ČĀY “tea” ( < Chi. ch’a; Mathews’ Chinese English Dictionary,
no. 101 ), shrub of the genus Camellia and beverage made from
its leaves, probably the most popular drink throughout the
Iranian world. The spread of tea in the Persian world. Berthold
Laufer’s remark that “It would be very desirable to have more
exact data as to when and how the consumption of Chinese tea
(Camellia theifera) spread among Mohammedan peoples” (Sino-
Iranica, p. 553) is still valid. It is not known when Persians
first became acquainted with the beverage. Bīrūnī, in his Ketāb
al-ṣaydana, written in the first half of the 5th/11th century,
gave some details about the plant (čāyʾ) and its use as a
beverage in China and Tibet. He identifies five varieties by
color (white, green, violet, gray, and black), singling out
white tea as the best of all (afḵar al-anwāʿ), as being very
rare (nāder al-wojūd), and as having most effect on the body (p.
128, tr. p. 105). The habit of drinking tea apparently did not
spread to western Asia before the 7th