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FRANKINCENSE
 

1871) distinguishes five species of Boswellia: (A) B. thurifera, Colebr. (B. glabra and B. serrata, Roxb.), indigenous to the mountainous tracts of central India and the Coromandel coast, and B. papyrifera (Plösslea floribunda, Endl.) of Abyssinia, which, though both thuriferous, are not known to yield any of the olibanum of commerce; and (B) B. Frereana (see Elemi, vol. x. p. 259), B. Bhua-Dajiana, and B. Carterii, the “Yegaar,” “Mohr Add,” and “Mohr Madow” of the Somali country, in East Africa, the last species including a variety, the “Maghrayt d’Sheehaz” of Hadramaut, Arabia, all of which are sources of true frankincense or olibanum. The trees on the Somali coast are described by Captain G. B. Kempthorne as growing, without soil, out of polished marble rocks, to which they are attached by a thick oval mass of substance resembling a mixture of lime and mortar: the purer the marble the finer appears to be the growth of the tree. The young trees, he states, furnish the most valuable gum, the older yielding merely a clear glutinous fluid resembling copal varnish.[1] To obtain the frankincense a deep incision is made in the trunk of the tree, and below it a narrow strip of bark 5 in. in length is peeled off. When the milk-like juice (“spuma pinguis,” Pliny) which exudes has hardened by exposure to the atmosphere, the incision is deepened. In about three months the resin has attained the required degree of consistency. The season for gathering lasts from May until the first rains in September. The large clear globules are scraped off into baskets, and the inferior quality that has run down the tree is collected separately. The coast of south Arabia is yearly visited by parties of Somalis, who pay the Arabs for the privilege of collecting frankincense.[2] In the interior of the country about the plain of Dhofār,[3] during the south-west monsoon, frankincense and other gums are gathered by the Beni Gurrah Bedouins, and might be obtained by them in much larger quantities; their lawlessness, however, and the lack of a safe place of exchange or sale are obstacles to the development of trade. (See C. Y. Ward, The Gulf of Aden Pilot, p. 117, 1863.) Much as formerly in the region of Sakhalites in Arabia (the tract between Ras Makalla and Ras Agab),[4] described by Arrian, so now on the sea-coast of the Somali country, the frankincense when collected is stored in heaps at various stations. Thence, packed in sheep- and goat-skins, in quantities of 20 to 40 ℔, it is carried on camels to Berbera, for shipment either to Aden, Makalla and other Arabian ports, or directly to Bombay.[5] At Bombay, like gum-acacia, it is assorted, and is then packed for re-exportation to Europe, China and elsewhere.[6] Arrian relates that it was an import of Barbarike on the Sinthus (Indus). The idea held by several writers, including Niebuhr, that frankincense was a product of India, would seem to have originated in a confusion of that drug with benzoin and other odoriferous substances, and also in the sale of imported frankincense with the native products of India. The gum resin of Boswellia thurifera was described by Colebrooke (in Asiatick Researches, ix. 381), and after him by Dr J. Fleming (Ib. xi. 158), as true frankincense, or olibanum; from this, however, it differs in its softness, and tendency to melt into a mass[7] (Birdwood, loc. cit., p. 146). It is sold in the village bazaars of Khandeish in India under the name of Dup-Salai, i.e. incense of the “Salai tree”; and according to Mr F. Porter Smith, M.B. (Contrib. towards the Mat. Med. and Nat. Hist, of China, p. 162, Shanghai, 1871), is used as incense in China. The last authority also mentions olibanum as a reputed natural product of China. Bernhard von Breydenbach,[8] Ausonius, Florus and others, arguing, it would seem, from its Hebrew and Greek names, concluded that olibanum came from Mount Lebanon; and Chardin (Voyage en Perse, &c., 1711) makes the statement that the frankincense tree grows in the mountains of Persia, particularly Caramania.

