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Date: 26/8/04
Daily Star 22nd August, 2004 Fruits of the earth come in many shapes, sizes, and colors, and some are even colorless. Sea salt, in its naturally occurring form, is transparent, almost simple in its outward appearance.
Nonetheless, Sodium chloride (NaCl), salt's chemical name, is absolutely essential to human life. Indeed, during the increasingly hot summer months in Lebanon it is advisable for people to add a little more salt to their diet, in order to compensate for its loss.
Perhaps equally as important though, and to gain a better sense of Lebanon's own history, it is also advisable to understand the role that the country's coast played in the history of salt. Since the earliest Phoenician records, salt ponds existed on the rocky shores of Anfeh, an ancient port just south of Tripoli. The great traders carved ponds in the seaside rocks and carried sea water to these ponds, or salinas, in large pottery jars. After evaporation by sun and wind, the salt crystals were gathered and transported to points east, west and north by galley or caravan. Over time, the extracted salt from Anfeh became a major commercial success. In fact, there are tablets written in Cuneiform dating from 1,400 BC which tell us of the superior quality of Anfeh salt. To this day, the country's ancient salt heritage still survives, with Anfeh salt found on any market shelf in Lebanon.
Despite its celebrated past, however, under Ottoman rule, salt extraction was forbidden, and the salinas (salt ponds) of Anfeh were destroyed. Broken and empty, the salt ponds became unproductive for the first time in their long history. During the long Turkish rule, women would fill jars by night and carry the sea water to their villages in the hills where the inhabitants had created small basins for secret salt extraction. Whoever was caught was severely punished, but then, as now, life and food preservation depended on salt, so it must have been worth the risk.
Unchanged during the French mandate, the Ottoman laws remained until 1943.
It was only when Lebanon became independent that salt extraction became legal again, with new basins created, tens of thousands of them, all along the coast of Anfeh. The salt beds began and ended at the limits of the town on 500,000 square meters of rocky shore, all of which belongs to a Greek Orthodox Monastery, Deir Sayedet al-Natour.
Run singlehandedly by a once reclusive, ageless and energetic nun named Sister Catherine, the monastery is, however, the owner in name only.
That's because various families hold old leases on their parts of the salt beds; and either way, Sister Catherine is totally uninterested in salt production. She has instead focused her energies on rehabilitating the monastery, built by Cistercian Monks in 1115 AD directly over the ruins of a previous 6th century monastery. With little help from local personalities, Sister Catherine has repaired centuries of damage and misuse with her own hands. The word "salt" is not in her vocabulary, although the clever European monks of the 12th century must have considered the favored location before the construction of their beautiful church and living quarters.
The Anfeh salinas alone represents half of Lebanese salt production, although its ancient methods really set it apart from the country's other salt beds, which employ more modern methods. Until 1990, Lebanon was self-sufficient in salt production, selling 45,000 tons a year locally. Because of government accords with other Arab countries, notably Egypt, Lebanon now produces only 20,000 tons annually. In 2003, the country imported 40,000 tons of sea salt from Egypt and 2,000 tons of refined salt in boxes from the United States, France and Great Britain. Lebanon also exported very little salt last year, just over 1,000 tons.
Anfeh architect George Sassine says that some local politicians and their business partners have the 5 kilometer coastline in Anfeh in mind for hotel and recreational projects - development which would spell the end of one of Lebanon's ancient industries.
Thus, although it was once given as an offering to the gods and goddesses of the ancient world, salt has now become an expendable commodity, no longer worth its weight in gold.
Thousands of years ago, of course, this was not the case. The great salt beds of pre-Roman Ostia (just south of Rome) supplied present day Italy with the then expensive seasoning, creating one of the earliest trade routes recorded in written history.
Herodotus describes the endless kilometers of desert routes to deliver salt to the interior oases of Libya and Egypt. The Romans paid their officers all across the Empire with a salarium, a small monthly allowance specifically for salt. Pliny the Elder professed that salt was the ultimate panacea, the cure for all ills, internal and external. The Egyptians used salt and other elements to mummify their dead.
As demand for salt grew, so to did its price. As a result salt ponds multiplied in number all along the Mediterranean coast. Despite the ensuing decrease in value, taxes rose drastically.
By the 11th century, salt was so heavily taxed that it created a superstition: Do not pass the salt from hand to hand, or you will quarrel with the recipient. In retrospect, this old adage makes perfect sense - people ate with their hands; their fingers were greasy. The bowl of salt, be it made of clay, wood, metal or porcelain would be extremely slippery. One spill would understandably create ill feeling, to say the least.
Today, we mostly use forks, spoons and knives, and salt is poured through the little holes of the salt shaker; however the superstition lingers on, more than a thousand years later. If we spill salt we throw a pinch of it over the left shoulder to ward off bad luck, often without even knowing why.
The Bible (Genesis 17:5) tells us of Lot's wife who, fleeing Sodom, turns into a pillar of salt. To say that someone is "the salt of the earth" is to say that that someone is a good and reliable person. To be worth one's salt is to be known as a hard worker. An old salt is a seaman, and a Salty Dog is a cocktail made with equal parts of gin and grapefruit, with salt to taste, poured over ice. The different meanings and references go on, from the mundane to the spiritual.
Not all seawater is equal in salt content. The Arctic Ocean, for example, is hardly salty at all, while a southern sea like the Mediterranean is five times more salty, and the Red Sea is even more dense in its salt composition.
There is also another kind of salt, from a very different source - a difference that is very important for human welfare. The source is the earth and the salt, called rock salt, is mined from depths which vary from 3 to 300 meters. This salt is millions of years old and was once sea salt, until the earth expanded and the seas retracted, leaving giant expanses of crystallized salt. The millennia brought other elements into the vicinity of the underground salt, and the result is a cheaper product, not as pure, and best suited for industrial use. The next time you choose salt from your market shelf, some say, note the word "sea" on the box. You and your family will ingest less aluminum and other chemicals.
As summer begins to slowly wind down, it is the time of the year when most Lebanese households use large amounts of salt for pickling. Cucumbers, turnips, carrots pickle easily. Half fill a mason jar with brine or saturated salt water. Add one small cup of good red vinegar, one red pepper of the spicy variety, slices of one lemon and a clove of garlic. Place sliced vegetables in the jar and let the concoction stand at room temperature, undisturbed for about a month. Then pour out the brine and cover the pickles with water, one small cup of vinegar and one small cup of sea salt. Shake the jar vigorously and refrigerate.
Children can also learn about the saturation process by adding salt to a jar of water, little by little, stirring until the water will no longer absorb the salt. Place the jar of saturated salt in the freezer and wait several hours. Remove the jar and share the wonder of the salt crystals that form on the surface. They are as beautiful as snow flakes. Now, please pass the salt! |
