North India and the Unani Tradition

Unani has a different ancestry from India's older indigenous systems. Its roots are Greco-Arabic — Hippocratic and Galenic ideas carried through Persian and Arabic scholarship — and it arrived in the subcontinent with scholars and physicians from Central and West Asia. Over centuries it settled into North Indian cities: Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Aligarh, with hakims practising in family lineages and, later, formal colleges.

It kept its own framework of temperaments, its own pharmacy and its own training. It is not Ayurveda in another vocabulary, and the two coexisted as separate professions even where they shared a bazaar and many of the same plants.

The kitchen traces are everywhere in the north. Rose — as gulkand, rose water, rose petals in summer drinks — belongs to this culture. So do saffron, cardamom, screwpine, sandalwood and cooling sherbets made in the pre-refrigeration heat. Kashmiri kahwa, with saffron and almond, is a winter household drink. Joshanda, a warming herbal infusion, is a familiar name in a North Indian cold spell.

Seasonal habits followed the extremes of the northern plains: heavy, warming, ghee-rich cooking through a real winter; light, sweet, cooling, water-rich foods through a dry and punishing summer. Sattu, bel sherbet, khus and vetiver-scented water are summer entries; til, gur, gond and methi are winter ones.

Unani's compound medicines — khameeras, majuns, arqs and the rest — are formal pharmaceutical preparations. They belong with a qualified Unani practitioner who assesses the person first, not with a home shelf. The household inheritance is the food, the drink and the seasonal rhythm.