From medicine to tradition: Evolution of tobacco in MENA region

AMMAN — Tobacco was introduced in the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century by the Spanish and it was used as a medicine before further researched established that smoking tobacco caused dizziness, fatigue and odour in the mouth.

The spread of tobacco around the world was a direct consequence of European conquest of the New World and there were attempts to ban smoking in the Ottoman Empire in 1633 by Sultan Murad IV (1623-1640). The ban was lifted but his successor Sultan Ibrahim (1640-1648) taxed tobacco.

In 1682, Damascene jurist Abd Ghani Nabulsi declared: "Tobacco has now become extremely famous in all the countries of Islam ... People of all kinds have used it and devoted themselves to it ... I have even seen young children of about five years applying themselves to it." In 1750, a Damascene townsman observed "a number of women greater than the men, sitting along the bank of the Barada River. They were eating and drinking, and drinking coffee and smoking tobacco just as the men were doing."

Tobacco was introduced into the Middle East through the port sites of Africa or Europe or both between 1599 and 1606, and spread rapidly to the interior. When exactly tobacco was used in Palestine and how early it was cultivated locally remains a topic of debate. 

"Tobacco was smoked in public spaces there as early as the opening decades of the 17th century, and travellers’ accounts of the period claim that it was a well-established pastime from at least 1599. The earliest tobacco smoked in Palestine was a Lebanese product it was only later cultivated locally from at least the late 17th century and perhaps earlier," noted Professor Bethany Walker from The Bonn University, adding that in Palestine as throughout the Ottoman domains, smokers chose between locally grown and imported tobaccos: both were available in the local markets, as were locally (or regionally) produced and imported pipes.

Generally associated with middens and fills and as surface finds on surveys, most pipe bowls in published reports date from the 17th to the19th centuries.

"Physical evidence of tobacco smoking from the 16th century is very rare," Walker said. One fortunate exception may be the small, light gray chibouk bowls from Khirbet Beit Mazmil," Walker said, noting that the excavation shave produced dozens of the bowls from stratified contexts (under architectural collapse and on floors in living and cooking spaces) and in association with very early Ottoman handmade pottery, late 16th-century mangirs (ranging in date from the 1590’s to 1617), and charcoal dated by 14C analysis to the turn of the 17th century. 

These are among the earliest tobacco-pipe fragments found to date in Palestine, the professor said, as some of the pipes still contained the tobacco smoked in them, they were subjected to residue and isotope analysis to determine where the tobacco was cultivated. 

"The laboratory analysis is now complete, and the multidisciplinary analysis of the tobacco, the pipes, the stratigraphic contexts, and texts related to the tobacco trade and taxation is being prepared for publication," Walker underscored, adding that in terms of social history, the association of these pipes with both men’s and women’s activity areas provides vivid evidence for the consumption of tobacco by women in domestic contexts from the beginning of tobacco cultivation in Palestine.

In more recent times, smoking rates in the Levant are still very high despite global efforts to reduce smoking. Cultural norms and social acceptance make smoking popular in societies where social gatherings in cafés and shisha places are considered a cultural tradition.

Tobacco industry is very profitable in the MENA region and it is expected that by 2026 the annual revenue from tobacco will surpass $100 billion annually.

MENA countries are major consumers of tobacco products, with a diverse range of preferences among consumers. Although there has been a notable increase in the popularity of water pipes (Hookah or Shisha) and electronic cigarettes, traditional cigarettes remain the most popular among nicotine products in the MENA region, at a market share of almost 90 percent of retail value.