The humble fruit which adds a dash of exotic taste to our dishes has the Muslims to thank for its widespread use today. Muslims cultivated and introduced the lemon to Europe and were the ones who started lemonade.
The very first uses for the lemon in the Mediterranean were as an ornamental plant in early Islamic gardens. The lemon tree moved from Assam and northern Burma to China, across Persia and the Arab world to the Mediterranean and from there to Europe and the West.
The lemon seems not to have been known in pre-Islamic times in Europe. The first clear literary evidence of the lemon tree in any language dates from the 10th century Arabic work by Qustus al-Rumi in his book on farming. At the end of the twelfth century, Ibn Jami’, the personal physician to the great Muslim leader Salaahuddeen, wrote a treatise on the lemon, after which it is mentioned with greater frequency in the Mediterranean.
It appears that the all-American summer drink, lemonade, may have had its origin in Muslim Egypt. The earliest written evidence of lemonade comes from Egypt. The first reference to the lemon in Egypt is in the chronicles of the Persian poet and traveler Nasir-i-Khusraw (1003-1061?). From documents in the Cairo Geniza (records of the Jewish community in Cairo from the 10th through 13th centuries) we know that bottles of lemon juice, qatarmizat, were made with lots of sugar and consumed and exported.
Muslims brought a new flavour sensation to the world with the lemon
The Lemon
