A Rose a Day No.45

This Iranian woman is harvesting the Autumn Damask rose in the Fars region. Where she comes from it is called  ‘Gol-e-Mohammadi ‘– ‘Mohammadi Rose’ (‘Muhammed’s Rose’). In Fars, as in other regions of the Near East, such as Syria and Turkey, but also Bulgaria, this rose is an important cash-crop. 

The Autumn Damask has two important characteristics: a strong perfume and remontancy. Until recently,  it was believed that  Northern Persia is the only region where all three of the parents of  the Autumn Damask  grow together, so  it was assumed to be the birth-place of the new species, and that with human assistance the Autumn Damask  subsequently spread from there east towards India, south to Arabia, and west into north Africa and Europe, bringing with it the remontancy gene.  Persia in particular was a major centre for the cultivation of roses, and the rose was a much loved flower. There was a long-established tradition of growing roses as ornamental plants in gardens.  But new  research has pushed the origins of the repeat-flowering Damask even further east to the Amu Darya River in the Aral Sea Basin in northern Turkmenistan and southern Uzbekistan, an area  north of Afghanistan, which was known as  the Transoxiana in Alexander the Great’s time, or the River Oxus of classical Latin and Greek. This discovery, in its turn, leads to the hypothesis that the remontancy gene from Rosa fedtschenkoana  which is necessary for there to be the Autumn Damask, comes from further east still, in central Asia or north west China. The Aral  sea Basin  was the centre of  Bactrian civilization between  329 – 125 BC, and was an important point of interface between Central Asia and the Chinese Han Dynasty.   

Such is the disparity in the geographical distribution of the roses that hybridized to produce the Autumn Damask that it seem probable  their crossing could only have been facilitated through ‘artificial selection’,  through conscious human intervention. This hypothesis would then imply that Asiatic rose genes have been an unacknowledged part of the western rose gene pool since at least Roman times.  For centuries, traders had been making   their way into China and back again along the caravan routes, and   plants and seeds came  and went with them.  Roses could easily have traveled from China   along the trade routes which traversed 6, 440 kilometers,  and linked China with the west from the 2nd century BC to the 14th century AD, and attempts could have been made long ago to cultivate remontant roses.

Rose water is  an important part of daily life in the Middle East, and has been for centuries. When Saladin triumphantly entered Jerusalem in 1167, he ordered the floor and walls of Omar’s Mosque to be washed with rose-water   to purify it of the stench of the Crusaders. It was said that five hundred camel loads of rose-water were needed, and that much of it came from Damascus.  When Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453, he had  Hagia Sophia cathedral   washed  with rose water before converting it into a mosque.  Rose-water was also used  as flavoring ingredients for drinks, and desserts such as ice cream, jam, Turkish Delight, rice pudding, yogurt and sherbet.  As we will see in more detail in a future Chapter, rose ointment and rose water were also used for their medicinal benefits. Roses motifs also adorned Persian carpets, featured in miniature painting, and were incorporated into architecture decoration.   As Islamic tradition spread and assimilated the indigenous cultures of conquered lands, the rose travelled too. When the Mughal   Dynasty invaded in India, it eventually merged  Persian with indigenous Indian culture, making the rose  an important feature of Indian life.   

Another profitable use for the rose in the Middle East was the perfumed attar of roses, which involves distilling volatile oils from the flowers. Knowledge of this process dates from at least the first century AD, and by the  ninth century attar of roses was especially being exported from Fars region  in Persia  to places as far afield as Spain, India, and China. From the tenth to the seventeenth century, Persia was the acknowledged centre of the industry. The Damask rose was cultivated for this purpose especially around Shiraz in the Fars province, and  still is to this day, but  Rosa centifolia   is also used in the Near East. The Moors brought the technology of rose-water production to southern Spain, and the Monghuls to India, and a traditions says that it was actually Queen Noor Jehan in sixteenth century India who discovered rose oil when she collected droplets of the oil from a canal flowing with rose petals. Today, roses for oil   a significant cash-crop in regions of India such as Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. As an enduring legacy of the Turkish Ottoman Empire,  cultivation of roses  for rose-water and rose oil also continues today in Turkey and Bulgaria.

Over the centuries, not much has changed in how  roses are cultivated and processed to make oil. In the spring the pickers still work quickly from the early morning, as the harvesting period is short and dependent on the weather. During a cool, cloudy day in spring harvesting can last for a month, while in hotter seasons, for only 16-20 days. The flowers are then brought to sills (copper or iron), mixed with water, and the distillate collected in metal tubing. The primary distillate is then further processed to obtain the desired properties.  To produce  just one kilogram of  rose essence in a still,   takes  about 12 tonnes of fresh roses.  Industrialization of the time honoured practices began in the early twentieth century, especially in Bulgaria, where steam still and volatile extraction systems were developed.  Under communism, copper sills were abandoned and the rose farms   were collectivized and nationalized. Today, Bulgaria remains a world leader in the production and export of attar. There is  even a  Valley of the Rose dedicated to the cultivation of the Alba, and especially  the Damask Rose,  Rosa damscenea trigintipetala, aka  the ‘Kazanlik Rose’.   

In the twelfth century, returning Crusaders may have carried knowledge of  rose distillation back with them to Western Europe on their return home, although it could have arisen independently in Europe. Eventually, the rose became important ingredient for the Western perfume industry. In the sixteenth century around the town of Grasse in southern France, rose cultivation developed for this purpose. But it was pink Cabbage Rose,  Rosa centifolia, aka ‘Rose de Provence’ , not the Damask, that is the species of choice, and it  remains today at the heart of a thriving business.  Dior, Chanel, and Hermès all source their roses in Grasse.  

 Image:

http://www.iranmirrorbd.com/en/2017/05/10/rose-harvest-season-in-southern-iran/

 

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A Rose a Day No.44