Cinnamon, Cassia and Somaliland

Abstract

THE ANCIENT SEMITES sometimes took their tribal totems from trees, which they thought of as animate. The leaves, bark, gum or wood of such trees they conceived as preserving the attributes of the tree itself. Thickets, groves or forests of such trees were sacred places, to trespass in which was disastrous. Setting fire to such a thicket to bring the ground under cultivation is said, in more than one Arabian story, to have brought about the departure of spirits of the trees in the form of flying serpents who brought death to the intruders. From very early times certain trees and plants were thought to possess special virtues for ceremonial purification, and it is not impossible that such uses antedated animal sacrifice as a means of atonement to the higher powers.' Echoes of such beliefs may be found in the Old Testament fable of the trees that chose the bramble to be their king.2 Among known products of Arabia, those especially valued for purposes of purification were the lemon grass (idhkhir ) 3-of which the woody root is more fragrant than the hollow stem (Andropogon schoenanthus)-which grows tall and strong in the valleys of streams in both Arabia and Somaliland; the senna (Cassia angustifolia), a leguminous shrub native in the Somali uplands; the myrrh (Balsamodendron myrrha), a small tree whose rudimentary leaves offer little evaporating surface to the blazing sun of its native uplands; the acacia (Acacia seyal), yielding a valued hard wood and a gum of specific virtue; the balsam (Balsamodendron gileadense), a poorer cousin of the myrrh; the sweet flag or calamus (Acorus calamus) ; the ladanum or rock rose (Cistus villosus); the fragrant blooming kadi or screw pine (Pandanus odoratissimus) ; and most valued of all, the frankincense (Boswellia Carterii), a fully-leaved small tree which requires more water than the myrrh and grows therefore in val-