Category Archives: Environment and Climate

Autumn 2023, Environment and Climate, Family and Household, Posts

Recipes for Sacred Porridge in Post-Earthquake Turkey

Leave a comment

By Su Hyeon Cho

Mid-August is the grape harvest season in Vakfılı, an Armenian village perched on the mountainous region of the southernmost Turkish province of Hatay. Tasting grapes takes the form of ritual in the patient waiting until Surp Asdvadzadzin, the holiday that celebrates the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary by blessing the grapes and cooking a sacred porridge. The prelude to this festive occasion consists of the drumbeats of davul and the blasting of zurna the night before. Cheerful crowds dance around seven steaming cauldrons of harisa in the churchyard overnight. The porridge, made out of sacrificed meat (madagh) and wheat, is simmered overnight on an open fire until the meat disintegrates. The repetitive labour of churning the ingredients into a viscous consistency is key, hence the name harisa (or hrisi in colloquial Arabic), which originated from ‘churning’ or ‘pounding’ in both Armenian and Arabic.

Left, Middle: Distributing harisa during Surp Asdvadzadzin in 2023 (photo credit: Ismail Zubari), Right: The destroyed cross tower on the churchyard of Surp Asdvadzadzin Church, Vakıflı.

 

This year’s Surp Asdvadzadzin was prepared by a much smaller, more dejected crowd, as Lora Baytar Çapar, a resident of Vakıflı, describes in her essay “May the taste of harisa be the same, this holiday lacks its flavour”. Earlier in February this year, a deadly earthquake shook Hatay and the wider region of north Syria and south Turkey, resulting in over 50,000 deaths and the destruction of the livelihoods of millions.

In Vakıflı, villagers also fell victim to the earthquake. Many had left the village by summer. A community centre in the village stood in for the severely damaged churchyard, and candle holders and other ecclesiastical ornaments were brought in to imitate the usual celebration. Yet, the seven once brimming cauldrons were only half full. There were no cheerful rhythms and melodies of davul and zurna. Although the setting may seem insufficient, Çapar underlines, continuing the tradition of cooking harisa is the community’s will to survive.

A cat sitting on the rubble of Hünkar Mescidi in the old town of Antakya in February 2023 (photo credit: Daniel Thorpe)

 

During my visit to Hatay in September, I witnessed construction work in progress, a series of emptied plots of land and what locals call “camp cities” (çadır kentler) along the road from Antakya to the coastal district of Samandağ. After an hour of dusty travel, I reached the Hızır Aleyhisselam Türbesi, where the suprahuman Hızır (al-Khidr) is believed to have met with Moses. In the vicinity of this spiritual centre for the Alawite community, there is a communal kitchen area where harisa is prepared throughout the year. As harisa is the most celebrated sacrificial meal in the region, locals vow to make a sacrificial offering (called adak in Turkish) for the healing, fertility, and safety of their beloved. On that account, Turkish guest workers in Europe (gurbetçi) hurriedly returned to their hometown shortly after the earthquake and cooked harisa.My interlocutors pointed out that cooking harisa is a form of prayer, and post-earthquake harisa reflects this belief even more strongly.

In the wake of the fortieth-day commemoration after the earthquake, Mişel Orduluoğlu pens an essay grieving for the capital Antakya. Orduluoğlu notes that fortieth day signals the departure of the souls that are no longer with us. The writer adds the period of “five Friday prayers, five shabbat meals, and five Sunday masses with candlelight and frankincense” had passed without Antakya’s usual soundscape, a mixture of call for prayer (ezan), church bells (çan), and Jewish canton (hazzan). “When the city has lost its spiritual sites, then where should one convene the funeral procession?” the writer rhetorically asks. The earthquake did not select its victims, and each community, of different ethno-religious backgrounds, is going through the same pain – together. Orduoğlu remarks that harisa is a means of collective mourning for the loss of the diversity of Antakya that residents have long been proud of.

