saffron, thanks to centuries of Muslim influence, the rest of Europe did not seem to have consistently continued its use until the Crusades brought Europeans back into the Middle East.
A military engagement waged by European Christians, eager to wrest the holy city of Jerusalem from Muslim control, the Crusades took place from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. Crusaders, mostly from France, Germany and England, spent months and sometimes years in the Muslim territories of the Middle East, entering through the Bosporus into the Byzantine Empire through Constantinople (later Istanbul). The Byzantine Empire had long controlled the major trade routes into the Far East and was a conduit for the import of saffron, which was used widely throughout the empire for medicine and perfumery. This love of saffron did not wane during the Middle Ages, even as Turkish Muslim invasions encroached closer and closer to Constantinople, making trade even more perilous. The Turks themselves had been well known in antiquity as growers and traders of the saffron crocus. The first-century Roman writer Columella wrote of the famed saffron of Corycus, a town in Cilicia – an area that correlates to Çukurova in modern-day Turkey.
They say that Timolus and Corycus are considered famous for the saffron-flower, and Judaea and Arabia for their precious scents; but that our own community is not destitute of aforesaid plants, for in many sections of the city we see at one time cassia putting forth its leaves, again the frankincense plant, and gardens blooming with myrrh and saffron.
Columella’s “own community” was the region of what is today Cádiz in Spain.
The extended time the Crusaders spent pushing forward through the Byzantine Empire towards Jerusalem must surely have reacquainted these Europeans with an array of exotic spices and foods to be had there, including saffron. The Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099, occupying the city for nearly a hundred years and then again for a brief twenty-year period in the 13th century.
An occupied city requires oversight by its conquerors, and Europeans, acting as administrators and soldiers, took up residence in Jerusalem. Many took Middle Eastern wives, who brought saffron-laden cooking into their homes, along with saffron perfumes and medicines. The interplay between the European expatriate community and the natives of the lands they had conquered naturally meant that the Europeans developed a taste for saffron, and they took the spice back to their homes in Europe, often using covert means: spiriting the cormels away in hidden compartments of containers, buried under other spices, or wrapped in rugs and other fabrics.
The resurgence in the European taste for saffron during this time is well documented. It reached its peak alongside the high point of the bubonic plague epidemic, for which saffron was widely believed to be an effective cure.
In terms of cuisine, we see saffron appear in recipes and shopping lists throughout medieval Western Europe. One medieval Flemish cookbook offers a recipe for a sauce to accompany rabbit, which includes cinnamon, saffron, ginger and sugar. A shopping list for a wedding feast outlined in the French cookbook Le Ménagier de Paris, penned in the late 13th century, included “long pepper, galingale [galangal, which is similar to ginger]; cloves, saffron and other spices”. The most reliable access to saffron for Europeans at this time was through Venice, which had long straddled the line between loyalty to Christianity and loyalty to commerce, and which was known internationally for the brutal lengths it would go to protect its lucrative business as a middleman in the East–West spice trade. Venice was ideally situated on the Adriatic Sea, where it had obtained vast trading rights, and Venetians were eminently skilled as mariners to make the journey to Constantinople. This well-established trade route became one of the most prominent maritime silk routes and is now recognied by UNESCO.
When Venice, acting as an independent city-state, orchestrated the attack and pillage of Constantinople in 1204 under the Crusaders’ flag, a door was opened to untold wealth via the spice trade. It was only a matter of time before the Venetians were trading on the silk routes into Persia and other outreaches of the Mongol Empire, which was spreading so fast that, by the end of the thirteenth century, it would cover most of the Middle East, all of China, Southeast Asia, parts of Russia and the northern outposts of the Indian subcontinent, most notably Kashmir. Trading with the Mongols meant trading with those who controlled the saffron market. Some Crusaders brought back with them not just saffron but the corms required to grow it in their home countries. This was no small feat, because the punishments for taking saffron corms from Muslim trading areas were severe and often included death. Still, a number of efforts were clearly successful because a small but pervasive saffron-growing culture blossomed in Western Europe.
Excerpted with permission from Saffron: A Global History, Ramin Ganeshram, Pan Macmillan.
