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0203 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 203 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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SUGAR

377

the Christians of the city Gundesapûr, which was in connection with India and cultivated Indian medicine, should have propagated the cane and promoted the sugar-industry. This is no more than an ingenious speculation, which, however, is not substantiated by any documents. The facts in the case are merely, that according to the Armenian historian Moses of Khorene, who wrote in the second half of the fifth century, sugar-cane was cultivated in Elymais near GundéSâpûr, and that later Arabic writers, like Ibn Haukal, Mugaddasi, and Yâ.qût, mention the cultivation of the cane and the manufacture of sugar in certain parts of Persia. The above Chinese notice is of some importance in showing that sugar was known under the Sasanians in the sixth century. The Arabs, as is well known, took a profound interest in the sugar-industry after the conquest of Persia (A.D. 64o), and disseminated the cane to Palestine, Syria, Egypt, etc. The Chinese owe nothing to the Persians as regards the technique of sugar-production. In A.D. 647 the Emperor T'ai Tsun was anxious to learn its secrets, and sent a mission to Magadha in India to study there the process of boiling sugar, and this method was adopted by the sugarcane growers of Yan-6ou. The color and taste of this product then were superior to that of India.' The art of refining sugar was taught the Chinese as late as the Mongol period by men from Cairo.'

1 raft hui yao, Ch. oo, p. 21.

2 YULE, Marco Polo, Vol. II, pp. 226, 23o. The latest writer on the subject of sugar in Persia is P. SCHWARZ (Der Islam, Vol. VI, 1915, pp. 269-279), whose researches are restricted to the province of Ahwaz. In opposition to C. Ritter, who regarded Siraf on the Persian Gulf as the place whither the sugar-cane was first transplanted from India, he assigns this rôle to Hormuz; the first mention of refined sugar he finds in an Arabic poet of the seventh century. Lippmann's work is not known to him.