Part II: Citrus and the Expansion of the World
World Civ. | From Islamic Trade to the Atlantic Age
If the ancient world introduced citrus to the Mediterranean, the medieval world transformed it into a global traveler. The decisive agent in this transformation was not a single empire but a civilization — the expanding Islamic world.
Muhammad was born in AD 570 in the desert town of Mecca, situated on the high plateau of western Arabia. Orphaned early in life — first by the death of his father and then his mother — he came under the care of his grandfather and, after AD 578, his uncle Abu Talib. His early years were spent in modest occupations. He worked as a shepherd and later as a caravan agent for a wealthy merchant widow, Khadija bint Khawalayd.
Their eventual marriage elevated Muhammad into the commercial and social networks of Meccan leadership. Through trade routes that connected Arabia with Syria, Persia, and beyond, Mecca itself was already part of a wider world of exchange.
Around AD 610, Muhammad reported receiving his first revelation. Within a decade, his teachings began to attract followers — and opposition. In AD 622, he and his companions left Mecca for Yathrib, a city riven by civil conflict that sought him as mediator. The migration — the Hijra — transformed Yathrib into Medina and marked the beginning of a new political and religious community.
Conflict soon followed. Between AD 625 and 628, Muhammad led a series of military campaigns that culminated in a treaty recognizing the growing Muslim community. When Meccan allies violated the agreement in AD 629, Muhammad marched on Mecca. In January of AD 630, the city fell with minimal bloodshed, bringing the religious center of Arabia under Islamic authority.
After a final pilgrimage to Mecca, Muhammad died following a brief illness and was buried in Medina. Yet his influence had only begun. Within a century, the civilization shaped by his teachings stretched across a vast geography — from the Indo-Chinese world in the east to Morocco, Spain, and even parts of southern France in the west.
With this expansion came agricultural diffusion. Islamic agronomists, traders, and settlers carried crops across continents, integrating them into new climates and landscapes. Among these plants were several citrus varieties: citron, sour orange, lemon, and the pummelo.
By roughly AD 1150, citrus was firmly established in North Africa and Spain. In fact, there is no clear botanical or textual evidence that lemons were cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean before the expansion of the Islamic world in the tenth century. Islamic trade routes — extending across deserts, seas, and caravan roads — effectively reorganized the botanical geography of the Mediterranean basin.
The Crusades further accelerated this diffusion. Between AD 1096 and 1291, European crusaders and merchants encountered citrus fruits in the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. Many feudal Europeans had never seen lemons, limes, or sour oranges before these encounters. What began as curiosity soon became fashion. Nobles and wealthy merchants sought the fruits not only for their flavor but also for their exotic prestige. The citrus tree had become an emblem of the interconnected medieval world.
By the late fifteenth century, the story entered a new phase — the age of maritime exploration. In 1471, the archives of the Italian city of Savona recorded one of the earliest references to the sweet orange in Europe. The historian Giorgio Gallesio later suggested that the fruit likely entered Europe through commercial routes guarded by Genoese merchants. Italian trading networks had long dominated Mediterranean commerce, and the Genoese were among the most skilled navigators of their age.
Yet the Mediterranean monopoly was beginning to fracture.
Portuguese explorers sought direct access to Asian trade by sailing around Africa rather than through the traditional eastern Mediterranean trade routes. Among them was Vasco da Gama (1460–1524), whose voyages dramatically altered global commerce.
In 1498, da Gama reached the East African port of Mombasa along the Indian Ocean. There, he observed something striking: the oranges available there were “very good oranges, much better than those from Portugal.” The comment revealed an important distinction. The sweet oranges encountered in Africa differed from the more sour varieties long known in Europe and depicted in Roman art.
Exploration had begun to reshape Europe’s understanding of the citrus world.
The Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus stood directly within these overlapping commercial networks. Born the son of a wool weaver in the Republic of Genoa, Columbus achieved an extraordinary social ascent through his marriage to Felipa Moniz Perestrelo, the daughter of a Portuguese Knight of Santiago. Through this connection, he gained access to the household and maritime culture surrounding Prince Henry the Navigator.
Like Vasco da Gama, Columbus pursued the riches of the spice trade. But instead of sailing around Africa toward Asia, he sought a western passage to the East Indies.
His voyages carried citrus across an entirely new oceanic frontier.
Spanish law during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries required ships sailing to the Americas to carry orange seeds. Later regulations mandated young trees instead, since seeds often dried during the long voyage. Citrus served both practical and agricultural purposes. Sailors and settlers consumed oranges to ward off scurvy — a disease that haunted long sea journeys.
Columbus himself transported citrus seeds during his second voyage on November 3, 1493. Other explorers followed the same practice. Juan Ponce de León carried seeds during his expeditions, and Spanish sailors routinely included them among essential supplies.
The conquest of the Aztec Empire by Hernán Cortés in 1521 accelerated the spread of citrus across the New World. Spaniards introduced sweet oranges into Mexico and South America during the mid-sixteenth century. French settlers later carried them into Louisiana.
From New Orleans, the fruit traveled again — this time into Florida. By 1872, seeds obtained from Louisiana contributed to the establishment of orange groves across the state. Growers discovered that grafting sweet oranges onto sour orange rootstocks produced particularly successful orchards.
Thus, citrus completed one of the longest botanical journeys in human history. From Himalayan foothills to Mesopotamian cities, from Jewish ritual to Persian roads, from Roman luxury to Islamic agriculture, and finally across the Atlantic with European explorers, the fruit followed the expanding boundaries of civilization.
At every stage of that journey, it carried new meanings. Sacred object, medicinal remedy, imperial curiosity, aristocratic luxury, maritime necessity, and agricultural commodity — citrus became all of these things because it moved wherever people moved.
The history of citrus, therefore, is not merely the story of a fruit. It is the story of human contact itself.
Bibliography | Notes
García-Lor, Andrés, Federico Curk, Patrick Ollitrault, Manuel Luro, and Luis Navarro. “The Citrus Route Revealed: From Southeast Asia into the Mediterranean.” HortScience 52, no. 6 (June 2017): 814–822. https://doi.org/10.21273/HORTSCI11023-16.
Theophrastus. Enquiry into Plants. Translated by Arthur Hort. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 1916.
Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 1945.
Hebrew Bible. Leviticus 23:40.
Josephus, Flavius. Accounts of the reign of Alexander Jannaeus.
Philostratus. Description of Alexander’s encounter with the shrine of Skanda.