moroccan mint tea

Maghreb (Morocco, and across North Africa); atay is Chinese gunpowder green tea steeped hard with nana spearmint and heavy sugar, a drink assembled from a long-distance import and a local herb.

Reached the Moroccan court through Britain at the start of the eighteenth century under Moulay Ismail, as medicine and as diplomatic gift, restricted to the Makhzen; spread through the cities between 1830 and 1860, and after the 1856 Anglo-Moroccan treaty cut duties to a tenth, imports went from 31,000 kilograms in 1862 to three million by 1908

The story usually told is that a British merchant dumped blockaded Crimean stock on Tangier and Morocco has drunk it ever since. Graham Cornwell went looking for the source of that and found nobody who tells it cites one. What the Moroccan historians Abdelahad Sebti and Abderrahmane Lakhssassi describe is slower and stranger. Tea arrives through Britain around 1700, under Moulay Ismail, as medicine and as a diplomatic gift, and stays locked inside the Makhzen for a century. It reaches the cities between 1830 and 1860. Then the 1856 treaty cuts the duty to a tenth and imports run from 31,000 kilograms in 1862 to three million by 1908. The national drink arrives through a market being prised open, not the accident of a cargo. Sebti puts it harder than this archive had dared to: Moroccan tea culture unfolds fully only in a colonial context. The leaf is Chinese, the nana is local, the sugar is colonial commerce, and the ritual of pouring from height and refusing only at social cost is wholly North African. Origin does not determine belonging. Belonging still has a date on it.