Magellan, conqueror of the seas

Author's name: Stefan Zweig Publisher: Dar Al-Mada for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2020 Literary classification: Biographies and Memoirs Brief about the book: Stefan Zweig was a precise and well-informed historian. An imaginative novelist with a strong style, and a psychological scholar who understood human nature and uncovered many of its secrets and tendencies. Moreover, he was a sensitive artist who loved beauty and believed in the greatness of humans and the value of the human soul. From this, he hated "dictatorship" in its various apparent and hidden forms, and he suffered greatly from methods of violence, injustice, and oppression. Spices were the primary goal of the long, arduous journeys undertaken by Western traders to the East. Since the Romans, during their conquests, tasted the flavors of Eastern spices—some hot and intoxicating, others pungent and intoxicating—the use of these spices in preparing food spread among the Western people until it became an ingrained habit that was difficult to abandon. In the Middle Ages, Europeans were ignorant of sour lemon. Their elders and wealthy classes believed that the pleasure of food lay in eating large quantities, but suddenly they realized that a small amount of spice, cinnamon, ginger, or other spices was enough to give food a delicious flavor they had never known before. They no longer accepted food unless it was mixed with Eastern spices, and they even began to mix their drinks with them! There was another goal behind these journeys: in addition to acquiring the necessary spices for food, they sought to obtain new Arabic perfumes such as musk, amber, rose water, and others, which women of that era greatly needed. Churches also shared this need for these Eastern products, due to their consumption of large quantities of incense imported from Arab lands through long sea or land routes.