Freedman 2011 Mastic

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Mastic: a Mediterranean luxury product

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Paul Freedman
a
Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, USA
Available online: 19 Apr 2011
To cite this article: Paul Freedman (2011): Mastic: a Mediterranean luxury product, Mediterranean
Historical Review, 26:01, 99-113
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Mediterranean Historical Review
Vol. 26, No. 1, June 2011, 99–113
Mastic: a Mediterranean luxury product

Paul Freedman*
Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, USA

Mastic is a resin produced by plants that grow only on the southern part of the Aegean
island of Chios. Its cultivation and commerce were regulated by the rulers of Chios to
assure substantial profits on this valuable commodity. Mastic is an example of a
Mediterranean product that was in great demand in both Islamic and Christian
societies. Yet its particular utility and the reasons for its long-lasting prestige are not
easily understood beyond generalizations about its culinary, medical and cosmetic
uses. The article concludes with a discussion of Columbus, who erroneously believed
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he had found mastic in the New World.

Keywords: mastic; Chios; spice trade; Genoa; Columbus
Among his many contributions to Mediterranean history, David Abulafia published nearly
thirty years ago a study of merchants, crusaders, and the saffron trade.1 Saffron was and
remains an extremely expensive spice, but not because it is rare or particularly hard to
grow. Unlike any other medieval spice, saffron could be cultivated in many regions of
Europe as well as Asia. The English place-name ‘Saffron Walden’ shows that it could be
commercialized far from the Mediterranean, and even further from Persia and India, its
original habitat. In his article David Abulafia describes the importance of Tuscany for
saffron production, and the particular significance of San Gimignano as an entrepot for the
trade in saffron during the thirteenth century. Only in the fifteenth century would the
Iberian peninsula be credited as the source of the finest quality saffron, a reputation it
enjoys to this day. At that time saffron was cultivated in Catalonia and exported from
Valencia, while the modern Spanish saffron centre is La Mancha.2
Mastic is, I hope, an appropriate item of commerce to discuss in this volume honouring
Professor Abulafia. It is the resin of a particular kind of plant that is yellowish-white,
chewy, and sweeter and less sharp than pine sap (and more truly edible). Mastic occupied
an important niche in the Mediterranean trade of the Middle Ages as a highly-valued
ingredient in luxury cuisine, a perfume substance, and, above all a medicine. It figures in
all merchant lists of spices, such as Pegolotti’s famous catalogue of 288 kinds of speziere
which lists three grades of mastico.3
Like saffron, mastic differed from most of the better-known spices (pepper or ginger,
for example) by being cultivated in Europe, not in some distant, almost unknown eastern
part of the world (‘India’ as conceived in the Middle Ages). A crucial contrast, however, is
in the extremely limited habitat of mastic as opposed to the adaptability of saffron.
Although there are many different varieties of small aromatic trees and shrubs of the
Pistacia genus, only the Pistacia lentiscus produces a commercially exploitable quantity
*Email: paul.freedman@yale.edu
ISSN 0951-8967 print/ISSN 1743-940X online

q 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09518967.2010.536673
http://www.informaworld.com
100 P. Freedman
and quality of resin and only the variety grown in the southern part of the Aegean island of
Chios was considered to be true mastic in the medieval period, a distinction it officially
retains now as a Protected Designation of Origin product, according to the regulations of
the European Union.
In some ways, therefore, mastic might be considered the opposite of saffron, since
although each was a Mediterranean spice in great demand in the Middle Ages, saffron was
traded according to a complex and shifting pattern of routes and markets while mastic was
centred on one place and, especially during the period of the Genoese control of Chios
(1304 – 1329 and 1346 – 1566), the object of a tightly controlled monopoly. In keeping with
most spices, saffron and mastic were used in cooking as well as medicine, but saffron was
among the most important flavours for medieval cuisine, while mastic, although found in
recipes, was primarily a pharmaceutical and cosmetic item.
A final distinction between saffron and mastic has to do with the permanence of the
former as a valuable commodity. Although the glory days of the spice trade and the
feverish European demand for spices are long over, saffron has consistently retained an
importance in cooking, even if this has become rather specialized. It is used in certain
Spanish dishes (especially rice recipes), and a few classic French preparations, such as
lotte (monkfish) au safran. It is required for risotto alla Milanese and for the Swedish pre-
Christmas buns (lussekatter) made for Saint Lucia’s day (13 December). Saffron is not,
however, an everyday ingredient in Europe and most of the world’s supply is consumed in
Iran, India, and central Asia.
Until recently one would have said that mastic, by contrast, had dropped out of
circulation except for a restricted role in Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern cooking.
Mastic is still used as a flavouring for bread and pastries and as a spoon sweet in Greece.
There are also mastic-flavoured liqueurs. In Turkey it is popular in several desserts
(notably the rice-pudding dish sakizli firing sütlaç) and is one of the basic flavours for
lokum (Turkish delight). It is a key ingredient in the classic eastern-Mediterranean ice-
cream dish dondurma kaymakli.
Beyond these well-established but limited uses, mastic has enjoyed a recent comeback,
even a certain vogue. In just the past few years the Chios Mastiha Growers Association has
succeeded in restoring the image of mastic as healthful and in associating its unusual
properties with ‘wellness’.4 In keeping with the popularity of aromatherapy, the scent of
mastic is now available in soaps, creams, and other cosmetic products. Claims are made
for its efficacy against digestive, cardiac, and inflammatory complaints, and mastic is sold
in several forms as a nutritional supplement. There is an international chain of mastic
boutiques called ‘Mastiha Shops’, while a new mastic cookbook gives both traditional and
newly-invented recipes.5
The current fashion for natural botanical products that denote simultaneously health
and refinement, makes it easier to understand the popularity of mastic in the Middle Ages,
a substance that was neither a culinary staple in the manner of pepper or cinnamon, nor an
Asian spice from the distant and exotic realms of India or the Biblical paradise. In what
follows I would like to consider the restricted and tightly-managed supply, and also the
extraordinary European demand that was so intense that mastic could be considered
comparable to precious metals. Columbus, in his first exultant letter to Ferdinand and
Isabella announcing his discoveries, claimed he had found spices, gold, cotton, and mastic
(wrongly, as it turned out).6
Mediterranean Historical Review 101
Chios and the mastic plant

