Drink (11 page)

In their prime, between about AD 850 and 1100, the Vikings had a significant influence over the fortunes of Europe and beyond. Their voyages of trade and exploration took them farther north and west than any prior Europeans. They were the first to reach the coast of North America, and
Vinland
(“land of wine”) was the first European name for that portion of the continent. The Vikings got to America by using their colonies in Iceland and Greenland as stepping-stones over the Atlantic Ocean. They established a summer trading camp in Newfoundland, then coasted south until they came to a land of plenty. These voyages, pioneered by Leif Eriksson, are described in the Graenlendinga saga, which records the discovery of grapes in the new land by Tyrkir, a German Viking, who was familiar with wine from his native country. Eriksson accordingly named the place after its most promising feature, and loaded up his
snaken
with a cargo of grapes to take home to Greenland, where the vine did not grow and wine, if it ever reached there, was a fabulously rare import. He also took back timber, which Greenland likewise lacked. There were subsequent voyages in quest of grapes and lumber, but hostile Native Americans drove them away and they gave up on the American continent.

Meanwhile, in the parts of Europe that they had settled, they, too, succumbed to Christianity. They adjusted their drinking habits to accommodate the new religion, which, in its turn, incorporated some Viking customs, especially those pertaining to the year-end feast of Yule, which King Hakon of Norway shifted so as to coincide with Christmas. Whereas the Christian celebration had focused on quiet prayer, the Viking festival emphasized gift giving and self-indulgence. King Hakon decreed that for the new, combined festival “everyone was to have ale for the celebration, or else pay fines, and had to keep the holidays while the ale lasted.”

6 ISLAM

In the course of their river voyages through Europe toward the Black Sea, the Vikings established contact with the followers of a new religion whose conquests during the same period that the Vikings had terrorized the West made the Norsemen’s own achievements seem trivial. One such encounter was recorded for posterity by Ibn Fadlan, a native of Baghdad, and a disciple of Islam. Ibn Fadlan was a pious and literate man who traveled in the entourage of a Muslim ambassador, and his account of his meeting with a band of Vikings in AD 922, by the banks of the river Volga, is a mixture of admiration and horror. They were “perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy.” They were also “the filthiest of all Allah’s creatures,” who did not wash after eating, excreting, or sexual intercourse, all of which acts they performed before the astonished Muslim’s eyes. Their drinking habits were equally repugnant: “They are addicted to alcohol, which they drink night and day. Sometimes one of them dies with the cup still in his hand.” While this was scarcely news to the peoples whom the Vikings raided, Ibn Fadlan expected it to disturb his readers in Baghdad, whose faith had placed an absolute ban on the consumption of alcohol.

Islam, the revelation of Allah, the one true God, via his prophet Muhammad, was born in the harsh climate of Arabia, in the middle of the first millennium AD. Muhammad (c. AD 570-632), a native of the town of Mecca, received a visit in his fortieth year from the archangel Gabriel, who informed him that he was the last of a line of Judeo-Christian prophets whose pedigree stretched from Noah to Jesus, and instructed him to spread the word of Allah and to convert, exterminate, or tax unbelievers. Initially, he was poorly received in Mecca, which contained the most sacred object in Arabia—the Kaaba, a black cubic rock adorned with the images of 360 different gods, most of them petty immortals, possessed of no very great powers and worshipped, individually, by very few people. They did, however, draw the Arab nation together once a year for their veneration, so that polytheism was an important business in the city, and the monotheism preached by Muhammad unwelcome. After retreat to the town of Medina, where he continued to communicate with Allah and raised an army, Muhammad subdued Mecca, converted his fellow tribesmen, and by the time of his death, the principal places in Arabia, and its foremost clans, recognized the rule of Islam.

The basic precepts of new religion were simple—to acknowledge the supremacy of Allah, to pray five times a day, to fast during a specified period each year, to give alms, and, if possible, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Further instructions as to how Muslims were expected to behave were contained in the
Koran,
revered as the word of God, as spoken to his prophet. This sacred text was set down some years after the death of Muhammad, in the first instance inscribed on palm leaves and the shoulder blades of dead sheep. It contains 114 suras, or chapters, each composed of an uneven number of verses. It is not chronological, in that it does not record the utterances of Allah in the sequence that they were made. The Koran provides the faithful not only with general guidance on how to live, but also gives particular directions regarding dress, personal hygiene, and diet. Among these is a total ban on the consumption of alcoholic drinks.

Subsequent commentators have unraveled the correct order in which advice was given by Allah to mankind, and it can be deduced that his attitude toward alcohol changed from approbation into censure over time. Islam was born in a region of drinkers: The Greek historian Herodotus had claimed that the Arabs worshippedonly two gods—“Bacchus and Urania.” Strabo, writing four centuries later, noted that they drank wine when they could, and palm liquor in those parts of their territory unsuited to the cultivation of the grape. Arabian poetry had a minor genre dedicated to the celebration of wine, and perhaps as a concession to this heritage, alcohol is first mentioned in the Koran as a good thing, alongside water, milk, and honey. However, by its next appearance its status had become equivocal: It was labeled as sinful but also pronounced as having some useful qualities, albeit unspecified: “They ask concerning wine and gambling. Say, ‘In them is great sin and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit.’” The news that drinking was a sin was not enough to deter the faithful, some of whom refused even to sober up for prayers. The prophet consulted his god again and was advised that no Muslim could attend prayers if drunk. Given the frequency of prayer sessions, this could be read as a de facto ban. However, it seems the Arabs persisted in their old ways and continued to drink heavily at their frequent feasts. An affair of blood at one such led to a third consultation and complete and unequivocal prohibition. At the event in question, Hazrat Saad Ibn Abi Waqquas was busy reciting poetry that eulogized the excellence of his own tribe while belittling the merits of the Ansars of Medina, when an enraged and drunken Ansari youth threw a lamb bone at him, wounding his head. From such trifling incidents flow momentous consequences. Muhammad conferred with God once more and was told, “Strong drink, games of chance, idols, and divining arrows are an abomination of Satan; avoid them, that you might prosper,” for “Satan’s plan is to excite enmity and hatred between you, with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer: Will ye not then abstain?”

