SC - FW: Spices Used as a Form of Currency?

[David Dendy]

Greetings from Francesco

It's taken me a while to get to this question below (I'm way behind on
e-mail), but here's what I can toss in.

I don't call to mind any reference to spices as currency among the
Mediterranean or Middle Eastern Arabs (which doesn't mean it doesn't
exist -- just that I haven't hit upon it -- but I don't read Arabic).
However, in the Islamized area of the medieval Sudan, the vast strip across
Africa from the Atlantic nearly to the Indian Ocean, south of the Sahara
desert, spices do seem often to have been used as a means of exchange (in
that area they did not use coined money, but there were certain goods, such
as cowrie shells, which were accepted as payments at fairly standardized
values in a way which rather set them above normal barter). Ibn Battuta, the
famous Muslim world-traveler of the 14th century (the Arab world's answer to
Marco Polo), found when he travelled in this area of black Africa that
spices were what he should carry to make purchases. On a trip eastward from
Timbuktu, for example, he says: "Every night we stayed in a village and
bought what we were in need of in the way of wheat and butter for salt,
spices and glass trinkets." [quoted in Ross E. Dunn, *The Adventures of Ibn
Battuta* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 304-305.
There are more similar examples in the complete memoirs of Ibn Battuta, but
I have only this selection at hand]

Such a custom of payment continued for centuries in sub-Saharan Africa, and
will be found in the accounts of nineteenth century travelers. For example,
Gustave Nachtigal, a German who in 1869-74 was one of the first Europeans to
cross the African continent, found that from Bornu eastwards through to the
Nile spices of one sort or another were used for payments. For example:
"Strips of cotton cloth were the usual medium of exchange, along with
*kohol*, *kimba* pepper, glass beads and the like" [Gustav Nachtigal,
*Sahara and Sudan, Volume 4: Wadai and Darfur*, trans. by Allan G. B. Fisher
and Humphrey J. Fisher (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1971),  p. 26] "In Bornu .
. . the favourite mediums of exchange were *kimba* pepper, cowrie shells and
*kohol* . . ." [vol. 4, p. 31] " As mediums of exchange in the Fitri region
paper, red Sudan pepper, *kimba*, salt, cowrie shells and beads are much in
demand, but onions and garlic are also used." [vol. 4, p. 37]

Kimba pepper is *Xylopia aethiopica*. It is a pod off a tree which grows
only in Africa south of the Sahara. The taste is like a very pungent black
pepper, even a little numbing on the taste buds. I've managed to get hold of
a supply, and will soon have it in the web-catalogue, once I've calculated a
price.

Red Sudan pepper is the hot African variety of capsicum pepper (African bird
pepper).

I hope this may be useful,
David Dendy / ddendy at silk.net
partner in Francesco Sirene, Spicer / sirene at silk.net
Visit our Website at http://www.silk.net/sirene/
>Subject: Spices Traded as a Form of Currency?
>Date: Sunday, May 21, 2000 11:37PM
>
>I've run out of ideas and am hoping someone from the list will be able to
>help me out.  Is there someone (anyone?) making up the list who may have
>run
>across documentation sources for spices used as currency by Arab
>merchants?
>
>In my research into spices and trade, I've seen evidence (several places)
>that Europeans used spices -- peppercorns, for example -- as a form of
>currency.  But nowhere have I found references to Muslim merchants using
>spices as "legal tender."
>
>The value placed on spices was often greater than that given to gold or
>jewels and I know that ancient cities were founded on the wealth of
>Muslim
>spice merchants.  Does anyone out there know how to find out if Arab
>merchants used spices as a form of currency as well as a tradable
>commodity?
>
>Any assistance that surfaces would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Izdihara al Hakima bint durr
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