Maghrebi mint tea

Maghrebi mint tea (Maghrebi Arabic: أتاي, atay; Arabic: الشاي بالنعناع, romanized: aš-šhāy bin-na'nā'), also known as Moroccan mint tea and Tunisian mint tea or Algerian mint tea, is a North African preparation of gunpowder green tea with spearmint leaves and sugar.

It is traditional to the Greater Maghreb region (the northwest African countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania). Its consumption has spread throughout North Africa, parts of the Sahel, France, Spain, the Arab world, and Middle East.

Mint tea is central to social life in the Maghreb and is very popular among the Tuareg people of Algeria, Libya, Niger and Mali. The serving can take a ceremonial form, especially when prepared for a guest. The tea is traditionally made by the head male in the family and offered to guests as a sign of hospitality. Typically, at least three glasses of tea are served. The tea is consumed throughout the day as a social activity. The native spearmint naʿnāʿ (نعناع) possesses a clear, pungent, mild aroma, and is the mint that is traditionally used in Maghrebi mint tea. Other hybrids and cultivars of spearmint, including yerba buena, are occasionally used as substitutes for nana mint. In Morocco, mint tea is sometimes perfumed with herbs, flowers, or orange blossom water. In the cold season, they add many warming herbs like marjoram, sage, verbena, and wormwood. Mint has been used as an infusion, decoction, and herbal medicine throughout the Mediterranean since antiquity.^{[citation needed]}

In Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria, the word for tea is tay, atay or lātāy; while in Tunisia it's et-tey. These diverge from the typical Arabic word for tea, shai (شاي). According to Van Driem, ʾit-tāī originates from the Dutch language thee.

Gunpowder tea was introduced into North Africa by the British in the 18th and 19th centuries via Morocco and Algeria.

According to food historian, Helen Saberi, the drinking of green tea infused with mint spread from Morocco to Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and to nomadic tribes of Berbers and Tuareg in the Sahara.

Sugar and tea would arrive from Europe to the port of Essaouira, where Jewish merchants who had started migrating to coastal cities in the 19th century managed their passing through the interior of Morocco. James Richardson recorded a description of a Moroccan tea ceremony in the 1840s, and said that during his travels tea was drunk widely and all day long.

Tea consumption became associated with power and prestige in Morocco, and Ahmed Bin Mubarek [ar], officer of Sultan Suleiman (r. 1792–1822), became the first mūl atay (مول أتاي "master of tea") in the Makhzen. In the twenty years after the Anglo-Moroccan Treaty of 1856, and after the British East India Company diverted tea meant for the Baltic states to Morocco during the Crimean War, tea imports quadrupled but tea consumption remained an urban practice. Among urban populations, partaking in the tea ceremony became a symbol of status and savoir faire, while among rural farmers it was a way to emulate the urban class they both envied and resented. Tea consumption spread through wider segments of the population as a result of the famines of the 1880s, when it became an emergency calorie substitute, appetite suppressant, and mode of performing acculturation for rural populations flooding the cities in search of opportunities.