And that was that.

Interestingly, this third and final directive was tested by some of the faithful: Was it permissible to drink only a little bit? No, Muhammad is reported to have answered: Any is too much. And besides, wine would be available in heaven. The Islamic paradise is described in some detail in the Koran and appears to have been designed to appeal to the ascetic inhabitants of a barren land. Good Muslims were encouraged to expect an afterlife of sensual excess, spent in a fertile Arcadia: “As for the righteous . . . theirs shall be gardens and vineyards, and high-bosomed virgins for companions, a truly overflowing cup.” Anyone thirsty after a mortal life of abstinence could chose between “rivers of wine, delicious to drinkers,” and a packaged variety (“pure wine, securely sealed, whose very dregs are musk”), upon arrival in paradise. This was deferred gratification on a grand scale, far beyond the Christian version, which left the delights of heaven unspecified, beyond one’s being in the presence of God. Even the most visionary of Christian saints had lacked the confidence to depict their paradise as wet.

With such clear limitations to work with, Islam set about conquering the drinking world. Under the command of the caliphs, the lineal descendants of Muhammad or his generals, Muslim victories were numerous, rapid, and convincing. Within a hundred years of the death of the Prophet they controlled Egypt, North Africa, most of the Persian Empire, Sicily, Corsica, Spain, and Portugal, and had made incursions into France as far as Bordeaux. In accordance with their creed, their new subjects were offered the alternatives of the sword, the Koran, or of paying tribute. Those who converted immediately gained all the privileges and duties of being a Muslim. In some areas, notably North Africa and Persia, a majority of the population switched to Islam; in others, those who preferred taxation to circumcision remained in the majority, and laws were formulated to circumscribe their conduct.

The first version of the laws for non-Muslims resident in Islamic lands were set out in the
Umar Pact
made between the second caliph, Umar Ibn Khetib, and the Christians of Syria, in AD 637. The pact created the notion of a
dhimmi
—a Jew or Christian who lived under Muslim rule, paid a poll tax, and who was bound to observe its regulations. Surprisingly, in the light of the Muslim abhorrence of alcohol, dhimmis themselves were allowed to continue to drink, and to produce and sell wine to each other for sacred and secular purposes. In the Spanish town of Córdoba, for instance, there was a state-operated market for wine in the Christian quarter during the rule of al-Hakam I (AD 796- 823). As a consequence, the impact of a dry religion on mankind’s love affair with alcohol was not so colossal as might have been expected. Taverns continued to operate, albeit they were forbidden to serve Muslims. Although the pact of Umar was tightened up in subsequent versions (“They shall not drink wine in public, nor display their crosses or their swine”), alcohol remained available throughout the Islamic world.

With so much temptation at hand it is unsurprising that many Muslims succumbed to Satan’s wiles and took up or, in the case of converts, resumed drinking. Although pious sobriety was venerated, and examples of heroic restraint were held up to the faithful, including that of a cousin of Muhammad who, after being captured by Christians, was “celebrated for refusing, after an abstinence of three days, the wine and pork, the only nourishment that was allowed by the malice of the infidels,” and despite the prescription under Islamic law of eighty lashes for anyone caught drinking, alcohol, especially wine, was widely consumed, and even celebrated.

Muslim poets made a significant contribution to the philosophy of drinking. Collectively, their work gave a new face to alcohol. The composite portrait was drawn, in the main, in Persia, whose ancient relationship with wine had continued beyond its conversion to Islam. It pictured the act of drinking as one of defiance and as a pleasure made all the sweeter for being sinful. The master hand responsible for the best parts of the portrait, who registered every cup of wine that he drank as a vote in favor of Satan and against piety, was Abu Nuwas (c. 756-813), a decadent genius whose name means “curly locks” in Arabic. His mother was a Persian seamstress, his father an Arab soldier who had served in the campaigns of the caliph Umar. He studied the Koran at Basra, in Iraq, and spent the rest of his life, by his own admission, drinking, fornicating, and writing poetry.

His audience was huge. The Islamic world was united by a single language, Arabic, a lyrical idiom wonderfully suited to the expression of creative thinking. Arabic possessed pre-Islamic traditions of verse, including the minor genre of
khamriyya,
wine poetry, which Abu Nuwas adopted and perfected:

The poet found his inspiration in the taverns of his native Basra, which were run by Jewish merchants, and in Egypt when in exile, where Christian religious orders supplied the drinks. He was especially fond of the young male acolytes who served the wine in Christian establishments. Indeed, he wrote of attending mass just so that he could fantasize over an altar boy as he drank communion wine, and succeeded in insulting both Christianity and Islam in the same poem:

The poems of Abu Nuwas, and the writers who followed his example, are not only useful markers of attitudes toward alcohol under Islam in its heartland at its zenith, but also tell us the what, how, and where of Arab drinking. The what, for poets, was wine, of which they recognized four colors—red, white, amber, and golden. Some of it was naturally effervescent—Abu Nuwas wrote of a red variety that “shoots out sparks like rubies” and compared its bubble trails to falling stars. Wine was drunk mixed with water, often starting in the morning (“Quick to your morning drink and delight yourself, my man!”), and drinking binges lasted days, sometimes weeks. The beverage itself in Arabic was a she—the daughter of the vine. A good vintage could provoke not just the thirst, but also the lust of the poet: