Alcohol – A History

Title: Alcohol – A History
Author: Rod Phillips
Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2016 (First published 2014)
ISBN: 9789385755903
Pages: 370

Alcohol has a very long history of association with mankind, just like the taming of domestic animals or the invention of the wheel. The discovery of the fermentation of sugar in fruits into alcohol was definitely a landmark event in history as it probably provided humans the first opportunity to experience something 'out of the ordinary' - those who drink surely know what I am talking about! Over the ages, the drink went through several transformations, such as an intoxicating substance to a healthy beverage and nowadays back to an undesirable one. When the quality of water supply in European cities was abysmal, alcohol was the only liquid safe to drink. But when the health risks of unwholesome potable water were realized and extensive piping arrangements were provided to ensure safe drinking water to the masses, alcohol was dislodged from the lofty pedestal on which it had reigned for much of history. Then came non-alcoholic beverages such as tea and coffee that provided an acceptable alternative to alcohol as a stimulant. Temperance and prohibitionist movements took birth around this time and severe restrictions were placed on the distribution of alcohol. The US - of all the places - experimented with a total ban on alcohol for 13 years from 1920 to 1933. This book provides a good summary of alcohol from the ancient past to the twenty-first century. The drawback is that it focusses only on the West. Rod Phillips is professor of history at Carlton University and is the author of 'A Short History of Wine'.

Phillips provides a skeletal account of the discovery and development of alcohol from the hoary past. 9000 years ago, someone found that if the juice of fruit or berries were left for a short time in warm enough conditions, it began to bubble or froth. Once the bubbling subsided, the resultant beverage produced a pleasant feeling when consumed in small quantities. Even though alcohol was fermented in almost all of the ancient societies, North America is an anomaly where there is no evidence of native peoples making alcohol despite the availability of suitable raw materials. Ancient Greece and Rome drank only wine and avoided beer, thinking it unfit for civilized people. They exported the knowledge of vine cultivation and winemaking to all of the known world. The Middle Ages (1000 - 1500) saw the birth of the alcohol industry close on the heels of economic prosperity and urbanization. City dwellers were not able to produce their own food and drink. Improvements in recipes catapulted the industry to new heights. Ale was made with gruit which was not suitable for keeping for a long time. Replacement of gruit with hops for bittering ensured longer preservation and industry flourished in the Middle Ages. Alcohol was considered safe for consumption as sources of plain water in Europe and America were polluted. The fermentation process itself and the method of adding alcohol to water killed harmful bacteria.

This book clearly traces out the social background in which alcohol entered the diet of Europeans and how opposition built up against it, along with the reasons. By the end of 1500s, distilled spirits entered mainstream drinking culture instead of fermented beverages. The first form of spirits to be produced was brandy which is distilled from wine, similarly rum was distilled from molasses. The distilled alcohol was known as aquavitae (water of life) in Europe. They contained much higher alcohol content than fermented drinks. By the early modern period (1500-1700), alcohol became firmly entrenched in the daily diets of European populations. Resistance to alcohol came to the fore in the nineteenth century when biblical scholars were working in a cultural climate increasingly receptive to temperance and prohibitionist ideas. They reinterpreted the treatment of alcohol in the Bible and claimed that wherever the term was used in a positive sense, it in fact meant grape juice. When tea was first introduced, it was recognized as having stimulating effects somewhat similar to alcohol's. Writers argued that tea was preferable to wine, because it conveyed all the benefits of wine without the disadvantages of intoxication and hangover. In the nineteenth century, many governments provided safe drinking water to many urban populations. Though this was led by concerns for public health and ideas about personal and social hygiene, it provided one of the bases for radical anti-alcohol movements. This made possible a real shift in the attitudes for a future without alcohol.

