Norman wrote:I'm talking about a drink of leaves steeped in water and drank for pleasure (ie: the way we treat drink Lipton or Celestial Seasonings)
The legal discussion is about how to prepare it on the Sabbath without breaking the laws of cooking.
Well, good luck looking for that, then.
The Talmud is pretty big, and that's the only reference I could find; it's telling you that root-tea cannot be
consumed on the Sabbath, and it's not the same as what you're looking for.
Two other issues to consider --
Issue the First: Tea involves the tea plant (
Camellia sinensis); if it's just other assorted leaves (or flowers, or whatever), it's a tisane or herbal tea. The Menagier's tisane recipe above does not involve leaves of the tea plant, for example. It is not, as the original posting above described, "actual tea."
So, to go back to another post upthread:
Piers Brent wrote:Small Maters Section - Drinks Seasoned with Sage. Atleast that is where it is in the old Medieval Home Companion version.
I don't have <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060166541?ie=UTF8&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0060166541">A Medieval Home Companion</a> in front of me here at the office, but according to
http://tigerwytch.angelfire.com/recipes.htm the recipe is:
To make a cask of sage-flavored liquid, take two pounds of sage, clip off the stems, and put the leaves in the cask. Have a half ounce of cloves in a little cloth bag hung in the cask on a small cord. You can also put in a half ounce of bay, or an eighth of a pound of Mecca ginger, an eighth of a pound of long pepper, and an eighth of a pound of bay. When you want to make sage-flavored drinks at table in winter, have a ewer of sage water and pour it over white wine in a goblet.
This doesn't convince me of a thriving tea trade, bringing tea leaves from China to France in the 14th century, what with the lack of any reference to anything resembling tea leaves.
It's a "sage-flavored liquid" rather than a stand-alone beverage.
So, to go on, to Issue the Second: the concept of "drinking for pleasure." When we look at medieval beverages, few (including the boozes!) can really be exclusively "for pleasure"; most of them are considered to have some sort of medicinal property. Even though we can be pretty sure that people drank their beverage(s) of choice because they liked 'em, or because it was what was available in their area at that time, there's going to be some learned physician, somewhere, who wants you to know precisely
what condition it will cure. (The
Tacuinum Sanitatis is a good book to look in; even the winds, and different textiles in one's clothing, are broken down into medicinal properties.)
This doesn't necessarily mean that all remedies were drunk for pleasure; clearly quite a lot of concoctions were strictly medicinal. (But this is kind of a lengthier concept, and this post is getting QUITE long enough, don't you think?)
(And anyway, as I'm writing this long post, I see that CdeC has already addressed a lot of these issues.)
Norman wrote:Kakuzo Okakura wrote:The earliest record of tea in European writing is said to be found in the statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the year 879 the main sources of revenue in Canton were the duties on salt and tea. ...
Persians - Arabs -- this is where I think more information is warranted. When did they start drinking it?
Remember my question is about South Eastern Rome, Persia and the Middle East
...and the Caucas is on the borders of even that -- and I know that there are finds there of Chinese trade goods and even local made materials based on Chinese trade -- including women's decorations, silk, paper
...and what about Bukhara, Samarkand (ie: Uzbekistan) - central Asia
It appears that the duties on salt and tea involve trade within China, from what I'm seeing of the aforementioned Arabic traveller's writing in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684807122?ie=UTF8&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0684807122">The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years</a> --
The king has the exclusive right to the income from salt and from a herb which they drink with hot water. It is sold in every city at high prices, and is called sakh. It has more leaves than a clover and is slightly more scented, but is somewhat bitter. Water is boiled and then poured on it ... The total receipts of the public treasury come from poll-tax, salt, and from this herb.
According to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415966906?ie=UTF8&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0415966906">Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia</a>, "Coffee and tea, so popular in the modern Middle East, are relatively recent innovations: The latter is postmedieval and only the former can be called a (late) medieval drink."
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684807122?ie=UTF8&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0684807122">The Middle East</a> does go on with some additional references to tea:
Bernard Lewis wrote:A little later, another writer, the famous al-Biruni, writing in the early eleventh century, gave a fuller description and some information about the cultivation and use of tea in China and Tibet. Tea drinking appears to have been introduced to Iran by the Mongol conquerors in the thirteenth century. It did not, however, become widespread, nor is there evidence of the habit having travelled any further west. The large-scale switch to tea drinking in Iran occurred in the early nineteenth century, when it was reintroduced from Russia. The extensive cultivation of tea did not begin until the twentieth, when it was encouraged by rulers in both Iran and Turkey, no doubt to reduce dependence on coffee, which they could not grow. Tea cultivation remained of relatively minor importance, mainly for local consumption and a small export surplus. A major tea-drinking area is the western Maghreb, where tea is first mentioned in about 1700. It was introduced and sold by French and English merchants who brought it from the East, and saw Northwest Africa as a useful extension to their European markets. Prepared with mint leaves, it has become the national drink of Morocco.
Edited to add this, in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195173368?ie=UTF8&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0195173368">From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East</a>:
Bernard Lewis wrote:Hot drinks come surprisingly late. Fruit juices or infusions may have been heated, though even that is questionable. But the familiar hot drinks, tea, coffee, cocoa, were totally unknown in the Mediterranean and adjoining regions in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. We do find occasional reference in Arab travel books to the infusion of tea leaves in China. But they describe it with puzzlement and distaste, adn don't seem to have been tempted to import this. There is some evidence that when the Mongols conquered Iran in the thirteenth century they brought tea drinking with them, but it didn't take. It wasn't until much later that tea was reintroduced to the Middle East by Europeans. Sometimes it came over land from North China, sometimes by sea from South China. The North Chinese word for tea is chai, the South Chinese tey, two dialectal pronunciations of the same word, designated by the same Chinese character.
Then there's this bit in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0313327734?ie=UTF8&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0313327734">Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia</a>:
Glenn Randall Mack & Asele Surina wrote:Cultural inspiration came not only from the West with Islam but also from China. Tea is perhaps the greatest culinary gift to Central Asia from the East. Though mass consumption of the drink appeared only in the modern era, tea was first introduced to Central Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia from China during the Tan dynasty in the seventh century. The dynsaty exerted its influence from Afghanistan to Korea, and tea and teahouses gradually spread throughout the region. Bricks of tea were transported through Central Asia along the Silk Road to India and Turkey, and eventually into Russia by at least the seventeenth century. Of the three basic categories of tea, green tea (Camellia sinensis) by far is the preference in Central Asia; Russians in the urban areas enjoy black tea, and oolong tea is conspicuously absent. The green tea is generally nonfermented, caffeinated, and yellow in color. Chinese sources point out that early Arab, Tocharian, Uighur, and Bactrian traders made a beeline for the teahouses in Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), the capital of the Tang dynasty and terminus of the silk road.
Norman wrote:Kakuzo Okakura wrote:England welcomed it in 1650 and spoke of it as "That excellent and by all physicians approved China drink, called by the Chineans Tcha, and by other nations Tay, alias Tee."
Who are these other nations that the English speak about? And when did they start drinking it?
Doing a bit more research, this reference comes from one of the first known newspaper
advertisements, in
Politicus; it appears in a few issues from the 1650s: "That excellent and by all Physicians approved, Chinese drink called by the Chineans Tcha, by other nations
Tay or
Tee, is sold at the Sultanesshead, a Cophee House in Sweetings Rents by the Royal Exchange London."
Being an advertisement, though, they're a bit vague on details -- the other nations, or these physicians who are so keen to approve it for consumption.
I think the Dutch tea trade was established by this point, so I'd guess the "other nations" include the Netherlands, at least.
EDITED TO ADD references to tea in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26ref%255F%3Dnb%255Fss%255Fgw%26field-keywords%3Dpepys%2520diary%26url%3Dsearch-alias%253Daps&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957">The Diary of Samuel Pepys</a><img src="https://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=suggestion-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="">, most notably on
25 September 1660 ("I did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before") and also
13 December 1665 ("to Mr. Pierce’s, where he and his wife made me drink some tea").