Near East and Middle Eastern rose references

[arillady]

 
Can anyone assist in locating historical source material from the Near East and Middle East about roses in those areas in ancient, mediaeval, or early modern times? Have any of you run across such materials, or, just as important, references to such materials as would seem to hold promise?
 
The above was posted on an old rose forum and I wondered if any of the SRGC forum members and visitors would be able to help.

Pat

[ArnoldT]

Pat:

I saw a story in the British Gardens Illustrated a while back about a city in Iran that is well known for roses and the oil derived from them.

[Ezeiza]

Have to check but Rhodes has a coin with a rose; Suetonius in Life of Vitellius and Strabo have references.

[majallison]

I know that there are tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh which are reckoned to contain the word 'rose' in Sumerian (?); there are the frescoes at the Palace of Knossos on Crete which might show roses (problems with some over-zealous restoration at the beginning of the 20th Century which might have created roses where there were none); there are references in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; I know that buds of Rosa 'Sancta' aka Richardii have been found in wreaths in first century AD Greco-Roman tombs in Egypt.  This is all a bit vague, but I think there's plenty of material out there...

[ArnoldT]

Pat:

The story was in Gardens Illustrated Issue 146.  It describes the harvesting of rose petals to make rose oil and rose water in the central city of Kashan.

If you would like  copy of the article let me know.

[Ezeiza]

In the Golden Ass of Apuleius there are several references to roses and their use in gardens. The main character turned into a donkey by sorcery will recover his human form if he eats roses and thence they are mentioned on several occasions along the novel.

[arillady]

This is from Brent Dickerson who was the bearer of the question for someone else.
"***I wonder if professors of agricultural history might have some insights on the matter...? I can't say that I've ever run across anything about farming (or gardening) techniques in the Ottoman Empire or anything of the sort; and yet, surely the many rich and cultured societies of the Islam world must have produced a great deal on the subject over the centuries."

[Ezeiza]

Of course not, references are short and scattered in texts. For instance, countless references to roses in The Arabian Nights but one has to read thousands of pages to sort them out.