Habib-i Neccar Mosque, built in the mid-7th-century, is one of many buildings with historical and religious significance in Antakya that was severely damaged during the earthquake (photo credit: Daniel Thorpe)

 

No writer would set preparing harisa in a closed, family kitchen. It is a communal dish, cooked in bulk for sharing at sites where communities feel a spiritual connection. The new kitchen setting, surrounded by rubble and debris, is an odd spectacle. In his essay, Hakan Mercan painfully details the destruction of historical buildings, from Habib-i Neccar Mosque to St. Pierre Church, allegedly the first mosque in Anatolia and the oldest cave church in the world, respectively. Amid despair, the author notes, the survival of the Hızır Aleyhisselam Türbesi gave solace to the community. The essay concludes with reclaiming harisa’s boisterous presence, which reads, “Nothing would remain the same as before, but let’s not surrender to the shadow of hopelessness… Excited children will impatiently stand in a long queue in front of the cauldrons of harisa, burning the frankincense. We will bloom again and again.”

Vernacular writing about harisa in the wake of the earthquake culminates in a recipe for compassion, sharing, solidarity, miracle work, and hope. As such, food writing on harisa does not resemble other food writing. It often contains wordy headnotes about pain and loss, without much in the way of culinary instruction or gastronomic pleasure. Gastronomic pleasure is nowhere to be found. Their recipes for harisa are in the future tense, waiting for the joviality to return, the community to revive.

Su Hyeon Cho is a DPhil candidate in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral project ‘Saints and States in a Plastic Bowl: Tales of a Sacred Porridge in Unlikely State’ focuses on harisa-cooking Alawite, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian communities from Hatay to explore the transcending power of rituals in perpetual ruptures from anthropological perspectives. Before returning to academia, she worked in different capacities at research institutions, diplomatic missions, and the United Nations in the Middle East.

Antiquity, Environment and Climate, Posts, Summer 2023

The Little Mermaid and The RP

Leave a comment

By Melissa Reynolds

Disney’s animated The Little Mermaid (1989) is the first movie I remember going to see at the theater. In case you’re wondering, that makes me two things: 1) old and 2) the target demographic for the 2023 live-action remake of the animated classic. Not only do I have fond-but-hazy memories of hearing “Kiss the Girl” and “Part of Your World” for the first time, lo those many years ago, I also now have a daughter through whom I can experience that magic all over again. The movie industry may be selling nostalgia these days, but as it turns out, I’m buying.

Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid (2023).

All of this is to say: it should come as no surprise that I loved every minute of the live-action The Little Mermaid, released in theaters this past May. Can we talk about Halle Bailey for a minute? That voice! Her gorgeous face! The athleticism required to appear as if she was actually swirling, floating, and diving underwater! She was magnificent, as was the whole world conjured in the film. Somehow, Halle and the wizards behind the computers at Disney studios made mermaids, sea witches, and singing crabs feel real.

When I began thinking about The Little Mermaid and its relationship to the RP, my first inclination was to highlight our many posts on love magic. After all, love spells like this one from eighteenth-century Russia or this one in a sixteenth-century English manuscript aren’t so very different from the spell Ursula weaves for Ariel. True, neither of these magical recipes requires a mermaid to give up her voice in exchange for legs, but grinding the heart of a snake into powder to sprinkle in a woman’s food as a love potion isn’t so very far removed from Ursula’s oeuvre.

https://youtu.be/Y0JoW27fxUw
Ursula’s love magic seems to require a tongue of some kind, the winds of the Caspian Sea, and of course, Ariel’s voice. Scene from Disney’s animated The Little Mermaid (1989).

Love magic we’ve got a-plenty in our archives, but that wasn’t what stood out in my viewing of the live-action The Little Mermaid. For me, the thrill of the remake came from seeing Ariel’s underwater existence come to vivid, three-dimensional life. We live in an entertainment era chock-a-block full of CGI effects, and even still, I found myself agog at the visuals in the film. How did they make Ariel’s hair swirl like that? The visual effects actually changed how I thought about a story I know by heart. Because Ariel’s CGI-conjured world felt both real and fantastical, her deep desire to give it all up for the mundanity of carriage rides and dinner conversation (or lack thereof) came into sharper focus for me.

In the Disney version, Ariel’s choice to leave the water comes with consequences: she has to give up her voice to grow legs. She can’t be what she was underwater when on dry land.

In that respect, she’s kind of like coral—or, at least, she’s kind of like coral as premodern philosophers understood it. As Laurence Totelin wrote in her 2016 post, The Coral and the Seal: Ancient Amulets Against All Ills, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that naturalists discovered that coral was in fact an animal—or, more precisely, thousands of marine animals whose secreted exoskeletons form the structures we call coral. Before then, natural philosophers believed that coral began its life underwater as a plant and then transformed into stone when it came into contact with air. Like Ariel, coral became wholly different when it crossed from the underwater world into our own.

Because it transformed from plant into stone, premodern people believed that coral had transformative properties when used as a medicinal or magical ingredient. Totelin wrote about ancient recipes in which coral was used to staunch blood, to whiten teeth, or to protect against all manner of evils. Other posts in the RP archives show coral being used in recipes centuries later: in the medieval French Livre de simple médicines, in recipe collections from early modern Austria, and in published recipe books from seventeenth-century England, to name just a few. The prevalence of coral in recipes spanning from the ancient to the early modern world points to its perceived power as a transformative ingredient. Like a singing mermaid, coral was precious because it was that rare object that could cross from the watery world into our own. The very fact of its presence on land suggested a wondrous metamorphosis.

Illustration of a cabinet filled with medical ingredients, including coral (second row, right). Livre des simples médecines, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS n.a. fr. 6593, fol. 12322.

The worldview that brought us mermaids and medicinal coral may be long gone, but in so many ways we remain fascinated and mystified by the creatures of the deep—and for good reason! Every day scientists discover new life lurking in the depths, some of it nearly as fantastical as singing mer-people (though not, perhaps, as photogenic as Halle Bailey). Who knows? Maybe somewhere in those depths is an organism with powerful, transformative properties of the kind premodern philosophers could only imagine for coral.

A small selection of deep sea creatures from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. I’m told none have the singing voice of Halle Bailey.

But just as Ariel was up against Ursula’s deadline in The Little Mermaid, we have our own deadline to meet when it comes to marine life. At the rate our oceans have warmed this summer, we may lose the world’s coral reefs within a few years. Early modern naturalists would be appalled—as should we. Deep sea creatures we can only imagine may become extinct before we have a chance to discover them.

So, if there’s one lesson I think we should take from this summer’s excitement for The Little Mermaid and premodern philosophers’ misapprehensions about coral, it’s this: the ocean may be inhospitable to humans and filled with creatures beyond our wildest imagination, but, in the lightly edited words of our marine heroine, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a “part of [our] world” worth saving.

In the spirit of remembering those who have been “part of our world,” I’d like to take this opportunity to offer enormous thanks to our co-editor, Clare Gordon Bettencourt, who is stepping down from our editorial board. Clare first joined the RP team with me in 2019 as a social media coordinator. If you’ve enjoyed our Twitter feed over the past few years or felt buoyed by the RP’s community online, it’s because of Clare’s work amplifying new scholarship, celebrating accomplishments, and bringing people together in ways that made us all stronger. Of course, Clare is also a researcher and scholar in her own right, and we were lucky to feature her post on “Food Identity Standards and Recipes as Legislation,” based on her dissertation research, in 2021. We are so grateful for her contributions and wish her well in her new career at Santa Clara University.

Antiquity, Environment and Climate, Ingredients, Posts, Series: Metals, Series: Minerals

A valuable ancient commodity: Miltos of Kea

Leave a comment

By Effie Photos-Jones

The island of Kea in the North Cyclades is by some travel agents’ reckoning the (rich) Athenians’ ‘best-kept secret’, their beautifully-designed stone-built villas merging seamlessly with the barren landscape overlooking the blue Aegean Sea (Fig 1).