At one time it was common to refer to ‘gum mastic’ because the end-product has a flexible
consistency and can be chewed (mastic/masticate), but mastic is really more of a resin than
a gum. It is obtained by making incisions in the stems of the lentisk tree of Chios. Known
locally known as schinos, the plant grows to a height of two to three metres, and produces
mastic after five to ten years.7 Trees can live for more than 200 years, but they cease to be
productive of resin after about 50, and in general small trees produce more than large ones.
The sap is not easy to harvest or organize into marketable form. The ground beneath
the trees has to be prepared by being cleaned, and then spread with powdered stone that
catches the resin but allows it to be removed without contamination. The cuts are made
using a special knife. How frequently to cut and where to make the incisions requires
considerable expertise. Slowly the resin is exuded as a sticky, clear liquid that solidifies
into a soft crystalline form within three weeks. Five to ten incisions are made on each tree,
and the process is usually repeated every four or five days. The resin solidifies on the
ground in the form of chunks, the larger ones referred to as pites, and the smaller as psilo.
The eighteenth-century French traveller Pitton de Tournefort describes the harvest:
They begin the tapping of the lentisks on the first of August, making several diagonal cuts into
the bark with a long knife but not touching the young branches. On the day after cutting, one
observes the nourishing sap flowing out in drops, which gradually coagulate into tears of
mastic. They harden on the ground: this is why the bases of the trees have to be kept so clean.
The bulkiest harvest is in mid August, if the weather is dry and fine.8
The description could serve for how the task is accomplished today, except that the
incisions are made earlier (in June), and the harvest now begins in July.
Tournefort’s account also differs slightly from the medieval practice that included an
earlier, smaller harvest undertaken in February and March, collected directly from the
bark, not from anything that fell to the ground. The evidence that there once was such an
early harvest comes from the Arab geographer Abulfeda (who died in 1331), who states
explicitly that the mastic that hardens on the tree is superior to what is gathered from the
ground in the summer.9 A Genoese document involving litigation over contracts for mastic
also implies a harvest in February and March. On 19 March 1348, when there were still
problems in organizing the commerce in mastic after the second Genoese conquest of
1346, Cristiano Spinola di San Luca and his associates brought suit against Simone
Vignoso, leader of the successful expeditionary force, over payment for a consignationem
masticis recollecte masticis mensis februarii seu martii.10
This late-winter harvest resembled a kind of première pression of ‘extra-virgin’ olive
oil, in that it consisted of just the resin exuded by the trees from previous cuts, a
sufficiently small quantity so that it could be taken off the tree without being allowed to
fall to the ground. This is no longer worth the cost of the labour involved and, according to
the testimony of observers such as Tournefort, has not been worthwhile for centuries. In the
medieval period, however, this early-season mastic seems to have held the highest place in
the hierarchy of quality. While Pegolotti simply lists mastic in three categories, mastico
primo, secondo, terzo, an earlier (fourteenth-century) Catalan commercial manual gives a
list of 170 spices and other valuable products in which the first quality mastic is described
as being ‘the first drops’ – màstech prima gota: aquest vall més (first-drop mastic: this is
more costly). Second-drop mastic is still good, but the third level (described as màstech
gruell) is stated to be of poor quality (àvoll).11
This early harvest has an oblique significance in relation to Columbus’s claim to have
visited Chios (which is not in itself surprising as he was Genoese). Writing in his log on
102 P. Freedman
11 December 1492, Columbus says he is sure he has found mastic, but it is not the season
for its production, which he identifies as March in Chios.12 Of course he had not
discovered mastic in Hispaniola, nor in Cuba, nor anywhere in the Caribbean. It is thought
that Columbus probably mistook the gumbo-lindo tree (Bursera simaruba) for mastic, but
while he was habitually and notoriously over-optimistic about treasure, spices, and
valuable commodities generally, this particular mistake has some interesting implications
about his expectations of the East Indies that will be discussed later. At this point, the fact
that he puts the Chios harvest in March is not, contrary to what has sometimes been
asserted, a mistake in his recollection, nor evidence of his unreliability, but rather suggests
he was on Chios in the fall and winter, but not during the major harvest in the summer.
He probably visited the island in 1474 –1475.13
Today the summer harvest is concluded by the end of September, but the arduous work
of getting the mastic off the powdered stone and cleaning it continues. This can take
several months: a preliminary washing takes place at the farms where the trees are grown,
followed by a more industrial process run by the growers association. In past centuries
there was a similarly long and laborious period after the preliminary cleaning, a sorting
and grading known in the spice trade generally as ‘garbelling’ (garbellatura in Italian)
whereby impurities such as dirt, seeds and twigs along with undersized or dried-out bits of
mastic were removed by sifting, cleaning, and picking over. According to Pegolotti, the
inferior residue that remained after sorting the mastic garbellatura was worth one-fifth
the price of good mastic, which itself was divided into three grades based on colour
(the lighter being most prized), clarity, and softness.14 Today, as in the Middle Ages, all
mastic has to be processed through the governing association. The Growers Association
now grades the mastic ‘tears’ according to eight categories (of which five are recognized
as commercial grades). As in the Middle Ages, the best mastic is soft, relatively large, and
a light yellow colour. The tears are the size of small nut kernels (between peanut and
almond size, generally).
The area from which mastic originates consists of twenty-four villages in the southern
Catamorea region of Chios. They form the mastic territory (Mastichochora,
Mastihohonia), defined under Genoese rule when the villages were also organized as a
series of interconnected defensive sites, fortified and hidden from the sea in order to guard
against piracy. The fact, or at least the accepted belief, that mastic can only be grown in
southern Chios has been a basic attribute of the spice since ancient times and remains, as
indicated above, legally codified today. Mastic even has its particular saint, Isidore of
Chios, who was martyred on the island during the Decian persecutions. According to local
legends, his body was dragged under the lentisk trees which began weeping for him and
continue to produce mastic tears in his honour.15
There are many sorts of Pistacia of which the best known is the tree that produces
pistachio nuts, Pistacia vera. The species lentiscus grows in many places around the
Mediterranean, and all sub-species exude some sort of resin, but only the Chios variety
produces mastic whose whiteness, aroma, and flavour are distinctive. There were
occasional geographical eccentricities, such as a French translation of a Latin geography
of marvels written around 1340 which claims that Arabia abounds in cruel and venomous
animals, diamonds (guarded by poisonous snakes), and ‘good mastic’.16 But generally
Chios was identified as the unique source. Documents in the Cairo Geniza distinguish
between ‘ilk gum (‘ilk al-anbāt, that is ‘gum of the Nabateans’), and samgh, which appears
to be Chios-grown, or at least lentisk, mastic.17 Arabia and the horn of Africa had many
different (and often precious) fragrant resinous substances, but mastic seems to have been
generally recognized as something particular.
This apparent natural monopoly was remarked upon by naturalists and geographers of
the classical world, but an inferior kind of black mastic, according to Pliny, was available
for one-fifth the price of Chiote mastic.18 Galen distinguished between dark, poor quality
Egyptian mastic and the white, fine variety from Chios.19 Islamic geographers referred to
Chios as the ‘island of mastic’, but at the same time noted that mastic could also originate
from Crete and Cyprus.20 Benjamin of Tudela (late twelfth century) notes the presence of
about 400 Jews on the island of Chios, identifying this as the place where the trees that
produce mastic are grown.21 Writing in 1333, the German traveller Ludolph of Suchem
says that the same tree grows elsewhere, but only those native to Chios yield real mastic.22
In his description of the island written shortly after the Turkish invasion of 1566,
Hieronimo Giustiniani (a member of the Genoese consortium that had ruled Chios) angrily
denied that other forms of lentisk plants could produce anything resembling true Chiote
mastic. The mastic from Chios is white and sweet, he claimed, while these poor imitations
are black and bitter. Giustiniani labels as mad, or at least ignorant, those who believe
mastic could be grown elsewhere.23

