Maghrebian tea culture
Maghrebian tea culture describes the tradition of tea preparation and the ritualized form of tea drinking in the countries of the Maghreb and beyond in northwest Africa. In Morocco , Western Sahara , Mauritania , Algeria and Tunisia, as well as among the Tuaregs , whose habitat extends south across the Sahara to the Sahel zone , green tea is made with sugar in a similar way . Fresh nano mint is often added. Green tea was introduced to the region in the 18th century. In urban town houses and also in nomad tents in the desert, a tea ceremony has since developed, which is part of a social get-together and the welcoming program for a guest.
Tea culture in the region
The consumption of coffee spread over North Africa in the 16th century. Tea was introduced to Morocco by English traders in the 18th century, along with the pear-shaped teapot with a cranked spout, which was then fashionable in England . This model later came south to the countries of the Sahara and is still the basic shape of many teapots today. At the end of the 19th century, European travelers reported numerous trade caravans that had apparently been bringing green Chinese tea and sugar south through the desert for some time.
To prepare tea, green tea, usually of the Gunpowder variety, is boiled in water for several minutes or a quarter of an hour in a pot or pot. Then the tea water is poured off the leaves and heated with a lot of sugar in another jug. When the tea is boiled again , the sugar molecules hydrolyze and split into glucose and fructose , which changes the taste of the tea and makes it sweeter. If desired, fresh mint leaves can be put in the pot when boiling or in the glasses when serving. The regional differences can be seen in the quantities, cooking times and, above all, in the way the tea is poured into the glasses.
In all countries, making tea is a man's job, in contrast to food that is traditionally cooked by women. In all societies it is part of their own national culture, even if the cooking procedure and the social occasion of the ceremony hardly differ within the region. There is no specific time of day to drink tea; every meeting of relatives or friends is reason enough for the head of the family to make tea. Guests in the house are welcomed with tea and should not refuse it under any circumstances. Usually three glasses are served according to the widespread motto: "The first glass is bitter like life, the second strong like love and the third gentle like death".
In several West African coastal countries, the consumption of green tea under the term Ataya is popular.
Morocco
Tea ( tamazight ⴰⵜⴰⵢ atay , Arabic الشاي, DMG aš-šāy , Moroccan-Arabic اتاي Atāy , French thé à la menthe , “mint tea”) is still the national drink in Morocco, although the import of coffee continued to rise in 2009 and a little more espresso (qahwa kahla) and latte (qahwa helib) are ordered than tea in city cafes . In the first eight months of 2009, Morocco imported 38,500 tons of green tea from the People's Republic of China , making it the main buyer of Chinese green tea, which is produced in a total of 1.24 million tons.
Traditional tea preparation in a middle-class Moroccan household takes place in front of the guests in the lounge. The householder or his servant brings a tray with tea glasses, another tray with the other necessary utensils and the charcoal stove on which water is brought to the boil in a kettle. After the teapot has been rinsed out with hot water, green tea is poured in, which is then poured off with a little boiling water. The landlord now adds a lump of sugar from a sugar loaf and a few leaves of mint and fills up with water. He pours a little tea into a glass and tries to see if it contains enough sugar. Then he fills the guests' glasses in a high arc and repeats this until each guest has received three glasses of tea.
The old teapots were made of pewter and their sizes were designed for 6 to 16 glasses. The spherical containers with lids for mint leaves and the similarly shaped sugar containers were made of brass. The solid sugar cone is crushed with a hammer or tongs, the jaws of which are aligned lengthways. The engraved tea tray, also made of brass, has three curved feet with which it is placed on the floor.
In today's cafés, green tea is served in small pots with which the guest pours the mint leaves and fragments of white sugar in the glass. Mint leaves should be removed before they turn bitter. Instead of mint, some families flavor their tea with louiza ( lemon bush ) or sheeba ( wormwood ).
Western Sahara and Mauritania
It is likely that it was not until the end of the 19th century that the tea drinking culture spread from Morocco to the Western Sahara and Mauritania region. The Moorish tribe of the Ouled Bou Sbaa (Ūlād Bū-Sbā) immigrated from the region around Marrakech in southern Morocco to what is now Western Sahara around this time and brought the habit of drinking tea with them, which at the beginning of the 20th century extended to the south of Mauritania got. With the tea came the solid sugar loaf ( hassania m. Galeb, Pl . Gwāleb ) and all the tea sets from Morocco. The Moroccan names were also adopted into the national language Hassania.
Teaware
For the Sahrawis in the Western Sahara and the Bidhan in Mauritania, the tea water is heated in a kettle ( mʿgraḫ, maġreǧ, Pl. Mġareǧ ) made of tinned copper on a special charcoal stove ( meǧmar, Pl. Mǧāmer ). The hearth of noble households has a cylindrical shape with perforated decorations and stands with a tripod on the floor in the tent or in the middle of the living room. Simple stoves consist of a sheet steel shell with a cylindrical base soldered onto it. The kettle is usually placed directly on the charcoal ( ḥmūm, Pl. Ḥemūm ). It only takes a few minutes for the charcoal to glow and the water to boil.