Fig. 1 Private house in Orkos, looking east. To the SE on can see the island of Kythnos. (c) Effie Photos-Jones

The scenery is even more spectacular in the south and in the east of the island. Although sparsely populated today, this area was from the mid of the 19th century and well into the early part of the 20th century, a hive of activity, on account of the extensive underground workings of the seams of lead and iron ores. Today, miners’ cottages stand derelict, perhaps waiting for a buyer to convert them into holiday homes. But the ground underneath Petroussa, Orkos or Trypospilies (Fig 2 map) is riddled with galleries, some dating as early as the 4th century BCE. These early galleries were opened with one aim in mind: to access miltos (Fig. 3c).

Fig. 2. A map of Kea with its four ancient city states and the miltos names Orkos, Petroussa, Trypospilies. (c) Effie Photos-Jones

The material they called miltos is a composite one consisting of naturally fine iron oxides (hematite/goethite) with small amounts of calcite, quartz and clay minerals. It made its first appearance in the Bronze Age Linear B clay tablets  as mi-to-we-sa. The Mycenaeans, acutely aware of colours, had many names for red, miltos being, we think, a red with a deep purple hue. It would be many centuries before Kea miltos would surface again in the literary record, always as the colour red but also as a whole host of materials whose colour merited that name. In the 4th century BCE Theophrastus (On Stones, 52) tells us that builders and joiners used it to draw a line with, workers in shipyards used it for ship maintenance and if the miltos came from the island of Lemnos, then it was used as a medicine, as well, and against ‘poison’.

From the above it is clear that miltos was a valuable commodity. But how valuable? An Athenian decree carved on a marble inscription found in the Athenian Agora and dated c. 360 BCE tells us exactly how valuable. The decree was issued by Athens to all the three city states of Kea (Ioulis, Korisseia and Karthaia (Fig. 2) requiring each one of them to export miltos in its entirety from their respective mines, exclusively to Athens; also for the Keans to bear the charges for the transport and only in an Athenian boat! The tone is severe and the penalties dire. The decree appears to openly invite a slave to denounce his master, if the latter is suspected of selling his miltos to a third party. It stipulates that the slave would be gaining not only his freedom but would also receive half of his masters’ estate!

Another contemporary inscription, more informative than severe, also from Athens mentions miltos mixed with pitch, the miltopissa. And at an even later date (3rd century CE), the author of an agricultural manual, recommends miltos for pest control. It suggests miltos should be smeared around the roots of trees ‘to prevent trees and vines from being harmed by worms or anything else’.

So what was the rationale behind all these diverse uses of miltos? was it a case of ‘since we have it …we might as well use it!’ or did antiquity have a more subtle understanding of this valuable natural material which has so far eluded us? We have been investigating….

As was mentioned miltos consists of very fine iron oxides with particle sizes ranging in the nanosized range. There are also impurities of lead, zinc, copper and arsenic within. But beyond its mineral components, Kean miltos also had an organic load. By that we mean microorganisms like bacteria, fungi and other which live around miltos, are feeding on miltos and also alter the environment around it (Fig 3). We became aware of these microorganisms through DNA sequencing of the miltos samples. Given that red Kean miltos was never heated but used in the ‘as was’ state it is almost certain that these microorganisms would have been carried along with the minerals. When the microorganisms died, they would release biomolecules (secondary metabolites), many of which are known to have numerous beneficial properties, as antibacterials, antifungals, antioxidants or other.

The diagram below (Fig. 4) gives a schematic illustration of the dual nature of Kean miltos, as a combination of both a biotic (microorganisms and biomolecules) and an abiotic (elements, nanoparticles, minerals) component.  It is the ‘intersection’ between the two components that gives rise to miltos’ diverse applications.