This degree of specialization is not unusual among aromatic products. Until the
eighteenth century, to take the best-known examples, nutmeg could only be grown in the
Banda archipelago of the Moluccan islands of what is now eastern Indonesia, while cloves
came solely from a few islands in the northern Moluccas. But there is a difference between
true botanical uniqueness of this sort, and a quality difference perceived among different
sub-species. Thus to return to saffron, the largest producer is Iran, but the finest saffron is
generally reputed to come from La Mancha in Spain. Or to take a more extreme
distinction, perhaps closer to the case of mastic, truffles are found in many parts of the
world, notably in China, but the value of the white truffles from Piedmont, or the black
truffles of Perigord, is astronomically greater than that of these other varieties, and the
difference in fragrance is not at all subtle.
In their study of the interconnected niches of the Mediterranean regions, Peregrine
Horden and Nicholas Purcell are rather doubtful about claims to uniqueness, seeing them
partly as the result of historians’ distortions (dividing commodities into bulk versus
luxury), and clever marketing by ancient and medieval merchants.24 As they point out, the
islands of the eastern Mediterranean were from ancient times reputed for many
specialities, from Parian marble to currants from Zante. Wine from various Mediterranean
islands, including Chios, was greatly prized and of course wine is a commodity for which
perceived differences of quality based on origin dramatically affect reputed value, hence
price.25 Among the best-known ‘unique’ products of the medieval world was alum from
Phocaea, on the Asia Minor mainland near Chios, also for many years under Genoese
domination. The discovery of alum at Tolfa in Etruria (1462) certainly enriched the
papacy, but the rarity of alum is, according to Horden and Purcell, artificial rather than
natural, and the same is true for Chiote mastic: ‘botanically there is nothing special about
the scrubby plant that remains one of the glories of Chiote agriculture’.26 Of course from
the historical rather than botanical point of view, mastic from Chios was deemed unique,
and it is hard to imagine a mere branding campaign that could produce such consistent
results over 2,000 years or so. Chiote mastic has fluctuated in value depending on
perceptions of its healthful properties and, to a lesser extent, gastronomic taste, but it has
not suffered as a result of cheaper imitations.
Because mastic has such a restricted habitat, and because of its perceived value, it has
always been subject to very close supervision. Control of mastic production and export
allowed the authorities to profit from its sale and to regulate its availability. While affected
by fluctuations depending on climate and the plant’s unpredictability, mastic is a fairly
104 P. Freedman
reliable product and if the individual tree yields no more than about 400 grams at best, still
the total number of trees among the twenty mastic villages is sufficient to result in fairly
substantial quantities overall.
The problems for the participants in the mastic monopoly were surplus and
unauthorized supplies (smuggling essentially). To guard against too much mastic coming
onto the market, any excess might be carried over to a subsequent year or simply burned.
More serious was private extraction. A Genoese ordinance of 1392 inflicted severe
penalties for trading mastic outside the control of the governing association; punishments
graduated according to how much mastic was involved. If less than a pound, the fine was
one perperus per ounce. Failure to pay would result in a public whipping. The fines
increase as the punishments come to include amputation of an ear, cutting off the nose,
branding of the face. An illegal diversion amounting to anything more than 200 pounds
would result in hanging with no possibility of compounding by paying a fine.27 The power
of various enemies and the island geography of Chios left it open to piracy, and raids on
the villages themselves, especially by Venetians, Catalans, and later Turks during the
Genoese occupation, but the island’s rulers tended to set up effective sway over mastic
production and trade nonetheless.
It is clear that mastic was an important source of wealth in the Byzantine Empire,
during the Genoese hegemony, and under the Turks. During the Genoese period mastic
seems to have represented about one-half of the value of what was produced by the island
(and it should be recalled that Chios also sold high-quality wine and fruit). The money
generated by the mastic and the importance of guarding this source of revenue allowed
Chios to resist the Turkish forces long after the rest of the Aegean had fallen under
Ottoman control.28
The Genoese period, from 1304 to 1329, and then from 1346 to 1566, provides the
most detailed information about how mastic production and sale were regulated. During
the 220-year second era, the mastic trade was controlled by a company that effectively
ruled the island. While the Zaccaria family, who first seized Chios, held a monopoly over
the export of mastic, the more durable Genoese conquest of 1346 was a venture capital
effort with many participants. In lieu of actually paying the expeditionary force, the
Genoese government gave power over the mastic extraction and trade to a private
partnership known as the ‘Mahona’. The etymology of the name is debated, perhaps from
the Arabic ma’ūnah (financial contribution),29 but it functioned as a kind of chartered
company, not unlike those associated with European colonial enterprise of the sixteenth to
nineteenth centuries (the Dutch East India Company, for example).
The Mahona established mastic quotas for the farmers who cultivated the trees in
proportion to the number of trees they held. Rather than dividing the mastic harvest among
the participants of the Mahona, the mastic was sold as a bloc, with the profits distributed to
the members of the society.
The Mahona seems to have borrowed from Byzantine precedent as the empire
controlled the distribution of mastic before the incursions of the Westerners.30
The Genoese administration has been the object of an extraordinary amount of
scholarship, based on the incomparable notarial archives of Genoa, and on a substantial
earlier literature on Chios in general and the mastic industry in particular.31
Within twenty years of the second conquest, the Mahona effectively ruled all aspects
of island life, while the Genoese Republic was allowed some revenue and the right to
appoint a podestà for a three-year term. This official represented a vestigial and not
particularly potent executive authority.32 The Mahona itself was divided into two with the
official recognition of a ‘New Mahona’ in 1362 (whose origins go back to 1350).33 This
somewhat cumbersome structure of simultaneous Old and New corporations was

