Manna from Heaven

A saccharine food which Allah provided to the children of Israel when they were wandering in the Sinai desert after their exile from Egypt.

Tiny insects living on the plant are responsible to produce the Mann, a sweet gum.

These insects puncture the bark of the host plant through which a liquid oozes out during the intense heat of the sunny day and hardened into the form of a gum during the cool nights.

The insects were identified as Coccus manniparus and the trees as Tamarix. For certain tribes living around the area of Sinai, the exudate was the only source of sweetness they collected from the trees.

The Mann was obtained from 2 different types of plants: The Hâj or Aaaqul (Alhagi maurorum named also locally Turanjbin) called also Shauqul –jamal; the camel’s fodder. It is a thorny shrub that do not grow beyond 3 feet in height, but it has long roots that can go 15 to 20 feet deep in the ground.

Apart from the Hâj, there was another plant called Tamarix mannifera that grows in the same region and can be also a Mann plant, a small tree with scaly leaves. It is named Gazanjbin.

The sweet Mann is still traded over the world, but mainly used in medicine since it has medicinal as well as nutritional properties.

The plant has been referred with the Salva bird or Quail eaten with the Mann during 40 years (1491 B.C. to 1451 B.C.) as a balanced diet.

During the Great Famine of iran in 1854, tonnes of the lichen named Lecanora affinis ‘rained’ (when fully fried is very light and can be flown to long distances and can settle down at a certain place when it rains, called also rose of Jerico) over the famine area and people collected it , powdered it and ate its bread for several days.