Diet of the Gulf People

Prof. E. H. Parker says that the T’ang History, in treating of the Arab conquests of Fuh-lin [or Frank] territory, alludes to the “date and dry fish diet of the Gulf people.” The exact Chinese words are: “They feed their horses on dried fish, and themselves subsist on the hu-mang, or Persian date, as Bretschneider has explained.” (Asiatic Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904, p. 134.)

Bretschneider, in Med. Researches, II., p. 134, n. 873, with regard to the dates writes: “Wan nien tsao, ‘ten thousand years’ jujubes’; called also Po-sze tao, or ‘Persian jujubes.’ These names and others were applied since the time of the T’ang dynasty to the dates brought from Persia. The author of the Pen ts’ao kang mu (end of the sixteenth century) states that this fruit is called k’u-lu-ma in Persia. The Persian name of the date is khurma.”

Cf. Chau Ju-kwa, p. 210.

XXII., p. 128 n.