Anura Gunasekera
19th June, 2025
Ceylon Cinnamon – Queen of Spices
Moreover, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure Myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half as much….and thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary; it shall be the holy anointing oil( The Bible, Exodus, 30;22-25)
Cinnamon is truly ancient, being mentioned in Chinese texts ( still known as kwai in Cantonese) as far back as 2800 BC. Its frequent mention in the Bible, from Exodus to Revelations, reflects both its importance, antiquity, and wide-spread use reaching back to the early stages of international commerce, preceding written history. No other spice in history has excited as much interest, and has had such a wide variety of properties, ranging from the supernatural to the curative, and the culinary to the decorative, attributed to it. Cinnamon, whilst preserving and enriching food, also sanctified and purified. No other spice, or consumable, has been invested with so much legend, myth and mystery, as cinnamon.
“Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates with all choice fruits. Henna with nard, Nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon ….”( Song of Songs- Hebrew Bible)
The name “cinnamon” is derived from ancient Hebrew or Phoenician, qinnamon and its ancient Greek equivalent, kinnamomon. The word first appeared in English, in or around the 15th century. An ancient Greek inscription describes cinnamon and cassia ( derived from the Hebrew, qtsiah ), as gifts donated to Apollo at the temple of Miletus. Its botanic name, Cinnamomum, is drived from the Hebraic and Arabic term, amomon , meaning “fragrant spice plant”. In antiquity these terms were both used to identify modern cinnamon, with cassia being imported from Arabia and Ethiopia, and true cinnamon from Ceylon- Sri Lanka( the issue regarding these two variants will be discussed in detail, later on in this writing). The Italians latinized the term and called cinnamon canella, meaning “little tube”. This establishes beyond doubt that the tubular shape of the cinnamon quill is an age old tradition.
Historically, in ancient cultures and nations, cinnamon was considered a gift fit for kings and as an offering for deities. Whilst, in the West, it was known as a precious commodity from the mysterious East, for centuries wily merchants kept its real origins secret from consuming markets, in order to maintain monopoly of supply. Maritime trade routes for cinnamon, and other spices from the East, were established in antiquity itself by Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and later the Arabs. The Portuguese, Spanish, the Dutch, in that order, manipulated the trade in the early middle ages, followed in the pre-modern era by the British.
The desirability and high value of cinnamon- and other spices- eventually spurred the “Age of Discovery”, as consuming nations in the West sought direct access to original sources, ultimately leading to the establishment of colonial trade routes and the globalization of trade. These journeys, across both land and sea, also resulted in the discovery of other lands, nations and, not infrequently, led to wars of acquisition and colonization, with the primary objective of securing unrestricted access to, and control over, precious commodities such as cinnamon.
In ancient Rome cinnamon was more valuable than gold. Pliny the Elder( AD 24-79), Roman author, naturalist, and naval and army commander, wrote that a Roman pound of Cassia (about 327 gm), arriving from the Red Sea “on rafts with rudders, sails or ors”, cost 30 denarii, equivalent to an year’s earnings for a Roman labourer. Both Pliny and Theoprastus(c.371 BC- c. 287BC), Greek philosopher and naturalist, in their writings, have described the method of peeling and curing cinnamon. Theoprastus, often referred to as the “father of Botany”, was one of the earliest to understand the significance of fragrances, and to write about the subject. The following is attributed to him;
“…….for that which is put in last it always dominates, even if it is a small quantity. Thus, if a pound of myrrh is put in to half a pint of oil and at a later stage a third of an ounce of cinnamon is added, the small amount dominates.”
The eccentric Roman emperor, Nero ( AD 37 – 68) is said to have burnt a year’s supply to the city, in the funeral pyre of his wife, Poppaea Sabina, whom he had murdered in a fit of rage, in AD 65. Before embalming became a common practice, wealthy Romans used cinnamon and cinnamon oil at funerals, in order to mask the smell of putrefaction of the corpses. In Roman society, cinnamon was used to treat digestive and respiratory ailments. Hippocrates ( c. 460- c. 370 BCE), Greek physician, philosopher, and one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine, included cinnamon in his treatise on medicinal plants.
Roman emperor, Diocletian ( 245 – 305 CE), increased the dwindling finances of the empire by setting prices and taxes for luxury imports, which included sesame seed, cumin, horseradish and cinnamon. Similarly, in the 12th century, in Jerusalem and Acre, then the main trading centres in Israel, special taxes were imposed on the revenues earned on sales of pepper, cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon.
For many centuries, the suppliers of cinnamon were successful in keeping its origins secret from consumers in the West, where it was most prized. European writers of that era continued to quote Pliny the Elder and Herodotus, and entertained the belief that cinnamon arrived through the Red Sea from trading ports in Egypt, from mystic origins. Jean de Joinville ( 1224- 1317), famous writer and historian of medieval France, reported that cinnamon was fished up from nets at the source of the river Nile, in Ethiopia, then considered by Westerners as the “edge of the world”.
The Maluku islands ( Moluccas) of the Indonesian archipelago, were known as the Spice Islands, because of the nutmeg, mace and cloves, found there exclusively in the early modern period. Local traders operating in Egypt and the near Middle-East carried these spices, along with cinnamon, in rafts and small sailing craft, north to Alexandria in Egypt. These commodities were picked up by Venetian traders who distributed them in Europe, whilst jealously guarding their monopoly of the products. However, the emergence of the Mamaluk and the Ottoman empires( c 1250 - early 20th century), disrupted these trading routes and compelled European powers to search for other routes of access to Asian markets and products.
The maritime explorations undertaken by Portuguese mariner, Vasco de Gama ( c. 1460 – 1524), especially his historic voyage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope ( 1497-1499), at the end of which he landed at the port city of Calicut ( now Kozhikode), in the state of Kerala, India, established the first link between Europe and Asia by an ocean route. He succeeded, where Christopher Columbus failed. De Gama’s epic sea journey opened an unopposed, direct Western access to the spice sources of the Indian sub-continent. The primary products obtained were cinnamon and pepper, but soon included other commodities, many of them new to Europe.
In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan ( c. 1480 – 1521), another Portuguese mariner, empowered by king Charles 1 of Spain, sailed at the head of a five-ship “ Armada of the Moluccas”, and reached the Philippines after a historic circumnavigation of almost half the globe. Although he never returned, being killed in 1521, in battle at Macatan, Phillipines, he is credited with having discovered in the island of Mindanao, Cinnamomum Mindanaese, closely related to Cinnamomum Zeylanicum of Ceylon.