Being sourced from antiquity itself, alcohol attached itself to religion as well. Christianity elevated wine to a position of centrality in its symbolism and rituals, while Islam rejected alcohol entirely and forbade its followers to drink alcoholic beverages. Perhaps the greatest sanctity for wine was accorded by Christianity through the concept of transubstantiation, that at the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The wine used for this purpose was especially blessed and not of the ordinary variety. The author claims that Christianity introduced Christ as resembling a wine god in the model of Dionysus of Rome, who was also born of a god and a human woman. He too performed the miracle of turning water into wine, although he converted only three jars, whereas Christ did six! The importance of wine for communion led the Christian church and its institutions to become significant sponsors of an extensive wine industry. Many vineyards were planted on monastic lands and monasteries became important commercial producers of wine, a major part of which was sold to secular society. Phillips also points out that though Islam banned alcohol, it granted access to it in paradise, which is depicted as flowing with rivers of delicious wine. When temperance movements arose in modern times, many of them were imbued with Christian virtues and the religion's inalienable link to wine became a sticking point. A way out came in the form of Louis Pasteur who found that heating up grape juice killed off the yeasts needed to turn its sugars into alcohol. This enabled the production of stable juice that was free from the risk of fermentation. This 'unfermented wine' was used in church services. The Catholic Church, however, continues to use wine.

This book examines the issue of the use of alcohol with people of other continents, but sadly leaves out Asia. Portuguese wine was used in the slave trade to pay for the slaves. The Europeans also introduced alcoholic beverages in their colonies. In Mexico, they couldn't displace the local variety known as pulque, to which the whites were addicted too. Missionaries opposed selling alcohol to Native Americans only because 'it made them more difficult to convert' (p. 149). The eighteenth century saw the emergence of clearly defined, class-based drinking cultures and a much starker differentiation between elite and popular drinking. Native Americans were prohibited from alcoholic beverages by peculiar laws preventing sale of liquor to them. These became redundant in 1920 when Prohibition was extended to all races. When it was repealed in 1933, the Native Americans continued to be under prohibition. This was lifted only in 1953.

The twentieth century was the most restraining ever on alcohol. World War I was a watershed in the history of alcohol. Under the pressure of extended military conflict, growing concerns about alcohol crystallized and many governments introduced regulations which were largely maintained and even intensified long after the conflict ended. The US prohibited alcohol for recreational consumption in 1920. For thirteen years, the people of America resorted to a slew of subterfuges to get hands on a bottle of it. Finally, convinced of its futility, the ban was lifted in 1933. This rethink was also due to the Depression because it made the state lose revenue on liquor sales and employment opportunities for the vast unemployed masses in the liquor industry. In Nazi Germany, thousands of individuals identified as alcoholics were sterilized because they believed that it will be passed on to descendants. This was the taste of eugenics vigorously followed by the Nazi party. However, with the failure of Prohibition everywhere, the moralistic approach to alcoholism was shunned and more practical organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous emerged in 1935.

Considering the subject matter, I had expected at least a part of the narrative in a lighter vein. This expectation was belied from the outset as Phillips vied for an academic thesis that may grant him a higher degree than to entertain the readers. This makes the text somewhat tedious. A lot of information is condensed into its pages that may be of better use to a student than a hobbyist reader. Leaving out Asia is an unpardonable lapse in a book of this nature. To compensate for this shortcoming in some measure, the author has included some very basic, fleeting references to China, but India is totally left out. As parts of history, quotes from books of the period are included, which adequately illustrates several aspects of the issue at hand. This book leaves out scientific matter altogether. One would be interested to know the mechanism of how alcohol affects the brain and nervous system, and also how the body finally disposes it off, thereby causing irreversible damage to the liver. The author should have devoted a chapter on this topic. As of now, readers sign off from the book with a feeling that consuming alcohol is a pleasurable experience and that's why puritans oppose it in every way they can. Its life-threatening aftereffects are not at all highlighted.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History – The Rashidun Caliphs

Title: Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History – The Rashidun Caliphs
Author: Tayeb El-Hibri
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9780231150835
Pages: 471

