Araq, Raki, Ouzo, and the Birth of White Magic
Countries of the East Mediterranean pride themselves of their national distilled liquors, the Greek “ouzo”, Turkish “raki”, and Lebanese “araq”[1]. These fraternal liquors share many commonalities: their alcohol comes from the grapevine, they are colorless and transparent, they have a high alcoholic content, and their magic comes from the aniseed plant.
The ritualistic drinking of araq, raki or ouzo starts with white magic: you pour the liquor into a glass, add water, and then the mixture turns from transparent to milky white. The inclusion of aniseed in these drinks’ distillation process is responsible for this wonderful chemical transformation, and these liquors are sometimes affectionately called “the milk of lions” because of this phenomenon. Just how old are these alcoholic drinks that elicit such nationalistic fervors?
The written history of alcoholic drinks is full of myths and misinformation, often involving monks in monasteries. The Greek “ouzo”, for example, traces its fake medieval origin to monks from the Mount Athos[2]. A more rigorous search for the origin of the milk of lions leads us down a very different alcoholic path.
The consumption of distilled liquors for recreational rather than medicinal purpose goes back 700 years [3]. A distilled drink called “araq”, or sometimes “araqi”, emerges in East Asia around the 14th century. It will take another two hundred years for the grape-based araq to firmly establish itself in the East Mediterranean[4]. The 16th century “Viaje de Turquia” (“Trip to Turkey”), as an example, describes the Greeks having protracted meals while drinking copious amount of “raqui”, a shortening of “araqi”[5]. However, there is no evidence at the time of aniseed being added to distilled liquors.
While countries may claim araq, raki or ouzo as their ancestral drinks, these beverages are in fact youngsters on the scale of these nations’ histories. The aniseed plant has been grown in the East Mediterranean for thousands of years[6], but aniseed was not introduced into the process of liquor distillation until the 17th century when an aniseed-flavored liquor emerges in the southern region of the kingdom of France[7]. We have to wait for the 18th century for clear evidence of aniseed being used in the East Mediterranean’s grape-based liquors[8].
Since then, the spread of these exquisite drinks across the region has been swift, and they have become part of countries’ identities. When drinking a glass of araq, I am sometime immersed by a sense of connection to my ancestral roots in their ancient past, while the rational part of my brain knows full well that araq is a young invention. That is the power of aniseed’s White Magic.
[1] Jordan, Palestine, and Syria are also producers of araq.
[2] There is nothing to substantiates this claim.
[3] I wrote about the origins of distilled liquors for recreational purpose in my Medium piece “On the Origin of Fun in Distilled Liquors (or the Story of Araq)”. See https://milklions.medium.com/on-the-origin-of-fun-in-distilled-liquors-or-the-story-of-araq-3d15e5af8e6f?sk=fd23211827792a99ce62d0d2975062e9
[4] The earliest mention of araq in the East Mediterranean that I could find dates from 1435 AD. Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn ʻArabshāh (died in 1450 AD) mentions the “araq of wine” in his Kitāb ʻAjāʼib al-maqdūr fī akhbār Tīmūr, which he wrote while living in Damascus. Ibn ʻArabshāh lived most of his life in Central Asia, and mentions araq in relation to the Central Asian conqueror, Timur. See page 165 in the following: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044117368191. I could find no other mention of araq in the 15th century East Mediterranean. Mentions of araq become frequent during the 16th century.
[5] See the relevant passage of Viaje de Turquia in https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/viaje-de-turquia--0/html/000423ea-82b2-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_7.html
[6] For example, a handbook on agriculture written in 12th century Spain, the Kitab Al- Filaha (“Book of Agriculture”) of Ibn al-’Awwam, gives alternative names for aniseed, including the “Levantine bisbass” and the “Byzantine fennel” (or rather literally “Roman fennel”, since Byzantine was called Roman (“room”) in Arabic). These names corroborate the strong connection of the aniseed plant to the East Mediterranean. See page 259 in https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$c34616
[7] In his Pharmacopée royale galénique et chymyque, Moyse Charas (died 1698 AD) talks about distilled wine infused with aniseed that is produced in Languedoc and Provence, two areas of Southern France. See page 497 in https://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucm.5315938138. This is the earliest mention I could find of aniseed-flavored distilled wine. There are earlier examples of doctors/proto-chemists adding aniseed to the process of wine distillation, but these concoctions were not social drinks. There are also older mentions of “aniseed-waters”, such as this “acqua d’anice” from 17th century Bologna https://collezioni.genusbononiae.it/products/dettaglio/6233, but there is no evidence these drinks included distilled alcohol.
[8] The earliest piece of evidence I could find regarding the addition of aniseed to alcohol distillation in the East Mediterranean is from The natural history of Aleppo, and parts adjacent by Alexander Russell (died 1768 AD). See page 20 in https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015019759979