Fig. 4. Miltos’ diverse properties deriving from their biotic and abiotic components. (c) Effie Photos-Jones

When miltos is mixed with resin or pitch and applied on wood it is the toxic trace elements within which would inhibit the growth of deleterious biofilms. The same mixture could be used as pest control, by preventing the growth of microorganisms/ insects threatening tree health. If on the other hand, when miltos was mixed with water, the toxic trace elements within, mostly insoluble, would have little effect. Instead, it would be its biome, in the shape of bacteria which help the growth of plants, by making nutrients bioavailable at the root level, which would render miltos a good fertiliser. In short, each application appears, to have called upon and with confidence, either the biotic or abiotic component of miltos depending on the ‘problem’ at hand. No wonder the Athenians were taking no chances with the Keans and their miltos.

We have for long considered miltos a good and ‘special’ red pigment. But all along, it has been way more than that. The Athenians had made a shrewd assessment of this natural material and as an all-powerful city state they imposed their might on their allies. With the demise of the Athenian hegemony in the region, the importance of Kean miltos faded only to give prominence to that of Cappadocia traded through its Black Sea port of Sinope (Sinopic miltos).

Further Reading

Lytle, E. (2013). Farmers Into Sailors: Ship Maintenance, Greek Agriculture, and the Athenian Monopoly on Kean Ruddle (IG II 2 1128). Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 53(3), 520-550.

Photos-Jones, E., Cottier, A., Hall, A. J., & Mendoni, L. G. (1997). Kean Miltos: The well-known iron oxides of antiquity. The Annual of the British School at Athens, 92, 359-371.

Photos-Jones, E. et al. (2018). Greco-Roman mineral (litho) therapeutics and their relationship to their microbiome: The case of the red pigment miltos. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 22, 179-192.

Effie Photos-Jones

Glasgow, UK

EPJ is a Senior Honorary Researcher at the University of Glasgow at the Schools of Humanities and of Earth and Geographical Sciences. She has been researching the metals and industrial minerals of the Greco-Roman world for over 40 years and more recently their pharmacological applications

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early Modern, Environment and Climate, Family and Household, Ingredients, Magic, Material History, Posts, Series: Charms

Powerful Bundles: The Materiality of Protection Amulets in Early Modern Switzerland

Leave a comment

By Eveline Szarka

If you shop around for a protection amulet today, you will most likely stumble upon ornamental jewellery. More often than not these pieces are round in shape, and pieces featuring Kabbalistic or runic symbols are especially popular. The term ‘amulet’ is described as a “piece of jewellery some people wear because they think it protects them from bad luck, illness, etc” in the OED. However, when it comes to premodern protection practices, the efficacy of amulets depended on both the production process and the materials and ingredients used. There are two additional significant differences between contemporary and early modern understandings and applications of amulets: First, in early modern Europe, amulets were not only carried around as mobile objects but also attached to houses or buried into the thresholds. Second, amulets were often used to protect valuable livestock against diseases thought to be caused by supernatural agents.

In my research, I understand amulets as powerful bundles, often of diverse materials, which take effect through physical contact between the amulet and the object (person, animal, house) to be protected. As I discuss below, the materials commonly used include herbs, plants, food stuff, words (both spoken and written) and time. For example, it was believed that gathering plants at a certain time of the day or on a holiday enhanced the amulet’s power.

While many recipe books containing instructions on how to make amulets are now lost, it is a stroke of luck that some 17th and 18th-century handbooks are still preserved in the State Archive of the Canton of Berne, Switzerland thanks to early 20th century folklorists and collectors. Unfortunately, these books are difficult to date and connect with specific authors, owners and users. However, comparisons with court documents show that people commonly produced and applied amulets throughout the early modern period. For example, in a court case in Basel 1719, a folk healer called Friedrich Fritschi defended himself for putting hazel rods underneath a window as a way to protect the house owner from a spectre.[i] Although we do not know much about these books, the recipes and the arrangements of the instructions offer valuable insights into the contemporary relevance and ideas about the efficacy of such practices and artefacts. For instance, instructions about the production of amulets are written alongside suggestions on how to get rid of cheese-eating mice, indicating that the production of amulets against evil forces belonged to everyday house care (Hauspflege) .

