Almonds Along the Silk Road
The Exchange and Adaptation of Ideas from West to East
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.29123Keywords:
Almonds, silk road, foodways, china, india, medicinal properties, ancient Greece, ancient rome, Abbasid Caliphate, food and medicine, ayurvedicAbstract
This is a story of almonds and the passage of ideas eastward along the various routes that have come to be known as the Silk Road. While we normally think of exotic goods travelling westward, there was also a significant trade in the other direction, to China and south to India. Both the almond and ideas about how to use them made this journey. For example, a Chinese pharmacist will explain that among various properties of almonds, they suppress coughs and are useful for treating lung ailments. This is the same advice offered by Greek physician Galen of Pergamum nearly two millennia ago. A practioner of Ayurvedic medicine in India would suggest that almonds are fattening and serve as an aphrodisiac, but can be difficult to digest, again echoing ancient Greek medical ideas. These similarities are no coincidence. Despite the very different structure of these three medical systems, almonds were employed in similar ways in each. How this confluence of ideas might have taken place and the passage of almond uses eastward along the Silk Road is the topic of this article.
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