Mabrouk takes a sack of seeds, slowly pouring them out into an iron pot connected to a large metal machine. He slowly lets the air into the pile of dark seeds before he turns on the machine, and out comes thick, dark oil falling into a colander and through it into a large jar. When the jar is half full, Mabrouk picks it up and puts the oil through another strainer before sealing it in plastic bottles. He writes the name of the type of fennel seeds from which the oil is made on the bottles and puts them on a shelf next to others filled with different types of oil. “Each one is for a client who placed an order earlier in the day and who will be coming back in the afternoon to pick it up,” he said. photo: Sherif Sonbol This is a relatively easy morning for Mabrouk, who has been extracting oil from seeds in the heart of the Tarbiaat Al-Attarin, the spice-sellers' market, in the Al-Azhar district of Islamic Cairo for the past 15 years. On a busier day Mabrouk and other workers typically have much more work to do preparing oil for merchants who stop by to pick up large orders from the wholesale stores of Islamic Cairo to take them to their shops all over the city and all over the country too. The Tarbiaat Al-Attarin is a wholesale district where all types of spices, old and new and from all the continents, are sold in large quantities after being graded, dried and prepared for use. photo: Sherif Sonbol This is the place where a keen cook might go in order to find a specific type of cumin or a rare type of black pepper. It is also the place where sellers blend their own mixes of spices, selling them as tried-and-trusted recipes that can do anything from help make a spicy and tender roast or be added to the food of a first-time mother to help her look after her new-born child. There are even spices that can help ward off negative household vibes and replace them with positive energy. “We have spices for cooking, but also for medication, beautification and more,” Samir Alfi, in the business for over four decades and a third-generation master of the spices trade, says. Alfi says that spices remain a great attraction for all Egyptians, “who love spices with a passion,” he adds. “It is about the Egyptian cuisine. We have a very diverse cuisine that comes with a very diverse mix of spices, some from India, others from South America and many from across Asia.” “We have spices that help to strengthen men's virility and others that help give a woman a perfect complexion and some that help bring joy to the house and ward off the evil eye.” Large stores have a diverse selection of spices. Some have five types of black pepper sold at prices ranging from LE80 to LE180 per kilogramme. Some have one type of pumice stone used to scrub away at dry skin from Sudan, while others have four types from all over Africa and Asia. Some only sell spices, while others also sell dried fruit and nuts, either all year long or only in the month of Ramadan. photo: Sherif Sonbol Hamada Mustafa, in the business for 30 years, says he used to sell dried fruit and nuts for 12 months of the year. But not now, he added. “The past three years have seen a considerable decline in sales, especially this last year, so now we only get dried fruit and nuts for the month of Ramadan. Even then we are not sure we are going to be selling enough, given the economic crisis we are going through,” he explains. The crisis has left its mark on Tarbiaat Al-Attarin, with spices trading for higher prices, but shoppers, including those visiting stores around the city, going for smaller quantities. This has not stopped imports, however. Mustafa Kamel, another old hand, says that he has been sticking to his list of imports from India, Pakistan, Turkey and Sudan. “We are getting lesser quantities, but we stick to our selection and have even added new items,” Kamel explains. The fixed items that every seller includes are cumin, black pepper, ginger and cinnamon. However, Kamel says that over the years and with the development of cooking, the spice-sellers have had to introduce new items to fit the new recipes being used. In the past, strictly Turkish, Egyptian and Syrian cuisine was the rule, this having been established for at least two centuries, but now more and more people are looking for the spices used in Indian and Chinese cooking as well, he says. “We have to keep up with the development of cooking,” Kamel adds. He puts the innovations down to the many cooking programmes on TV and radio that have been introducing international recipes. They are also related to the waves of immigration that have come to the country, bringing their spices and recipes with them. photo: Sherif Sonbol The large presence of Syrians in Egypt over the past few years, for example, is said in Tarbiaat Al-Attarin to have brought in several new items and reminded the market of some items that were common over the past century when Egypt had a large shawam (Levantine) community. This has meant that the spice-sellers have had to diversify the products they offer. It has also meant diversifying the mixes they prepare. “In the past, I used to make mixed spices that would help young women put on weight because that was considered to be beautiful. Over recent years, diet mixes have been more in demand,” Kamel explains. The change of fashions has also brought other things to the spice district. It has brought about electrical oil-extraction and seed-graining machines that have replaced manual methods. It has meant easier packaging and more modern display methods. According to Hala Barakat, a food heritage researcher and the author of a book on spices in Egypt, spices have long been indications of wealth and political stability. The larger the variety of spices, the more wealth and the better the access to world markets, she says. The rule of the ancient Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC, Barakat notes, was a high point of the Egyptian Empire, and as a result it was also a high point in bringing in spices not known before on the Egyptian market. The same thing could be said of the rule of the Arabs, whose expanding wealth encouraged the pursuit of more diverse and exotic commodities, including spices. The value of spices was always related to their availability and whether or not they had to be brought from remote countries. “This is why there was a time when black pepper was particularly expensive,” she says. According to Barakat, there are well over 350 types of spices on sale today in Egypt, with maybe 30 coming from Egyptian plants, mostly in Upper Egypt. And with the surge in the pursuit of natural herbs for health and beauty and the continuing march of globalisation, there are also more and more spices finding their way onto the Egyptian market. The cataloguing of these plants and their uses is something that Barakat has contributed to. However, it is something that requires a lot more work in order to complete a proper database, she says, and this has now been initiated by several keen researchers, herself included, under the auspices of a semi-official body. This work is best done with the help of families that have been in the spices business over consecutive generations, Barakat says. “It is something that really needs to be captured now because while some new spices and plants might be finding their way to us, some of the older ones may be at the risk of being neglected or forgotten.”
