Mashta - A Medicinal Herb From Egypt

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

There is practically no complete information on the Internet about this amazing plant, the dried grass of which is offered by Bedouins and nimble Russians, who quickly entered a profitable business. But on different forums, people ask about Mashta, trying to expand the mean lines on a small piece of paper attached to the package. Let's try to help them

How it all started

My granddaughter got redness on her soft cheek. Since a crowd of cats wandering in the courtyard of the house, they like to relax on sun loungers and armchairs by the pool, we assumed that it was lichen. We contacted the pharmacist of the nearest pharmacy, who gave us the ointment. The ointment was effective, the redness disappeared. But, as soon as you stopped smearing the skin, after a few days everything returned to its original form.

One friend suggested that it was an allergy. And another shared the dry herb of the Mashta plant, acquired from the Bedouins. In a short text to the package, it was said about the ability of the herb to help with various skin diseases, including allergies. Moreover, the friend who gave the herb confirmed its healing ability, referring to her own experience in treating allergies.

I decided to look for additional information on the Internet about the miraculous Mashta, but I could not find anything other than retelling the text from a piece of paper in various forums where people also tried to find out more about grass.

This situation gave rise to the suspicion of cheating with grass, although some people on the forums spoke very flatteringly about it, telling how they cured psoriasis with the help of Mashta, or with compresses from herbal infusion, they strengthened the hair, which left the head in whole clumps before treatment.

Armed with Arab

I thought that since the herb grows in Egypt and is famous for its healing abilities, then there must be information about it in Arabic. After typing four letters of the Arabic alphabet, I got to sites that told how to do a beautiful hairstyle, but nothing was mentioned about grass.

But such information gave at least some clues. I learned that "mashta" in Arabic means "comb", apparently, and "hairstyle", that is, there was a connection with hair. But the sellers advertised the herb as strengthening the hair roots. Perhaps such a connection indicated the origin of the Arabic name for the herb. This means that such a herb really exists, but it probably has some other names, including the Latin name assigned to all plants when botanists "arrange" them according to the classification "shelves".

Accidental find

As I continued searching, I came across an interesting book published in Berlin in 1912. It contained the Arabic names of plants and their Latin counterpart. The Arabic name of the plant was indicated in the transcription written in Latin letters, but in some places there were words written in Arabic letters.

Since my knowledge of the German language is limited to two or three dozen words, I decided to skip the preface, which stretched over a couple of dozen pages, and therefore began to leaf through the book, which consisted of almost three hundred pages, from the end.

Joy and subsequent disappointment

You can imagine my joy when on page 212 I saw 4 cherished Arabic letters written in bold black type. The Latin counterpart was the Scandix pecten veneris plant. I easily found such a plant, having received a huge disappointment.

Although the Arabic name was very suitable for this plant, since in Russian it sounded like "Crest of Venus", the narrow feathery leaves of Scandix did not at all resemble the small heart-shaped leaves lying in front of me.

Flipping through the book again

The first thought, of course, was that the Bedouins were trading under the grass called "Mashta" for no one knows what.

Cooling down with disappointment, I returned to the book, having carefully reread its title - "Arabic names of plants from Egypt, Algeria and Yemen." Egypt was the first, and therefore could hardly be on page 212.

Indeed, page 212 talked about the plants of Algeria. Although the Arabic name matched my search, the transcription showed that it was not "mashta", but "meshta", which I ignored in a fit of joy.

The fact is that in Arabic there is only one vowel letter, "alif". The rest of the vowel sounds are denoted by "vowels", which, as a rule, are not drawn in secular literature. Here is the text of the Quran written with all the vowels.

Therefore, the same word can be read in different ways, if you do not know this word, but there are no vowels. The word "mashta" and "meshta" have four identical consonant letters. There were no vocalizations in the text. So I mistook the Algerian "meshta" for the Egyptian "mashta".

In the photo from right to left (this is how Arabic texts are read) the word "mashta". The first is without vowels, as it was in the book, the second is "mashta", the third is "meshta" (the stroke above and below the first letter is the vowel).

I found the Egyptian mashta on page 70. And that was exactly what I needed to drop the accusation I had made in my mind against the Bedouins. But more on that in another article.

Summary

Maybe someone will perceive my story as not corresponding to the theme of our site. But I still decided to describe my search. I think that, inspired by my example, people will be able to find very necessary information on the Internet that does not want to easily open up to the call. The main thing when searching is to be patient and try to search, approaching the object of search from different positions.