Page 354 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

salt 1655

The Ayyubid dynasty that Saladin established was itself in a persistent craving for mineral salt, wherever it
essentially a constellation of independent principalities can be found.
governed by his kinsmen and their descendents.The most But salt is also an addiction. People who get used to
important principality was Egypt, which was ruled in turn adding salt to their food soon find unsalted food flat and
by al-‘Adil and his son al-Kamil, and which survived the tasteless.This is not usually harmful since kidneys excrete
thirteenth-century Crusades before being supplanted by excessive salt into the urine; but a lifetime of eating lots
the Mamluks in 1250. The longest surviving branch of of salt can sometimes bring on dangerously high blood
the dynasty ruled Aleppo until that city’s capture by the pressure. In practice, consuming some salt is a necessity
Mongols in 1261. for vegetable eaters; but most of the table salt people use
today and have consumed for centuries, is over and
Brian A. Catlos
above what our bodies actually require.

Further Reading Salt in Early History
As long as humans lived as hunters and gatherers, the
Baha’ al-Din, & Richards, D. S. (2001). The rare and excellent history of
Saladin; being the al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya as’l-Mahasin al-Yusufiyya meat in their diet meant that salt intake was adequate to
of Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing.
Ehrenkreutz,A. S. (1972). Saladin. Albany: State University of New York their bodily needs. But when settled farming villages
Press. arose in different parts of the world, beginning about
Humphreys, R. S. (1977). From Saladin to the Mongols:The Ayyubids of 11,000 years ago, much enlarged human populations
Damascus. Albany: State University of New York Press.
‘Imad al- Din, Baha al-Din, & Gibb, H. A. R. (1973). The life of Saladin: soon killed off most wild game animals within reach, so
From the works of ‘Imad Ad-Din and Baha’ Ad-Din. Oxford, UK: communities came to depend mainly on vegetable foods
Clarendon Press.
Jubb, M. A. (2000). The legend of Saladin in Western literature and his- and had to find ways to supplement them with small but
toriography. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen. essential quantities of mineral salt.
Lev,Y. (1999). Saladin in Egypt. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Fortunately, salt is common.The oceans constitute the
Lundquist, E. R. (1996). Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted: Selected
annals from Masalik Al-absar Fi Mamalik Al-amsar by Al-Umari. earth’s most obvious salt reservoir; but salt lakes, salty
Bromley, UK: Chartwell-Bratt. earth and salt springs exist in desert and some other
Lyons, M. C., & Jackson, D. (1982). Saladin: The politics of holy war. inland locations. But from the point of view of farmers,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
geography played a nasty trick on them, since where rain
fell regularly and crops grew best, salt was thoroughly
leached from surface soils, and carried off to the sea in
streams. So in well-watered landscapes local salt supplies
Salt were hard or impossible to find.
Just how local populations coped with this problem in
alt (chemical compound NaCl) is essential for Neolithic times is completely unknown, and written
Shuman life.The cells of our bodies exist in a bath of records surviving from early civilizations have nothing to
salty fluids; and since we excrete salt by sweating, uri- say about salt either. But we do know that durable pre-
nating and spitting, it is necessary to take in appropriate cious objects like gems, shells, flint and obsidian traveled
amounts of salt to maintain a steady concentration in across hundreds of miles in Neolithic times and when the
our bloodstreams. Since other animals share our salty domestication of donkeys permitted caravan trade to get
bodies, a diet rich in meat supplies enough salt to organized, beginning perhaps about 5000 BCE, the radius
replace losses; but diets that consist almost wholly of and regularity of overland trade exchanges increased. So
grain and other vegetable foods lack enough salt to there is every reason to believe that salt and other con-
maintain the salt balance. Resulting shortage manifests sumables, like mood-altering drugs, were also exchanged