Mint

General Information

From the basil family and related to oregano and pennyroyal. It has a leaf like that of oregano except that it is longer, with lines along it and a rough texture. They are arranged in groups of four and have a well-known scent. 

Grows in humid places and gardens, especially near to water. Amongst varieties of mint there is: ‘namam’ and there is no difference between the common variety and this other than the power of the scent, named namam or ‘the powerful green’. The root of namam creeps along the earth and looks like a worm, hence it is also called worm’s basil. 

Its Nature

Hot and dry in the second degree, some say the third. 

Uses and Characteristics

Purifies the digestive system, heats up the digestive system, calms hiccups, helps digest food, prevents phlegmatic and bloody vomiting, helpful in treating jaundice, emulsifies milk, prevents haemorrhage and the bursting of them and treats dog bites, useful in treating cold swelling and phlegm. If cooked with vinegar and mixed with rose oil and rubbed on the head and forehead it aids forgetfulness and headaches. Helps treat worms along with pumpkin seeds, activates the womb, foetus and placenta, helps in kidney stones and urinary blockage and colic, kills lice. 

Alternative

Pennyroyal, sweet marjoram

From Hadiqat al-Azhar (The Garden of Blossoms) by al-Wazeer al-Ghassani, a 16th Century pharmacopoeia. Translated by Miriam Hicklin.

Fig

General Information

A fruit from a tree belonging to the Moraceae family, coming in many varieties, of which there are white, black and red. The white type is made up of multiple varieties and types, amongst which there is ‘wadnaksi’ which is featured in the sunna of the Prophet twice, and it is the finest and best of the fig species. 

The black fig also comes in multiple varieties, mentioned just once in the sunna under the variety of ‘teen’, it is delicate and is the very best of the black figs, amongst which is ‘ghudani’ as it is known in the north of Morocco, Tlimcen being renowned for them, featured twice in the sunna.

Red figs come in the following varieties: naqal, ghazli and hamra’.

The fig is the best of all fruit and the most beautiful, it does very little harm and a great deal of good. 

Its Nature

Hot in the third degree, dry in the first.

Uses and Characteristics

Useful against colic and its demonstration of heavy fever, and if mixed with strands of barley and fenugreek and made into a poultice clears swelling. Cook the gum from the leaves with hyssop and it purifies the chest and lungs, treating pain in this area and from long-term coughing, if boiled it is helpful in treating swelling in the windpipe and muscles of the tongue. Treats the decay and rotting of skin and gets rid of moles, warts, vitiligo when used as a poultice. Corrects discolouring due to swelling and other illnesses. Treats dimples and whitlow, especially when used alongside german iris. 

Alternative

Dates


From Hadiqat al-Azhar (The Garden of Blossoms) by al-Wazeer al-Ghassani, a 16th Century pharmacopoeia. Translated by Miriam Hicklin.

The Tree and Her Boy

Here on this slope, through dark-shadowing doors depleted under the weight of years, she waits. Feeling the rush and tremble of each soul that passes, she offers to the wind of their movements a song of her own, a marriage of the fragile glass air she breaths and the materials of her own self, a flaking pastry that has bubbled and fractured under the heavy afternoons of heat fallen upon this cracked ground. It is a song that’s carried from her branches upon the wind-lines of this mound, along with it lifting the parts of her she gifts to the earth.

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Carob

"It is recounted that Solomon - peace be upon him - was given by God a different tree every day in his Sanctuary, and when he saw it he would ask: "What is your name? What are your useful qualities? How do you harm?""

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Our Foundational Text

On a cold, February day, in an ancient courtyard behind the Qarwaeen University, I found Hadiqat al-Azhar. The corners of its pages golden with age and smelling distinctly of earth, its presence was foreboding and heavy with expectation. 

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