When Muhammad died in 632 CE, he didn't leave behind any clear instructions on the successor. Since he died in Medina, the two factions in early Islamic society - the Muhajirun (emigrants) and the Ansar (helpers) - sprang into action to get one among them elected as the caliph (commander of the faithful). Umar cleverly handled the power struggle and ensured the almost unanimous selection of Abu Bakr as the caliph. The supporters of Ali, who was the son-in-law of the Prophet and therefore of the same family, felt that he was unjustly side-lined in the selection process. In fact, Ali would continue to be overlooked twice more as Umar and Uthman would step on to the top post in the coming years. He finally obtained the position as the fourth caliph and the first four are called the Rashidun (rightly guided) caliphs. After Ali's death in 661, the caliphate moved away from the companions of the Prophet and effectually ended up as a kingship. This book covers the period from 632 to 661 CE when the reign of the Rashidun caliphs ended. The divergence in the religious concepts of the institutions of Shias and Sunnis emanate from the initial disagreement over who should have succeeded the Prophet and what really happened on the eve of his death. This study revisits these issues in religious and historical sources and argues for an alternative reading of this history as a largely parabolic cycle of literary narrative. It advises that the study of Islamic chronicles should be as texts of representation than as factual testimonies preserved in time. Tayeb el-Hibri is professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

El-Hibri claims that the texts of early Islamic history were finalized only in the ninth century under the tutelage of the Abbasid dynasty on the caliphate. Naturally, the writers preferred themes and parables better appreciated by their patrons even at the cost of verisimilitude. Furthermore, the Quranic reticence on storytelling did not prevent Jewish and Christian converts after Muhammad's death from developing the tradition of religious storytelling anew. There were two schools of study of the early Islamic caliphate - the credulous and the skeptical. The credulous approach places significant belief in the historicity of Islamic traditions and the skeptical approach ranges from placing some trust in them to complete rejection. The skeptical approach is a new development. Religious scholars in the ninth century were in a dilemma over the mortal fight among the Rashidun caliphs for political power. Three out of the four were brutally assassinated. In light of this, they ignored the turbulent history of Uthman and Ali's reigns, opting to emphasize the flattering portions of the biographies. Conflict was blamed on outside instigators while the companions were portrayed as having acted in good faith. Ninth century writers in the Abbasid period answered contemporary economic questions about taxation by attributing certain principles to the Rashidun caliphs making it a touchstone for imagined, idealized practices. The polemical constructions of Sunni hadiths in the ninth century ran parallel to the standard narrative of the Rashidun caliphate with all its controversies and consistently legitimized what they did. 

The book presents the various scenarios and dramatic developments following the death of each leader. Prophet's succession was a contentious issue and we see that the selection of Abu Bakr was not entirely a foregone conclusion at first and also find the different versions of how he came to lead the prayer while the Prophet was alive, but sick. Abu Bakr played a leading role in healing the rift between the Muhajirun and Ansar factions in Medina and reuniting the community with sober council and kind words. Family renown was an overriding factor in early Arab society. It still is. Abu Bakr tells the Ansar that even though they possess all fine qualities, the Arabs will not recognize their authority except in the clan of the Quraysh, for they represent the best in lineage and standing (p.51). Abu Bakr also had a point of contention with the Prophet's daughter too. Bitterness between Fatima and Abu Bakr over her inheriting the estate of Fadak conquered from the Jews spilled over into day-to-day affairs. She insisted that the estate be handed over to her, but Abu Bakr managed to change the inheritance laws to the extent that a sole, surviving daughter of a deceased man would not be allowed to gain the majority share of inheritance from her father as her kin.