complemented – or complicated – by specifying quantities to be distributed in different
export regions: Genoa (which functioned as the European distributor); Romania and the
Anatolian Turkish lands lying to the west of Rhodes; and the Orient, consisting of Syria,
Egypt, and Cyprus; and the rest of the Muslim world east of Rhodes. The two latter zones
were supplied from Rhodes, and the largest proportion of mastic went to the Orient.34
The creation of two companies allowed for a certain amount of balancing and
investment hedging, and also brought more Genoese participants into the operation.
Within decades after the second Genoese conquest, the rulers of the two branches of the
Mahona came to be members, either by blood or by election, of the Giustiniani extended
family alliance (albergo), and by the late fourteenth century all members in the Mahona
were affiliated, if only as a fictive additional name, with the Giustiniani. The entire
Giustiniani albergo, except for two families, immigrated to Chios.35
Under the Genoese, the island was able to preserve its independence for over two
centuries by offering a certain degree of military deterrence, but also by the payment of
tribute to the Ottoman sultans. The control of the mastic cultivation and commerce by the
Mahona has provoked comparison to the plantation system of the sort that would become
characteristic of New World commodities beginning in the sixteenth century.36 This is not
quite right, as mastic was a specialized crop whose value lay in its high unit price, rather
than an extensively cultivated product such as cotton or sugar. The latter were made
profitable by means of minimal labour costs (slavery), and by production in large
quantities. The social status and economic condition of the Greek land-holders who
actually cultivated the mastic might not have been ideal, but they were far from being
servile dependents. The Mahona dictated how many trees they were responsible for and
what their quotas were, but under Byzantine, Genoese, and Turkish rule they earned a
good living, remained of free condition, and exercised control over their farms and
villages. The largest profits went to whatever private or governmental entity handled the
mastic exports and, as was seen, the Genoese were especially strict about preventing any
unauthorized mastic from leaving the island, but because of the high price and this
monopolistic control, the system did not depend on oppressing the islanders. Gradually the
Greek elite became collaborators and allies of the Genoese.37
Some of the mastic revenues accrued to non-Genoese intermediaries between the
Mahona and the actual points of sale. Jewish traders were involved in distribution and as
counter-parties to hedging and liquidation of mastic supplied or held by the Giustiniani.38
In an earlier era, Jews had been responsible for much of the traffic between Chios and
Egypt.39
It is difficult to estimate how much mastic was produced or what price it commanded.
Pistarino has estimated that about 30,000 kilograms of mastic was sold just to the Eastern
regions in 1417. Within the East for 1364 to 1373, Alexandria seems to have averaged
annually 11,430 kilograms, while Damascus received 10,263. Much smaller amounts
were obtained by Aleppo (2,509 kg), Tripoli (Syria) (1,140 kg), and Rama (Palestine)
(also 1,140 kg).40 Writing to the King and Queen of Spain about his supposed discovery of
mastic, Columbus estimates that Genoa obtains a profit of 50,000 ducats annually, which
seems exaggerated against what appears to be the 1474 figure of 16,720 ducats, but this
latter sum may represent either the entire year’s profits, or just those from the East
(which was the largest customer).41
During the Ottoman period, Chios was allowed a degree of privilege, a long history of
relative prosperity obscured in historical memory by the notorious massacres carried out
by the decaying Empire in 1822. The mastic revenues pertained to the wife of the Sultan.
106 P. Freedman
The villagers were allowed a greater amount of autonomy than they had enjoyed under the
Genoese, even if this was sometimes obscured by the exactions of the governing Agà, who
collected the mastic revenues for the Sultana’s household. Julien Galland, reporting on a
visit to the island in 1747, mentions some aspects of the mastic-growers’ privileges:
The lentisc trees . . . belong to the Grand Signor. He has granted many important privileges to
the peasants of these villages . . . they have church bells, they pay no taxation or practically
none . . . they are exempt from all dues, impositions and forced labour of all and any kind.
A special Agà, who annually takes to Constantinople this farmed tax, governs this part of the
country, whose inhabitants are not under the ordinary jurisdiction of the rest of the island. . . .
When the Agà with his guard goes to the town he is accompanied with drums and flutes, and is
heralded into the town by the peasants of the villages where the mastic has been collected;
they then take it to the castle with great rejoicing.42
There are few cultivated things in the world whose economic and social organization has
remained as consistent as has the regulation of mastic.
The uses of mastic

