![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmS3tBvhoZ5fNfveeiNNqnFgCqfsFVWDQq4cxeFLebesQa/image.png)

I am a big fan of Frank Herbert's ***Dune*** series. Long ago when I was a wee lad I happened upon David Lynch's interpretation of the first book on the Space channel. It was a Friday night in rural Kelowna and I had very little to do. I think my choices were either channel flipping or watching a rerun of Dragon Ball Z on mute. When I came upon the movie it was the gom jabbar scene where Paul recites the famous “fear is the mind-killer” speech. At the time, popular culture was filled with Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. I had an appetite for something different and a universe that had yet to be explored. Within the first thirty seconds of me watching that scene I was hooked, for better or for worse. To this day I still adore the movie, but mostly because of its cheese and aesthetics, and for the Kyle MacLachlaness.

![tenor.gif](https://steemitimages.com/DQmaioe1X5KQQtXX4FZaQbCzREP4YY4W7N1x5aAgQnNgcyW/tenor.gif)

I read the books soon after, and right now I'm in the process of listening to the series as audiobooks. One of the reasons I've kept up my interest in these books is because of my love of using the trade of a single thing to understand a relationship between peoples. Two posts ago I wrote about the Cairo Genizah, and it was ***Dune*** that lead me to the particular niche area of medieval Mediterranean trade dynamics and the lives those who executed the trade deals lived. 

![giphy.gif](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXkmkLsLgDBHLLAfa72wKgQqciEpbysASNrGAPD4buhae/giphy.gif)

During a lecture at university, we had a speaker come in and give a talk on the balsam industry out of Matariyya, near Cairo. Balsam was a very smelly resin that came out of the balsam tree (which was more of a shrub). It was used to anoint royalty and religious figureheads and was generally sought after as something that was precious. Matariyya was the only place that could sustain a steady supply of this resource, and only a select few had control over this resource. Sound familiar?

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmay7uvCaXJesz1PsuHnkxnXK8ckKUxQUsUE6tG5P7LW8M/image.png)

Just as the elite had a spice melange addiction in ***Dune***, the European elite had an addiction to balsam. Its popularity was mostly due to its other form, myrrh, which was one of the three gifts you get a Christmas time.

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXDTwWiqKDX1yjgK3fTbkBjNPK5hpBM5DfRHudPY41RhU/image.png)
*Thanks, Jesus*

From the time it became popular to use balsam to anoint the elite, to the eventual extinction of the balsam plant, the ebb and flow of trade relationships between the Christian and Fatamid powers can be tracked by watching the influx of balsam being shipped across the Mediterranean. This is, of course, coming from a former university undergraduate's research paper that was totally unsubstantiated and not peer reviewed. So if any future historian is looking at the Steem blockchain as a historical source (which I am TOTALLY going to write about) please take this with a grain of salt. 

Sources:

Images [1](https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/tractatus-de-herbis-ca-1440/), [2](https://tenor.com/search/twin-peaks-coffee-gifs), [3](https://giphy.com/gifs/nerd-reaction-the-simpsons-OMK7LRBedcnhm), [4](https://imgur.com/gallery/um13p), [5](http://www.art4god.com/blog/2016/7/18/jesus-and-drugs)

Milwright, Marcus *Balsam in the Mediaeval Mediterranean: A Case Study of Information
and Commodity Exchange* **Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology** 14.1 (2001) 3-23