710 GRAMINEJE. 



the Malayan Archipelago, where oa the other hand they have their 

 own names for the sugar cane, although not for sugar. This fact again 

 speaks in favour of Ritter's opinion, that the preparation of sugar in a 

 dry crystalline state is due to the inhabitants of Bengal. Sugar under 

 the name of Shi-mi, i.e. Stone-honey, is frequently mentioned in the 

 ancient Chinese annals among the productions of India and Persia ; 

 and it is recorded that the Emperor Tai-tsung, A.D. 627-650, sent an 

 envoy to the kingdom of Magadha in India, the modern Bahar, to learn 

 the method of manufacturing sugar.^ The Chinese, in fact, acknowledge 

 that the Indians between A.D. 766 and 780 were their first teachers in 

 the art of refining sugar, for which they had no particular ancient 

 written character. 



An Arabian writer, Abu Zayd al Hasan,^ informs us that about A.D, 

 850 the sugar cane was growing on the north-eastern shoi-e of the 

 Persian Gulf ; and in the following century, the traveller Ali Istakhri '^ 

 found sugar abundantly produced in the Persian province of Kuzistan, 

 the ancient Susiana. About the same time (A.D. 950), Moses of Chorene, 

 an Armenian, also stated that the manufacture of sugar was flourishing 

 near the celebrated school of medicine at Jondisabur in the same 

 province, and remains of this industry in the shape of millstones, &c., 

 still exist near Ahwas. 



Persian physicians of the 10th and llth centuries, as Rhazes, Haly 

 Abbas, and Avicenna, introduced sugar into medicine. The Arabs cul- 

 tivated the sugar cane in many of their Mediterranean settlements, as 

 Cyprus, Sicily, Italy, Northern Africa, and Spain. The Calendar of 

 Cordova* shows that as early as A.D. 961 the cultivation was well 

 understood in Spain, which is now the only country in Europe where 

 sugar mills still exist.® 



William II., King of Sicily, presented in A.D. 1176 to the convent 

 of Monreale mills for grinding cane, the culture of which still lingers at 

 Avola near Syracuse, though only for the sake of making rum. In 

 1767, the sugar plantations and sugar houses at this spot were described 

 by a traveller '^ as " worth seeing." 



During the middle ages England, in common with the rest of 

 Northern Europe, was supplied with sugar from the Mediterranean 

 countries, especially Egypt and Cyprus. It was imported from Alex- 

 andria as early as the end of the 10th century by the Venetians, with 

 whom it long remained an important article of trade. Thus we find " 

 that in A.D. 1319, a merchant in Venice, Tommaso Loredano, shipped to 

 London 100,000 lb. of sugar, the proceeds of which were to be returned 

 in wool, which at that period constituted the great wealth of England. 

 Sugar was then very dear : thus from 1259 to 1350, the average price 

 in England was about Is. per lb., and from 1351 to 1400, Is. 7d^ In 

 France during the same period it must have been largely obtainable, 

 though doubtless expensive. King John IP. ordered in 1353 that the 

 apothecaries of Paris should not use honey in making those confections 



^ Bretschneider, Chinese Botanical Works, ' There are several in the neighbourhood 



1870. 46. of Malaga. 



2 Bitter, I.e. 286. "Riedesel, Travels through Sicily, Lond. 



3 P. 57 of the book quoted in the Ap- 1773. 67. 



pendix. ^ Marin, Commercio rfe' Veneziani, v. 306. 



■^ Le Calendrier de Cordoiie de Vannie '^'RogQvs,, Hist, of Agriculture and Prices 



961, par R. Dozy, Leyde, 1873. 25. 41. 91. in England, i. (1866) 633. 641. 



