History Spinach

Spinach comes from a central and southwestern Asian gene center where it may have originated from Spinacia tetranda, which is still gathered as a wild edible green in Anatolia. Spinach was unknown to the ancient Mediterranean world.

    The diffusion of spinach into the Mediterranean was almost certainly the result of Arab ingenuity. Spinach, which does not grow well in hot weather, was successfully cultivated in the hot and arid Mediterranean climate by Arab agronomists through the use of sophisticated irrigation techniques probably as early as the eighth century A.D. The first references to spinach are from Sasanian Persia (about 226-640 A.D.) and we know that in 647 it was taken from Nepal to China where it was, and still is, known as the "Persian green." The first written evidence of spinach in the Mediterranean are in three tenth-century works, the medical work by al-Razi (known as Rhazes in the West) and in two agricultural treatises, one by Ibn Wahshiya and the other by Qustus al-Rumi. Spinach became a popular vegetable in the Arab Mediterranean and arrived in Spain by the latter part of the twelfth century where the great Arab agronomist Ibn al-'Awwam called it the "captain of leafy greens." Spinach was also the subject of a special treatise in the eleventh century by Ibn Hajjaj.

Horacio "Wolf" Sanchez