For all the attention that has been given to the history of Chios and the structure of the
mastic trade, relatively little is known about why mastic was so valuable. European
medieval medicine and consumer aesthetics (not so far apart) greatly valued aromatic
substances, particularly those that came from expensive imported ingredients (as opposed
to the more commonplace herbs). Within the array of aromatic products, mastic occupied
what might be considered a middle level, its price comparable to that of pepper.43 It was
nowhere near as precious as ambergris, camphor, or musk, which probably sold for
something in the order of twenty to forty times the price of mastic. On the other hand,
mastic had a considerable commercial value and was relatively affordable within a luxury
market, the difference perhaps resembling that between Romanée Conti or Vega Sicilia
wine on the one hand (commanding spectacular prices), and a merely expensive wine such
as Chassagne-Montrachet or Priorat.
In the modern era, mastic has been a versatile if rather special commodity. In addition
to its culinary role in Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East, mastic has been used in
composing special varnishes for paintings and a wood varnish for furniture, musical
instruments, and (rather surprisingly) aeroplanes. It also appears in certain kinds of
compounds used in floor-wax (essentially another kind of wood polishing), and
bookbinding. Mastic can be used in surgical stitching, and has had many applications in
dental hygiene (toothpastes, breath-fresheners). A flavouring for coffee in Arabia, a
chewing gum in Greece (until replaced by global chewing gum in the 1960s), and for a
time in Egypt as well, it is sometimes considered an aphrodisiac in North Africa.44 A study
at the University of Nottingham in 1998 and a clinical trial at Mosul (Iraq) in 1984
suggested that mastic might be effective in the treatment of peptic ulcers, but this was
refuted by another Nottingham team in 2003.45 Until the very recent success in
reintroducing mastic to the Western market as a wellness ingredient, its primary modern
consumers have been in the Islamic world.
Mastic thus has an ambiguous versatility, something that is now used to advantage in
marketing cosmetic and ambiance products, and was a selling point also in Antiquity and
the Middle Ages. It has always been considered particularly beneficial for the teeth and the
breath. Beyond this its attributed medicinal uses were multiple and varied considerably
among different authors. According to Dioscorides, mastic purifies the blood, cures
rheumatism, and is useful for the care of the teeth. Pliny wrote that it was a diuretic and
astringent for the bowels, as well as effective against sores, cough, spitting blood, and
stomach distress. He also mentions mastic’s use as a cosmetic and dental remedy
(especially for loose or aching teeth).46 Scribonius Largus, a writer of the first century AD,
recommends mastic for toothache and stomach inflammation. Claudius Hermeros two
centuries later claims mastic is effective against rabies in mules. Galen refers to mastic in
several works. Used in the compound wonder-drug theriac, mastic is also effective against
snake-bite. Elsewhere in Galen mastic is an ingredient in medicines for baldness, mange,
and inflammation of the stomach, liver and intestines. This is repeated in Paulus of Aegina
(writing in the seventh century AD).47
During the Middle Ages, along with its perennial association with dental health, mastic
was believed effective in relieving bad humours and humoral imbalance. According to the
well-known pharmaceutical manual Circa instans (composed by Mattheus Platearius in
the mid-twelfth century and widely circulated in its French translation as the Livre des
simples medecines), mastic is humorally hot and dry in the second degree. It is identified as
coming from a tree resembling the pistachio-lentisk that grows in ‘a region of Greece’.
In the original Circa instans (but not in the French version) there is a brief account of the
mastic harvest, including the incisions. Mastic has the virtues of ‘comforting,
agglutinating and consolidating’, according to Circa instans, rendered in the Livre as
‘restraining, fortifying, knitting-together and cicatrizing’. There follows a list of specific
applications in which mastic is used as a powder mixed with white wine and egg-white
(for external application), as a plaster with laudanum, mixed with liquid and applied as a
compress, or drunk as a decoction with rainwater. Mastic here seems to work against
various forms of gastric distress, from vomiting to diarrhoea caused by using too powerful
laxatives. In general it relieves superfluous or dangerous humours, especially those of the
choleric (bilious) type. Mixed with fennel seeds, mastic gently relieves the stomach of pain
and gas.48 In a magnificently illustrated late-fifteenth century edition of the Livre des
simples medecines, an imagined pharmacist’s shelf includes mastic along with various
other exotic drugs such as mace, pearls, azurite and dried Indian plums (myrobolans).49
Real pharmacists routinely dealt in mastic. In an inventory of his shop carried out after
his death in 1353, the Barcelona pharmacist Francesc de Camp is recorded as having over
50 pounds of mastic (a pound here being calculated at 400 grams).50 Later in the
fourteenth century, the last account book of Francesc ses Canes shows mastic prescribed
by itself, or as a mouthwash ingredient along with rosewater and frankincense, or in
combinations with roses, frankincense, dragon’s blood ‘and other things’, for an
unspecified ailment.51
In the Classical era there are few references to mastic as a culinary item. An account of
what the Emperor Constantine ordered furnished to bishops travelling to the Council of
Arles in 314 includes mastic, along with cumin, cinnamon, and other spices. These clearly
are to be used for food as they follow a list of more basic items such as pork, lamb, bread,
wine, and oil.52 The cookbook of Apicius calls for mastic as an ingredient in two aromatic
wines or cordials, Conditum paradoxum and Absinthium Romanum.53 Mastic is mentioned
in medieval cookbooks, although not as a particularly common spice in the manner of
pepper, cinnamon, or ginger. It does figure in a list of twenty-one requisite spices that the
cook should have on hand in the Vatican manuscript of the Viandier, the best-known
cookbook of the Middle Ages, attributed to the French royal chef Taillevent.54 Among the
Viandier recipes, however, only one for sauce cameline (a spiced sauce the colour of a
camel, hence the name) actually includes mastic. Some early printed editions of the
Viandier include mastic as an ingredient in a mutton stew (herison de mouton) and a fish
jelly.55
108 P. Freedman
Columbus and his hyperbolic expectations

