Introduction
It is a thick, semi-transparent, slightly yellowish or slightly brownish liquid that becomes opaque when it gets old and has visible particles that are like sugarcane juice and are full of sweet taste. It also has a subtle fragrance. According to the opinion of scholars and doctors, the best honey is that which has the following qualities.
Best qualities
Very fragrant.
Obtained from pure flowers.
Its taste is more delicious and sweet.
Its taste is sharp but not bitter.
The best is the one that is reddish and transparent.
The transparency is clear and clearer than wax.
Second grade
The second grade is white, transparent honey. Rabi season honey is considered better than Kharif honey, but some doctors have the opposite opinion. Honey that is black, green, or dusty; that is harvested in winter; that has a bitter and sharp taste; or that has been harvested for more than two years.
The sages are unanimous in their opinion about all these types of honey: that they are defective and bad. Their use burns the mucous membranes, and there is a possibility of madness and maliciousness in human nature.
In Vedic medicine, it is written about four types of honey.
The color of ghee is yellowish and dry.
White, clean, and transparent, this type is the best.
Blackish honey with the color of iron, this type is defective and harmful.
Traditional case study ( Healing Example)
Example 1
A young girl had both cheeks full of boils and pimples; she was in a bad condition due to pain. The girl’s mother was sitting in front of her and was asking for the names of medicines. She got treatment from doctors and healers, applied many ointments, and prescribed all the medicines, but the girl did not get well. Having got tired of everything, now I have come to Hakeem Sahib. Perhaps Allah will bless my daughter through his hands. These were the words of a woman who was present in the doctor’s office.
People were looking at the girl’s face with pitying eyes. Finally, her turn came, and Hakeem Sahib examined her thoroughly and then picked up a vial lying in front of her and gave it to her. The girl’s mother looked at Hakeem Sahib’s face in surprise after seeing the vial and said, “Hakeem Sahib, this is honey. ” Hakeem Sahib, sensing her concern, smiled and said, “Mother! Go home and mix two spoons of honey in water in the morning and give it to her to drink. Apply honey on the girl’s face at nine in the morning and clean her face with cotton for half an hour. Apply honey to her morning and evening and bring her to me after fifteen days.
Results
After fifteen days, when the girl was brought to the clinic, her face had cleared up considerably, and especially the pus-filled pimples on her face had completely disappeared. The hakim instructed her to use the same medicine for another fifteen days. After a month, the girl was completely healthy. Looking at her, it did not seem that she was the same girl whose face had been marred by boils.
Reasons
The doctor, inquiring about the girl’s mother, told her that the girl had a liver disorder that was causing all of her blood to deteriorate, and it was showing its effects, especially on her face.
Allah Almighty has placed healing in honey; that is why I treated her with only honey, and by Allah’s will, she recovered. The purpose of describing this incident was so that our scholars are well aware of the property of honey that honey itself purifies blood.
Example 2
A few years ago, another incident of healing related to honey was published in the famous newspaper Nawa-e-Waqt in 1987. In a remote village in the US state, a man was badly burned when a pot of rice exploded. His wife, who was involved in this sudden situation, did not explain anything to him, so she opened the jar and coated his body well with honey cotton. The next day, people admitted him to the hospital in a nearby city.
Results
When the doctors saw him, they were amazed that honey had healed his wounds to a great extent and drinking honey had also relieved his pain to a great extent.
Reasons
When questioned, the woman said that whenever a sibling got hurt in childhood, their parents would immediately apply honey to the affected area, which would stop the bleeding, and the wound would heal easily with subsequent application of honey. In light of this experience, I also applied honey to my husband as an immediate medical aid.
Healing properties of honey
Honey is not only a nutritious food but also a gift from God to mankind, which contains healing in every way. Honeybees collect the juice obtained from the leaves and flowers of natural plants with hard work and effort. They have to travel a huge distance to get from one flower to another and then to the honeycomb. You will be surprised to know that this small, brave creature collects honey five hundred times its weight. To collect a spoonful of honey, it has to visit two thousand flowers. One pound of honey requires about four pounds of flower juice, which this small bee collects with great courage and determination.
A look at the composition of honey
Long before the invention of sugar and molasses, honey was used by humans in the Stone Age or in the time when humans lived in caves in uncivilized parts of the world. They considered it the best food for themselves. It would not be wrong to say that man began the art of beekeeping from this period so that he could enjoy this excellent sweetness. Its special ingredients are as follows.
