268 DATE GROWING 



Maktum Ahmar, The Red Maktum, is dis- 

 tinguished by the Arabs as a separate variety, al- 

 though it is merely an inferior form of the preceding, 

 which is sometimes called Maktum Asfar ("yellow"). 

 The red variety is a little darker in color, and the 

 flavor is said to be not quite so good, but it is rare 

 and commercially of no importance, 



Manakhir, Menakher, Monakhir, The Nose 

 Date (lit., The Nostrils), a rare, large, and desirable 

 variety from Tunisia. The only specimens in the 

 United States are owned by the Department of 

 Agriculture, and there seems little chance of getting 

 more, as the palm is almost extinct in Tunisia. The 

 natives account for this by the story that their 

 rulers, under the old regime, acquired a great fondness 

 for the date, and sent agents into the region at harvest 

 time to appropriate the entire crop, which they 

 usually forgot to pay for.* Consequently the owners 

 decided it would be more profitable to them to grow 

 a poorer date which they themselves could enjoy, and 

 stopped planting Manakhir offshoots, even cutting 

 down old trees in some cases. The few trees now 

 left are jealously guarded by their wealthy owners and 

 offshoots can not be had at any price. 



The date is soft, dark in color, and somewhat 

 similar to Deglet Niir in flavor; many Americans as 



*This is an old story in Arab communities. Al Bakri says that 

 in the Ziban almost a thousand years ago " Ubayd Allah the Fatimide 

 decreed and reserved for his own use all the harvest of Liari dates 

 and ordered the local officials to forbid the sale of this variety and 

 send all that were grown to him." Another MS. calls the variety 

 Kabari; the writer says it was white and smooth, but I can not 

 identify it with any variety grown there now. Al Bakri, Descr. of 

 No. Africa, 1068 A. D. Tr. by de Slane. Paris, 1869. P. 126. 

 Kearney says the rarity of the variety Selatny (Sultani?) in Tunisia 

 is accounted for in the same way as that of Manakhir. 



