The Carrot 453 



descriptive formation is sufficient to show that the cultivated carrot 

 was foreign to the Hindu. Also W. Ainslie 1 justly concludes, "Carrots 

 appear to have been first introduced into India from Persia." 



According to Schweinfurth, 2 Daucus carota should display a very 

 peculiar form in Egypt, — a sign of ancient cultivation. This requires 

 confirmation. At all events, it does not prove that the carrot was 

 cultivated by the ancient Egyptians. Neither Loret nor Woenig men- 

 tions it for ancient Egypt. 



In Greek the carrot is <jTa<pv\Zvos (hence Syriac istaflin). It is men- 

 tioned by Theophrastus 3 and Pliny; 4 SavKos or bamov was a kind of 

 carrot or parsnip growing in Crete and used in medicine; hence Neo- 

 Greek t6 ba<pd ("carrot"), Spanish dauco. A. de Candolle 5 is right 

 in saying that the vegetable was little cultivated by the Greeks and 

 Romans, but, as agriculture was perfected, took a more important place. 



The Arabs knew a wild and a cultivated carrot, the former under 

 the name nehhl or nehsel, 6 the knowledge of which was transmitted to 

 them by Dioscorides, 7 the latter under the names jezer, sejanariya (in 

 the dialect of Magreb zorudiya), and sabahla. 8 The Arabic word dauku 

 or duqil, derived from Greek Bamos, denotes particularly the seed of the 

 wild carrot. 9 



Joret 10 presumes that the carrot was known to the ancient Iranians. 

 The evidence presented, however, is hardly admissible: Daucus maximus 

 which grows in Western Persia is only a wild species. This botanical 

 fact does not prove that the Iranians were acquainted with the culti- 

 vated Daucus carota. An Iranian name for this species is not known. 

 Only in the Mohammedan period does knowledge of it spring up in 

 Persia; and the Persians then became acquainted with the carrot under 

 the Arabic name jazar or jezer, which, however, may have been derived 

 from Persian gazar (gezer). It is mentioned under the Arabic name in 

 the Persian pharmacopoeia of Abu Mansur, 11 who apparently copied 

 from Arabic sources. He further points out a wild species under the 



1 Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 57. 



2 Z. /. Ethnologic, Vol. XXIII, 1891, p. 662. 



3 Hist, plant., IX. XV, 5. 



4 xx, 15. 



6 G^ographie botanique, p. 827. 



6 L. Leclerc, Traitd des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 380. 



7 Leclerc, op. tit., Vol. I, p. 353. 



8 Leclerc, ibid., and p. 367. 



9 Leclerc, ibid., p. 138. 



10 Plantes dans l'antiquite\ Vol. II, p. 66. 



11 Achundow, Abu Mansur, p. 42. 



