Sugar cane is back

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Something was new yesterday in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market!

Something I had never seen there or anywhere in the world.
Sugar cane!

The juice store man first cut it into manageable pieces with a cleaver and then fed it into a special machine with his right hand. The dry, squeezed part came out on the left side.

Out came the juice for the curious smiling customers.

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In not-perfect Hebrew the sign extolls the therapeutic wonders worked by the "sweet love" drink of lemon juice mixed with cane sugar juice.

Click to enlarge the photo if you can read Hebrew.

Photo by Amir Freundlich

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When I worked at the excavations in Tiberias last October, we volunteers were given a guest lecture by Dr. Edna Stern titled "The sweet Sea of Galilee." Apparently El-Kabri in the Western Galilee and other sugar villages in the north were producing sugar in Medieval times.

The first book about sugar production in Akko, Tiberias, Kabul, etc. was written in the 10th century. Dr. Stern quoted a juicy part: something about that they "ate and danced naked."

Hmm, like, from a sugar high??

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Stern headed a salvage dig at Horbat Manot. The photo above is the sugar mill there.
The Israel Antiquities Authority page about the site and about its planned conservation says this:

"The Crusaders first encountered sugar cane and the growing of it upon arrival to the shores of Lebanon in the 11th century. Within a few years they have come to realize the value of the sugar manufactured from the cane, the profit gained from its production and from exporting it to Europe. Apparently, the Crusaders were the first to develop the process of producing sugar crystals in cones and in molasses amphoriskoi that facilitated the transport and the marketing of the sugar cane products in Europe."

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The cones mentioned are sugarloaves.

Wiki says "A sugarloaf was the traditional form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century when granulated and cube sugars were introduced."

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"The sugar mill consists of remains of an aqueduct that conveyed water from Nahal Kziv; crushing mill sluices, press base for extracting the liquefied sugar and a large barrel-vaulted hall (8 x 35 m) containing furnaces for cooking and refining the sugar cane juice, remains of another hall to the north of it and a subterranean vault to the south of it," the report says about Horbat Manot.

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Sounds the same as the processes shown in this 16th century engraving of sugar production in Europe.
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Today there are but scarce remains of sugar cane in Israel and Jordan.

Once the water sources were more plentiful and supported the plant.

I heard from an old-timer who grew up in the 1930s near the sources of the Yarkon River how Arabs would pass with sugar cane-laden donkeys and he would get a few pieces to chew on for a sweet treat.

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And all this started at the shuk as something sweet to share with you for That's My World Tuesday.
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