The History of Tea & its Connection to the Tree of Life
As I refine my craft as a Tea Ceremonialist here in America, I often think about what it was like for my Great Grandfather Ayoub Sedgh to build his tea distribution empire back in Iran during the early 1900s. I wonder how he first learned about tea, if he found as much joy in it as I do and what roads he traveled to help make tea a beloved traditional and staple beverage amongst the people of Iran.
Legend has it that tea originated in the Southwestern mountains of China when a farmer and herbalist by the name of Shennong found a delightful surprise in the taste of leaves that accidentally fell into his cup of boiling water. There is evidence and research to support that China has been the original source of tea for over 2,000 years now. Tea started to make its way to other popularly associated cultures like Japan and Korea in the 8th century CE, Britain in the 1600s and Persia in the late 1800s.
Although India is the world’s second largest supplier of tea (after China), outside of a small Indigenous group in Northeastern India who were already enjoying their native tea plants, Indians, in general, didn’t adopt tea as a big national beverage until the 1900s when the British Empire began establishing plantations there. By this time, the British were the largest consumers of tea. While China had more people drinking tea, the British were drinking more tea per person than the Chinese, which fueled a trade imbalance that led the British to build their own tea empires in India and start an Opium War with China.
MY ANCESTRAL HISTORY IN THE TEA TRADE OF IRAN
Even though Persia has a long history of opium cultivation, they were not at all part of wreaking havoc in China with the British in this way. The Iranians did however and very ironically follow suit in smuggling Chinese tea expertise into their own lands, via Britain’s own stolen and replicated trade of tea in India. Lahijan and Tonekabon are two cities located in Northern Iran, along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, where Kashef al-Saltaneh established Iran’s first successful tea plantations in the early 1900s. The lush, green, rainy and mountainous terrains in these areas make for a great place to grow tea. Kashef al-Saltaneh learned the tea cultivation practices he brought to Iran while serving as a Persian diplomat in British India.
Serendipitously, my Great Grandfather Ayoub’s wife’s name was Saltanat, which comes from the same root word and meaning as the name Saltaneh, making me wonder if he drew inspiration for his tea distribution business from the connection between his wife’s name and the name of Kashef al-Saltaneh who also came to be known as the “Father of Iranian Tea.” It was very common during that time to acquire a name based on one’s claim to fame or family trade. For example, in Farsi (the language of Iranians) Kashef means ‘one who uncovers hidden knowledge’ and Saltaneh means ‘sovereign domain.’ Kashef al Saltaneh’s birth name was actually Mohammad Mirza Qajar Qovanlu. He was granted the name of Kashef al Saltaneh as an honorific title for finding ways to “uncover the hidden knowledge” of Chinese tea cultivation that the British did their best to hide from others (even though they themselves stole it), and take “sovereign domain” over it in Iran.
Given the connection in names, could it be that Saltanat Sedgh had a hand in Great Grandfather Ayoub’s success in the tea trade? I wish there was someone alive to tell me her maiden last name so that I could try to figure out if tea was an inheritance of some sort for her, like mine has revealed itself to be for me, that she shared with her husband. All I knew about the two of them up until last year when I learned about Great Grandfather Ayoub’s tea business for the first time, is that they were madly in love and often left their children to travel the world together.
Where were they going? Were they exploring the Silk Road together in hunt for some new teas? Did they ever get to China to explore the ancient origins of tea? It’s cool to think that I could be drinking tea that comes from the same source of old growth trees found in Yunnan, China, today, that my ancestors were possibly drinking back in their day.
THE HISTORY OF JEWISH MERCHANTS ALONG THE SILK ROAD
Persians are technically Asian. Originating in what is now Iran and used to be called Iran before the West labeled us as Persians, Iran sat at the center of major trade routes connecting East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe, especially through a route that came to be known as the Silk Road. Silk was one of the most expensive goods that crossed through the paths connecting one culture’s resources to another.
While I haven’t yet been able to find any historical evidence of Persian Jews like my Great Grandfather playing a dominant role in tea trade outside of what my mother shared with me, there are many documented accounts about the major role Jewish merchants played in the same networks through which tea moved. Fellow Great Neck, NY, resident and a new friend of mine (whom I ironically met at a Kabbalah class), Dahlia Abraham-Klein, is an avid writer on Central Asian Jewish history and values. In her book, “The Stateless Central Asian Merchant,” Abraham-Klein, shares excerpts from her Grandfather’s journal about his extraordinary life as a Jewish man that crossed many borders during the same time my Great Grandfather lived, to not only sell and trade goods of other cultures, but to keep his family safe from persecution and poverty.
As a Bukharian Jew, Dahlia’s Grandfather, Haim Aghajan Abraham, was most likely more embedded in the Silk Road trade routes than my Great Grandfather Ayoub was because he lived closer to the main source of goods coming from China and India. Bukharian Jews, while also considered Persian, come from areas that are further east than Iran and are now known as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.
The city of Hamadan in Iran, where Great Grandfather Ayoub lived, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and is known for its central position on the Silk Road, burial chambers of prominent Jewish historical figures Esther and Mordechai, mausoleum of Avicenna who was one of the greatest thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age and favorable military strategic position under the protection of the Alvand mountains (yes, that’s where my last name comes from). Hamadan also sits 387 km southwest of the city of Lahijan and the hub of Iran’s first tea plantations as mentioned earlier, which makes me think this was definitely one of Great Grandfather Ayoub’s sources of supply.
THE SHARED ESSENCE OF TEA AND KABBALAH’S TREE OF LIFE
I have yet to travel to Iran, China or India, but I’ve found a way to energetically transport myself there while sitting with tea in ceremony and when studying Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. While tea may have been imported into Iran and the teachings of Kabbalah rooted in nearby ancient lands, both have become a natural way of expression and culture for what I and many others offer at their tea tables - communion, connection and reverence. Tea, for Persians, and Kabbalah for Jews, became a way to reinforce values that were already central to Persian Jewish life - hospitality, gathering, learning and storytelling. Isn’t this what we all ultimately crave and love? It’s a practice and way of life that has become somewhat threatened by the overwhelming world of technological distractions we live in today.
While teas may physically come from trees, they can also be connected spiritually to what Kabbalah calls the Tree of Life. One of Kabbalah’s core principle values encourages the ideal that we are all one people that come from the same one source of light and love. About a year ago, I experienced a taste of what living in this type of ideal could potentially feel like, when I was on a retreat with an eclectic group of amazing souls from all walks of life. We got to sit in tea ceremony together twice a day for five days straight. Much like the network of merchants and crossroads that took tea from one part of the world to others and the way the roots of one tree can help create a network of nourishment for all trees across a vast forest, I felt how each and every one of us can do the same for one another if we just took the time to be present with one another.
All teas come from one species of trees called camellia sinensis. The differences in taste and healing properties come from the way the tea leaves are cultivated and processed, how or when they are harvested and the terrain (soil, climate and elevation) in which they are grown. When combined with hot water, they all provide the same calming compounds that have made tea so desirable amongst so many different cultures for so many thousands of years.
Like the one type of tree that all the different tasting teas physically come from, many of our different religious and cultural values also come from the same source. While I personally connect to Kabbalah’s teachings of the Tree of Life, many traditions have their own version with a similar message of oneness, transcendence and growth. Sitting in tea ceremony provides the opportunity to Remember, Reclaim and Rejoice in the ancestral history of tree wisdom that has the power to unite us all.
Just like how trees with healthy roots live longer and are better able to withstand stress, so too can humans, when we are more rooted in the wisdoms, heritage and gifts of our ancestral past.