The common teapot is called berrād, (Pl. Abrārīd ) and is made of tinplate or enamel . The imported enamel jugs are used unchanged, whereas the industrially manufactured pewter jugs experience a creative upgrade to Mauritanian handicrafts by craftsmen who are known as "blacksmiths" ( maʿllem, Pl. Maʿllemīn ). The maʿllem first saws off the handle and the button of the lid and then makes a new button using the sandwich technique. Different colored metal plates are placed on top of each other and fastened by means of a pin that is inserted through a hole in the middle. The mandrel is soldered to the lid. The new handle consists of a bent and soldered brass tube. The previous lid hinge is removed so that the tea can be cooked without the lid. Soldered-on metal strips give each jug its own individual geometric pattern that is typical of Mauritania. These elaborately manufactured traditional teapots can only be found in a few households; enamel or stainless steel jugs predominate in everyday life.
It is served on a tea tray (f. Ṭable, Pl. Ṭabali, ṭwābel ), a brass plate with a diameter of about 40 centimeters and a curved edge. In the northern part of Western Sahara, tea trays made of nickel silver , which were made in El Aaiún and probably in Smara , were common in the 1970s . A sugar hammer (kaṣṣāra) is needed to break up the sugar lumps . Valuable pieces with fine geometric patterns used to be made by soldering copper and silver sheets onto a brass core. Tea glasses (m. Kas, Pl. Kisān ) are mostly imported goods from France. The complete tea service includes a sugar bowl (rbīʿa) and a container for the green tea (zenbil) .
Tea ceremony
At the beginning of the tea preparation, the host pours some hot water over the dry, rolled tea leaves in the pot, which is then poured away after a few seconds. The tea leaves are freed from dust and slightly swollen. The jug is now filled with hot water and sugar is added. After about a minute, a glass is half full with tea and immediately set aside. Put another piece of sugar and possibly fresh nano mint leaves in the jug. The essential procedure is to pour the tea from a great height into a glass and pour it back into the pot. This process is repeated several times until a thick layer of foam has formed in the glass. In between you have to try and sweeten it several times. Only when the taste test was satisfactory, everyone present receives a glass filled with tea up to three centimeters high. An equally high mountain of foam sits on top of the liquid. Before the second round, the tea in the pot is filled with boiling water and with the previously reserved concentrated tea in the glass and boiled again. Since the foam is retained in the glasses, the second pouring no longer requires so much attention. At the third serving, thé mauritanien has become thin and bitter.
The tea party camps in tents, in private houses and also at public rest areas along the main roads on carpets or thin foam mattresses, generally in a lateral lying position, which is made comfortable by an armrest cushion ( surmije ) pushed under the elbow .
Tuareg
At the end of the 19th century at the latest, traders brought green tea from Tindouf , Tafilet and other places on the northern edge of the Sahara via Araouane to Timbuktu . The Africa researcher Oskar Lenz reported that he supplied his caravan with tea and coffee in the local market in 1880.
The Tuareg usually use a round, enamelled jug to make their tea, more rarely a stainless steel jug that is placed directly on the glowing charcoal. The same importance is attached to foam as in Mauritania. The glass should be half full at most. The third infusion can and must cook for a long time, since the leaves are practically depleted by then. Guests should drink at least one glass of tea when entering a strange house.
With the Tuareg, many of the sugar hammers called tafadist have a ring at the end of the handle through which the little finger is inserted. After a quick blow on the sugar loaf, which is held in place with one hand, with good practice the striking hand should immediately let go of the hammer, which then dangles from the little finger, and catch the broken sugar lump. As an alternative to the ornate brass hammers, valve pistons from old engines occasionally fulfill the same purpose, as in Mauritania, and enjoy a similar appreciation by their owner.
literature
- Wolfgang Creyaufmüller: Nomad culture in the Western Sahara. The material culture of the Moors, their handicraft techniques and basic ornamental structures. Burgfried-Verlag, Hallein (Austria) 1983, pp. 639–649
- Johannes Kalter: From Moroccan town houses. Linden-Museum, Stuttgart 1977, pp. 74-80
Web links
- Wolfgang Creyaufmüller: Peoples of the Sahara - Moors and Twareg. Lindenmuseum, Stuttgart 1979, pp. 100-106
- The drink. Le Thé mauritania. German Embassy Nouakchott
- picasaweb sand, wind and camels photo (Mauritania)
- flickr.com photo (Mauritania)
- Cultural Website of the Sahara: Tea. sahara-culture.com (Sahrawis)
Individual evidence
- ^ Raoul Verbist: A Teapot of 18th Century. Association of Small Collectors of Antique Silver, 2004.
- ↑ Creyaufmüller 1983, p. 639.
- ↑ Morocco, first consumer of Chinese green tea worldwide. Agence Maghreb Arabe Presse (MAP), 2009.
- ↑ Kalter, pp. 78-80
- ↑ Creyaufmüller 1983, p. 519.
- ↑ Creyaufmüller 1983, pp. 639-645.
- ↑ Creyaufmüller 1979, pp. 100f.
- ^ Oskar Lenz: Timbuktu: Journey through Morocco, the Sahara and the Sudan, carried out on behalf of the African Society in Germany in the years 1879 and 1880 . Vol. 2, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1892, pp. 44, 65, 101, 124; after Creyaufmüller 1983, p. 639.
- ^ Maggie Fick: Tea with the Tuareg. The New York Times, November 17, 2007.
- ↑ Hans Ritter, Karl-G. Prasse: Dictionary on the language and culture of the Twareg. Vol. 2. German – Twareg. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, p. 970 ( on Google Books ).