CHAPTER XIV 



ARAB USES OF THE DATE 



As a general rule the Arab eats his dates raw. 

 out of hand, just as the iVmerican does. In this 

 way he can dispose of astonishing quantities day 

 after day : — the explorer Nachtigal tells of natives who 

 often ate six pounds between sunrise and sunset, in 

 Tripolitania, and thousands of Arabs, whose principal 

 food during half the year is dates, consume several 

 pounds a day regularly throughout their lives, and 

 are among the healthiest and most vigorous members 

 of the human race.* It will usually be found, when 

 a traveler reports Arabs suffering from too many 

 dates, that their troubles are due solely to the fact 

 that they eat the fruit when it is half ripe, in which 

 case it tastes something like a green persimmon. It 

 is not dates, but tannin and free organic acids that 

 are to blame in these rare instances. 



Nevertheless, it is natural that the Arab should 

 seek to vary this diet in such a way as to make it 

 less monotonous, and to add to it the protein element 

 which the date lacks. In the Sahara, ever since 

 the middle ages, there has been in some regions a 

 superstitious idea that the meat of dogs was the ideal 

 accompaniment to a diet of dates, and dogs are even 

 today fattened for food purposes in parts of Morocco 

 and Tunis and in the Ziban of Algeria. Such a habit 

 could hardly have originated, or persisted, among a 



*Date growers can not expect the per capita consumption in 

 America to reach such a figm-e. Nevertheless, they tell a story in 

 Cairo of a young Amerif^an woman who ate seventy-five dates as 

 the finish of a hearty dinner! 