The reigns of the next two caliphs were marked by sectarian discord and allegations of nepotism especially in the allocation of war booty. They were also temperamentally much different from the first. Whereas Abu Bakr represented the experience of belief as a leap of faith and trust in the revealed word, Umar represented the experience of belief as an observation of the law and organizing norms. Umar's injunctions prohibited the drinking of wine, instituted the veiling of women and the clear demarcation between believers and non-believers. He is represented as an authoritarian and somewhat angry character. Umar made allies of religiously dubious but politically crafty figures like Muawiya and al-Mughira who knew what to say to Umar and when to say it. Umar was able to bring many new regions like Persia and Khurasan under the Arab sway but Umar and Ali appeared as patrons of the Arab and Persian camps respectively. Persia in general and Khurasan in particular would rise later as the chief patron of the Hashimite cause of Ali. Uthman is presented as a weak character. Scholars claim that Uthman came from a wealthy family, but there are no stories about his being a daring defender of Islam in its uncertain days. Hence, the later eulogy of him as a true companion of the Prophet may be a back-projection of Sunni praise on account of his becoming the third caliph. The slow progress towards the overthrow of Uthman is portrayed in an extensive set of narratives by Tabari about the companions abandoning Uthman to certain death. Muawiya requested Uthman to shift to Damascus from Medina but the latter didn't want to. Uthman was killed by opponents from Kufa, Basra and Egypt. The remaining companions failed to come to his aid. If some of them had intervened, the rebels would have departed in shame.

Ali at last became caliph when Uthman was killed by rebels who were alleged to have his tacit support. Ali's ascendancy set in a fissiparous trend that would rent the community asunder as Shias and Sunnis. The tragic wipe off of his family in the civil war is still mourned by the Shias. At the outset, Ali refused to countenance the contentious officials appointed by his predecessor even if that meant the disintegration of his rule in the provinces. To Ali, political war was a crusade of virtue and he stigmatized any attempt at compromise as something bordering on hypocrisy (p.96). Thus, Ali would be haunted by political setbacks throughout his career. He would often go by ideals rather than sound strategy and conceded his enemies space which a prudent commander would not have. At the Battle of Siffin, he allowed the camp of Muawiya to drink from the wells under Ali's control. In the battle, he fought valiantly alongside his troops, even though he himself had advised Umar against doing this at the Battle of Qadisiyya which Umar led, claiming that it would embolden the enemy to target him. The later narrators also focussed on Ali with a negative perspective. In spite of the wrongs done to Ali, they still conceived a contradictory perspective whereby even though Ali was pitied for his loss of the caliphate, his political distancing was still considered a necessity in order to give legitimacy to the Abbasid line, away from the Prophet's own Hashimite family. With the assassination of Ali, Muawiya transformed the caliphate into a more traditional kingship. Muawiya's qualities of forbearance, endurance and his discretionary system of pardons to wrongdoers and former foes helped him to gradually reconstitute a base of tribal support focused on his new centre in Damascus. Hampered by strict legal and religious codes that sacrificed all political and social considerations, Ali was unable to compromise for political expediency. The transfer of the leadership to Umayyads projected the province of Syria as the bastion of Sunnism in the caliphate, which was devoid of sectarian pretensions unlike the newly conquered regions of Iran and Iraq.

El-Hibri stresses that the stories preserved in the early Islamic narratives were neither real in its details nor intended to be factual. Rather, it played with classical biblical imagery to communicate a parable. To make every anecdote conform to this hypothesis, the author makes abundant use of symbolism to make them suited to what he proposes. This can be elaborated by an example: Arab conquest of Persia is mentioned in the book which unseated the king Yazdajird who fled. Disguised, he sought asylum at a local peasant's cabin who demanded four dirhams as rent for the stay. El-Hibri takes over at this point and argues that 'four' is the numerical symbol of justice or may have symbolized the cardinal points in the empire. This is a rather forced view and with that kind of license, you can claim anything. This book appears to be a learned attempt to focus on Islam's common legacy which it shares with Christianity rather than harping on its exclusivity. This focus on the biblical roots of early Islamic historiography makes it more appealing and acceptable to a Western audience. It does not lay stress on the intolerant mindset of the caliphs even though many instances can be discerned by the reader in passing through the narrative. This book is not for beginners as it assumes a somewhat deep familiarity with the source material. It mainly concentrates on the works of Tabari and also Ibn Sa'd, Baladhuri and Waqidi. It provides a transcript of the original Arabic verses of important citations. The Roman letters ensures that the reader can at least get to know of how the original sounded.

The book is recommended to serious readers who has a background of early Islamic history.

Rating: 2 Star