All of this gives an impression of variety, but beyond the dental applications not a very
clear sense of the reason for the high and consistent value placed on this substance. That its
value was high is underscored by Columbus’s enthusiasm and obsessive belief that mastic
abounded on the islands he explored on his first voyage. From Cuba in early November,
1492, he took some branches and a small amount of sap from what he thought to be a
mastic tree to present to the king and queen. Columbus estimated that the mastic he saw
could produce a thousand quintals a year and as further evidence identifying it he reports
that a native indicated by signs that the mastic was good for alleviating stomach
problems.56 On 12 November he wrote that there was an immense quantity of mastic
growing along a river. Here is where he mentions a visit to Chios, points out that until now
it has only been found to grow in Chios, and estimates the revenues from its cultivation at
50,000 ducats annually. He was able to gather only a tiny amount of resin because it was
raining all the time, and because it was not the season. He makes a similar series of
observation from Hispaniola in December, estimating that while the harvest in Chios takes
place around March, here, because of the warm climate, it probably could start in
January.57
To my mind, the implications of these observations have not been fully appreciated.
They testify to the grand if eccentric vision of Columbus and the degree to which it might
be said to have surpassed contemporary, ‘normal’ exaggerated expectations concerning
the wealth of the Indies. Pepper, cloves, gold, and rubies had always been associated
with the East, with a vaguely glimpsed India or, after the assimilation of Marco Polo’s
report that spices came from other places besides India, the islands of the East Indies. It is
therefore hardly surprising that Columbus should have anticipated finding these in the
lands he explored on his voyages. Indeed we know from his annotations to books in his
library that he constantly thought about the riches of the East, its precious stones, gold, and
spices.58 To expect to find mastic is more peculiar since, as Columbus himself observed,
its habitat was limited to Chios, an island not in the distant East but in the cosy, familiar
Aegean, a place whose climate differed (again as noted by Columbus) from the humid heat
of the 1492 islands. In effect he assimilates mastic to the hyperbolic wealth of East Asia.
It is not so much the exaggerated quantities of precious substances that are at issue.
This had to have been a widespread belief, for in order to proceed despite the extraordinary
risks of such a voyage, adventurers must have been confident that gold, spices, and other
aromatic products were not intrinsically rare, but rather abounded in their countries of
origin.59 If they were really scarce even in India, then their elevated price in Europe
reflected structural, permanent conditions that could not be overcome by direct contact.
The earlier consensus was that diamonds, pepper, and other such commodities were
difficult to gather in the places where they were found (hence inevitably and everywhere
expensive). By the late Middle Ages, however, it was widely believed that the high price
was not to be blamed on nature, but rather the effect of middlemen, customs dues,
monopolistic practices, or other artificial interventions that restricted the supply of what
was essentially, at its source, a plentiful commodity.
In this context mastic was an anomaly. As we have seen, it was not exactly rare –
plenty of it grew on the island of Chios, and its retail price was held up by restricting and
channelling its supply. Nevertheless, it could not be grown elsewhere, at least not with the
same recognizable qualities. To expect it to be plentiful in the Indies is thus a more
extreme form of optimism than anticipating forests of cloves, or the roofs of Japan
gleaming with gold; and it says something about Columbus’s ideas about the purpose and
promise of his explorations.
Once Columbus was no longer regarded as a kind of scientist, eager to prove a purely
intellectual set of ideas about the earth’s form and geography, the admiral tended to be
depicted by historians as more Messianic and obsessive. Medievalists in particular have
adjusted that image in turn by de-emphasizing Columbus’s visionary reputation, and
showing how his enthusiasms reflected current opinion of the fifteenth century about the
shape of the world and the nature of the East and its marvels.60 Thus the eagerness to find
gems, spices, and gold were shared by others who set out to exploit the Indies and were, in
fact, necessary to put into effect such dangerous journeys. What was not generally
expected were valuable temperate-zone goods (furs, amber), let alone European goods
with a known restricted habitat (mastic). This latter hope is a peculiarity belonging to
Columbus.
However exaggerated the conventional images of eastern wealth might have been,
there really was an immense profit available to the Portuguese upon discovery of the route
to India around the southern end of Africa. There were also enormous quantities of gold
and silver eventually extracted by Spain from mines in the New World. Mastic, on the
other hand, has remained the unique patrimony of Chios, and now that its demand and
healthful image are being re-established, it persists as a very long-term pleasure of the
incomparable Mediterranean.
Acknowledgements
A version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Negotiating Trade: Commercial Institutions
and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Medieval and Early Modern World’ held at Binghamton
University (State University of New York) in September, 2010. I received many helpful comments
from conference participants. I am also grateful to Aglaia Kremezi, an expert on Greek cuisine, for
her help with the modern and traditional uses of mastic.
Notes
1. Abulafia, ‘Crocuses and Crusaders’, 227– 43.
2. On saffron in medieval Catalonia, Rafat i Selga, Masos, 270– 85; Verdés i Pijoan, ‘Una espècia
autòctona’, 758– 86.
3. Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, 294. Although Pegolotti includes such things as alum
and cotton in his catalogue, the usual definition of spices is aromatic products of high unit
value. Most of them were imported into Europe, often from quite far away and so differed from
herbs in that they were items of grand commerce and not local aromatic substances.
4. For marketing reasons (rebranding and internationalization) the Association now prefers to use
the transliterated Greek ‘mastiha’ in English as well as in all other languages rather than
‘mastic’. I retain the latter term here, however, as it is the traditional English term for the
product and relatively familiar under that name to students of medieval commerce and material
culture.
5. Kochilas, Mastiha Cuisine.
6. Columbus, A Synoptic Edition, 67, 86, 224.
7. Perikos, The Chios Gum Mastic. The harvest and processing information is also described in
more recent materials available from the website of the Chios Mastiha Growers Association.
8. Cited and translated by Dalby, Dangerous Tastes, 136.
9. Balard, La Romanie Génoise, 2: 743.
10. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios, 3: 490– 91 (document no. 13).
11. Gual Camarena, El primer manual, 104. Gual Camarena is not sure what ‘gruell’ means here –
probably crumbly, doughy, perhaps from being too dried out. I thank the philologist Josep
Moran for this reading.
12. Taviani, Cristoforo Colombo, 1: 159.
110 P. Freedman
13. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 483– 99.

14. Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, 295, 299. He does not give the basis for grading, but this
is what the modern criteria are.
15. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 463.
16. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS m 461, fol. 11: ‘Celle region est nomee Arabie selon
le langaige du pais pource que cest une terre moul doulcement odorant et soues fleurant
comme encens, car en celle region croist le bon mastic et fin encens’. I am grateful to John
Friedman for this information.
17. Goitein and Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages, 561, note 54.
18. Pliny, Natural History, XII, 72.
19. Dalby, ‘Mastic for Beginners’, 41.
20. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 464– 5; Malamut, Les ı̂les de l’empire byzantin, 2: 389.
21. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, 72 – 3.
22. Balard, La Romanie Génoise, 2: 742; Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 502, no. 17 quotes Ludolph:
‘Haec insula specialis est nobilis, in qua crescit masticus, et non in alia parte mundi; licet
arbores eius in aliis partibus bene crescant, tamen fructus non reperitur’.
23. Argenti, Hieronimo Giustiniani’s History of Chios, 207: ‘Quantunque alchuni scrittori,
peccando piutosto d’ignoranza et coniscione de’ paesi, che per veruna certezza, o da solo udito
d’altri, presumeno scrivere pazzamente quello que ignorano, onde ardiscono dire, come il
Matheolo nel trattato della mastice et altri suoi seguaci, che non solamente a Scio, ma
etiamdiò ad alcuni altri paesi nascere il mastice, cosa certo falza . . . ’
24. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 225– 30; 359– 66.
25. From the fifth century BC wine from Chios enjoyed great fame. According to Athenaeus there
were sweet, medium and dry varieties. Analysis of amphorae indicates that at least some of this
wine had resin added to it (like modern retsina) and it is possible that mastic rather than
ordinary pine resin gave Chiote wine its particular character. The first reference to wine
flavoured with mastic, however, is Alexander of Tralles in the sixth century AD. See Barron,
‘Chios in the Athenian Empire’, 95. On wine from Chios during the late Byzantine Empire, see
Jacoby, ‘Mediterranean Food and Wine’, 137, 141, 144.
26. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 366.
27. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios, 2: 194– 5.
29. Suggested by Argenti, Chios vincta, xlii, note 2.
30. As pointed out to me by Professor David Jacoby. On Byzantine Chios see Malamut, Les ı̂les de
l’empire byzantin, 2: 388– 9, 440– 45, 540.
31. In addition to the works of Argenti, Pistarino and Balard already cited, see Balard, ‘Les Grecs
de Chio’; idem, ‘Le mastic de Chio’; idem, ‘Chio, centre économique’; Balletto, ‘Chio dei
Maonesi’; idem, ‘Chio dei Genovesi’; Lopez, Benedetto Zaccaria; Hopf, Les Giustiniani,
dynastes de Chios. For a bibliography of Genoese Chios, see Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi,
75 –8.
32. Argenti, Chios vincta, xli – xlvii.
33. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios, 1: 123– 37; Balard, ‘Chio, centre économique’, 14 – 17.
34. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 479– 80; Balard, ‘Chio, centre économique’, 15.
35. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 79 – 121; Argenti, The Occupation of Chios, 1: 332– 5; Argenti,
Chios vincta, xliii.
37. On this process Balard, ‘The Genoese in the Aegean’, 166– 72.
38. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 482; Balletto, ‘Chio dei Maonesi’, 146.
39. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1: 154, 268. I thank Jessica Goldberg for this information.
40. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 468, 484.
41. Ibid., 492 –5.
42. Galland, Recueil des rites, quoted (and trans.) Argenti, Chios vincta, cclxxii – cclxxiii.
43. I am grateful to Jessica Goldberg for her estimate of the price of mastic based on the Cairo
Geniza documents.
44. Perikos, The Chios Gum Mastic, 47 – 56; Roden, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, 44,
425.
45. Bebb et al., ‘Mastic Gum’, 522– 3.
46. Pliny, Natural History, XXIV, 42; XXXVII, 51.
47. Examples taken from Argenti, Bibliography of Chios.