Basic materials and ingredients of an amulet: linen, a cord, rods, plants, salt and bread. Source. E. Szarka

Let us now turn to an example that illustrates the concepts underpinning the efficacy of the protection amulet:

To insert into houses and barns in case of foul ghosts

Take some good vines, rods, melissa, brown periwinkles, communion bread and salt, [and bind] everything together in the three holy names with a string. Make as many as you need and drill [a hole] in both the barn and above the doors and thresholds. Put a small bundle in every hole and speak: “I put you in here in the name of God”.[ii]

This instruction exemplifies the three main production steps required to ensure the efficacy of the early modern amulet. First, people needed to gather the listed materials and ingredients. Some plants were commonly believed to be inherently powerful against evil forces, such as hazel rods. Salt and communion bread – liturgically and ritually blessed objects (so-called “sacramentals”) – were reoccurring ingredients in these kinds of recipes. Sometimes, makers also used or added slips of paper furnished with bible verses to the amulet to intensify its efficacy. Second, one had to mix the materials and ingredients, form a bundle and tie it with a string. Finally, the amulet had to be applied accordingly. It could be attached to an animal’s neck, to a door, buried into the thresholds or hidden in a drill hole above the house so that it kept malevolent entities from entering. People considered uttering sacred words both during the production and application process to be highly potent.

Drill hole in a wooden beam for a protection amulet found in an 18th century house in rural Basel, State Archive of the Canton of Basel-Land, SL 5250.5024. Source: E. Szarka

As we have seen, the gathering of materials and ingredients, the production as well as the application of the amulet were considered necessary consecutive steps to accumulate divine power. The ingredients were either inherently powerful or charged with sanctity in a liturgical context. Language, both uttered orally during these three steps or added in the form of paper slips, formed essential material ingredients that enhanced the amulet’s efficacy as it drew upon divine power. Similarly, the timing of the production could play a crucial role. For example, one had to collect the plants or apply the amulet at a particular holiday or a sacred time of the day. Time, just like language, acted as a “material” component charged with sacred power that could be transferred to the amulet through the specific production circumstances. Once applied to houses or animals, these effective little packages containing both visible and invisible materialities provided a metaphysical shield to unseen forces.

As I argue in my dissertation on ghosts and spirits in Post-Reformation Switzerland[iii], early modern people believed the world to be permeated by multiple invisible forces. Handling constant supernatural attacks from spirits and witches called for specific measures. Women and men tried to tackle and manipulate the supernatural sphere with elaborate rituals written down in recipe books. Practices concerned with amulet making disclose different concepts of causal relations in the physical and metaphysical world. Above all, they mirror a specific understanding of materiality, according to which certain plants and aliments, but also language and time, contain power that people can accumulate, enhance, and transfer to other materials, places and living beings to preserve their living environments.

[i] State Archive of the Canton of Basel, Criminalia 4, 22.

[ii] State Archive of the Canton of Berne, DQ 888, translated from the original German text by E. Szarka.

[iii] Eveline Szarka, Sinn für Gespenster. Spukphänomene in der reformierten Schweiz (1570-1730), doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich, 2020, upcoming Spring 2021.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Academic biography:

Eveline Szarka completed her PhD at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her dissertation focuses on the impact of the Protestant Reformation on the belief in ghosts and specters in Switzerland from 1570-1730. This year, she was granted a scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation to visit Harvard University and University College London from 2020-2022 as a postdoctoral fellow. However, due to the pandemic, she will likely postpone the start of the fellowship until 2021. Eveline’s  upcoming project focuses on handbooks about magic tricks and life hacks as related to the history of knowledge and science (1650-1850). Her research interests lie in early modern world views, historical conceptions of (im)materiality, causality, and magic as well as the potentials of human manipulation of the physical world.