Frankincense, or olibanum, occurs in commerce in semi-opaque, round, ovate or oblong tears or irregular lumps, which are covered externally with a white dust, the result of their friction against one another. It has an amorphous internal structure, a dull fracture; is of a yellow to yellowish-brown hue, the purer varieties being almost colourless, or possessing a greenish tinge, and has a somewhat bitter aromatic taste, and a balsamic odour, which is developed by heating. Immersed in alcohol it becomes opaque, and with water it yields an emulsion. It contains about 72% of resin soluble in alcohol (Kurbatow); a large proportion of gum soluble in water, and apparently identical with gum arabic; and a small quantity of a colourless inflammable essential oil, one of the constituents of which is the body oliben, C10H16. Frankincense burns with a bright white flame, leaving an ash consisting mainly of calcium carbonate, the remainder being calcium phosphate, and the sulphate, chloride and carbonate of potassium (Braconnot).[9] Good frankincense, Pliny tells us, is recognized by its whiteness, size, brittleness and ready inflammability. That which occurs in globular drops is, he says, termed “male frankincense”; the most esteemed, he further remarks, is in breast-shaped drops, formed each by the union of two tears.[10] The best frankincense, as we learn from Arrian,[11] was formerly exported from the neighbourhood of Cape Elephant in Africa (the modern Ras Fiel); and A. von Kremer, in his description of the commerce of the Red Sea (Aegypten, &c., p. 185, ii. Theil, Leipzig, 1863), observes that the African frankincense, called by the Arabs “asli,” is of twice the value of the Arabian “luban.” Captain S. B. Miles (loc. cit., p. 64) states that the best kind of frankincense, known to the Somali as “bedwi” or “sheheri,” comes from the trees “Mohr Add” and “Mohr Madow” (vide supra), and from a taller species of Boswellia, the “Boido,” and is sent to Bombay for exportation to Europe; and that an inferior “mayeti,” the produce of the “Yegaar,” is exported chiefly to Jeddah and Yemen ports.[12] The latter may possibly be what Niebuhr alludes to as “Indian frankincense.”[13] Garcias da Horta, in asserting the Arabian origin of the drug, remarks that the term “Indian” is often applied by the Arabs to a dark-coloured variety.[14]

According to Pliny (Nat. Hist. xiv. 1; cf. Ovid, Fasti i. 337

  1. ↑ See “Appendix,” vol. i. p. 419 of Sir W. C. Harris’s Highland of Aethiopia (2nd ed., Lond., 1844); and Trans. Bombay Geog. Soc. xiii. (1857), p. 136.
  2. ↑ Cruttenden, Trans. Bombay Geog. Soc. vii. (1846), p. 121; S. B. Miles, J. Geog. Soc. (1872).
  3. ↑ Or Dhafār. The incense of “Dofar” is alluded to by Camoens, Os Lusiadas, x. 201.
  4. ↑ H. J. Carter, “Comparative Geog. of the South-East Coast of Arabia,” in J. Bombay Branch of R. Asiatic Soc. iii. (Jan. 1851), p. 296; and Müller, Geog. Graeci Minores, i. p. 278 (Paris, 1855).
  5. ↑ J. Vaughan, Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) pp. 227-229; and Ward, op. cit. p. 97.
  6. ↑ Pereira, Elem. of Mat. Med. ii. pt. 2, p. 380 (4th ed., 1847).
  7. ↑ “Boswellia thurifera,” ... says Waring (Pharm. of India, p. 52), “has been thought to yield East Indian olibanum, but there is no reliable evidence of its so doing.”
  8. ↑ “Libanus igitur est mons redolentie & summe aromaticitatis. nam ibi herbe odorifere crescunt. ibi etiam arbores thurifere coalescunt quarum gummi electum olibanum a medicis nuncupatur.”—Perigrinatio, p. 53 (1502, fol.).
  9. ↑ See, on the chemistry of frankincense, Braconnot, Ann. de chimie, lxviii. (1808) pp. 60-69; Johnston, Phil. Trans. (1839), pp. 301-305; J. Stenhouse, Ann. der Chem. und Pharm. xxxv. (1840) p. 306; and A. Kurbatow, Zeitsch. für Chem. (1871), p. 201.
  10. ↑ “Praecipua autem gratia est mammoso, cum haerente lacryma priore consecuta alia miscuit se” (Nat. Hist. xii. 32). One of the Chinese names for frankincense, Jú-hiang, “milk-perfume,” is explained by the Pen Ts’au (xxxiv. 45), a Chinese work, as being derived from the nipple-like form of its drops. (See E. Bretschneider, On the Knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese of the Arabs, &c., p. 19, Lond., 1871.)
  11. ↑ The Voyage of Nearchus, loc. cit.
  12. ↑ Vaughan (Pharm. Journ. xii. 1853) speaks of the Arabian Lubān, commonly called Morbat or Shaharree Luban, as realizing higher prices in the market than any of the qualities exported from Africa. The incense of “Esher,” i.e. Shihr or Shehr, is mentioned by Marco Polo, as also by Barbosa. (See Yule, op. cit. ii. p. 377.) J. Raymond Wellsted (Travels to the City of the Caliphs, p. 173, Lond., 1840) distinguishes two kinds of frankincense—“Meaty,” selling at $4 per cwt., and an inferior article fetching 20% less.
  13. ↑ “Es scheint, dass selber die Araber ihr eignes Räuchwerk nicht hoch schätzen; denn die Vornehmen in Jemen brauchen gemeiniglich indianisches Räuchwerk, ja eine grosse Menge Mastix von der Insel Scio” (Beschreibung von Arabien, p. 143, Kopenh., 1772).
  14. ↑ “De Arabibus minus mirum, qui nigricantem colorem, quo Thus Indicum praeditum esse vult Dioscorides [lib. i. c. 70], Indum plerumque vocent, ut ex Myrobalano nigro quem Indum appellant, patet” (op. sup. cit. p. 157).
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