48. Wölfel, Der Arzneidrogenbuch Circa Instans, 73; Livre des simples medecines, facsimile:
fol. 129v– 130r; translation: 199– 200.
49. St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS Fr. Fv. VI, 2, Livre des simples médecines,
fol. 166r. Facsimile edition, Libro de los medicamentos simples.
50. López Pizcueta, ‘Los bienes’, 29, 37.
51. Vela i Aulesa, L’obrador d’un apotecari medieval, 83, 125, 184, 196, 273, 294, 314.
52. Gorce, Les voyages, 54.
53. Apicius, De re coquinaria 1, c. 1, c. 3 (1 –3).
54. Taillevent, The Viandier of Taillevent, 218 (no. 155) and 230 (no. 170). The cameline recipe is
in all manuscripts of the Viandier. For the use of mastic in the Arab world of the Middle Ages,
Rodinson et al, Medieval Arab Cookery, 39, 150, 285, 303.
55. Taillevent, Le Viandier de Guillaume Tirel, 182, 187–8, using an unspecified incunabulum.
Mastic is absent, however, from the sixteenth-century edition in the Bodleian Library given in
Taillevent, Viandier de Taillevent: The Cookery Book.
56. Gould, Neuva lista documentada, 431.
57. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 489– 90.
58. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape, 202– 3.

59. On medieval notions of scarcity especially with regard to spices, Freedman, Out of the East,
130– 45.
60. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape, does a particularly effective job of demonstrating
Columbus’s conceptual antecedents. See as well her article ‘Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in
the Voyages of Columbus’.
Notes on contributor
Paul Freedman is Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale University where he has taught
courses on medieval history and the history of food and cuisine. His work has been centered on
medieval Catalonia, especially church history and agrarian history. He has also written comparative
studies of peasants and how they were represented in didactic, literary and artistic materials. Most
recently he is the author of Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (2008) and editor of
Food: The History of Taste (2007).
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Mastic: a Mediterranean luxury product

Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, USA

he had found mastic in the New World.

ISSN 0951-8967 print/ISSN 1743-940X online

Chios and the mastic plant

mastic could be grown elsewhere.23

somewhat cumbersome structure of simultaneous Old and New corporations was

The uses of mastic

Columbus and his hyperbolic expectations

13. Pistarino, Chio dei Genovesi, 483– 99.

47. Examples taken from Argenti, Bibliography of Chios.

58. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape, 202– 3.

2nd ed. Geneva: Slatkine, 1967.

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