Grape sugar, or glucose; fruit sugar; and cane sugar, which at the same time make up a considerable percentage of honey, are very low in quantity in honey. According to an average estimate, it is present in honey from two and a half to three percent. While other sugars are present in honey obtained from different bees from 27 to 44 percent at the same time. Similarly, it also contains about 28 types of different metal salts, and in addition, many chemical components are also included. In addition to the sugars mentioned, it contains dextrose and levulose, which belong to the group of hexose sugars. As soon as they reach the stomach, they start to be absorbed into the blood and provide the body with instant energy and strength.
Types of honey
Honey contains six types of antibiotics. It is found in its beeswax, in royal jelly, the food for the queen bee, in the sediment during the cleaning of honey, and in honey itself, which has antibacterial effects during internal and external use. This effect is found in its ability to absorb moisture, as we have learned that germs grow and multiply in infectious moisture, but honey absorbs this moisture and stops its transmission. This is why honey heals wounds in the stomach and intestines of humans. Many doctors have used honey and they did not need surgery.
Honey is useful in blood purification because it burns oxygen completely when mixed with honey. This property is not found in other types of sugars. Honey assists the liver and spleen in producing red blood cells. This prevents blood from clotting and prevents excessive bleeding in the case of wounds.
Honey is also useful in diabetes. It does not affect the blood sugar level because it combines with oxygen and completes combustion. It creates strength in the body.
Religious and historical perspectives
In ancient times, humans knew of the many healing properties of honey, but today it is known that its properties have been overshadowed by modern medicine without any scientific or logical justification. For example, modern medicine has not yet found a cure for rheumatism, i.e., arthritis (joint pain and swelling), although in the past, this disease was successfully and curatively treated with a bee sting. If the patient could not tolerate it, then honey wax was melted on fire and applied to the painful area, thus reducing the swelling and pain within an hour or two. Contemporary researchers have found that bee stings contain several neutral acids that are beneficial for rheumatism. Accordingly, researchers are still busy finding a cure for Rabi’ah fever (Rabi’ah sensitivity or spring allergy), but modern medicine has not been able to find a suitable cure for it. If it is known which plants cause sensitivity to pollen and then honey made by bees from the flowers of these plants becomes available, then this honey will definitely prove to be a cure for this disease. Since it was a bit difficult to find the real cause of this disease, especially in the past, due to the scarcity of resources. Due to scarcity, this task was considered extremely difficult, in which case one should slightly heat any honey and inhale its vapors. According to the ancients, by heating honey and inhaling it (i.e., inhaling the vapors), one gets relief from the pain of the disease within a few seconds.
Doctors and experts have discovered the three health benefits in honey made by bees and ants, which is why honey is called the elixir of life. Ancient people used to dream of this elixir, although this delicacy actually contains the blessing of vitamins A, B, and C and mineral salts. The benefits of honey are not limited to its internal use; these benefits are also obtained by its external use. Honey has been used traditionally in many nations for a few decades.
A famous doctor of the country writes in one place that even before entering the medical college, my heart and mind were worried about the side effects of allopathic medicines and their harmful effects on the human body. However, after entering the medical college and learning about the hidden treasures in the human body, my anxiety increased even more. When I reached the third year and was faced with the subject of pharmacology, the facts began to come to light and after that I made up my mind that I would definitely devise or discover a harmless and natural method of treatment for human diseases. I was suffering from this anxiety when I heard the interpretation of the verses of Surah Al-Khal from my spiritual teacher, in which honey was referred to. And your Lord commanded the bee to build houses in the mountains and houses where they put up their umbrellas, then eat and eat from all kinds of food, then follow the easy paths of your Lord, from its bellies comes wine of various colors, in it is healing for people, in it are signs for those who think.
A consideration of this verse explains three important points, especially the phrase where they put up their umbrellas; it clearly shows that bees can be raised, that is, wherever people provide them with suitable means, these bees will stay and continue to obey the wisdom of their God. This method is called beekeeping or apiculture in modern terms. Similarly, the second point in these verses that there is healing for humans indicates that honey cures both material and spiritual diseases for humans. Obviously, it includes the entire existence of man; the body has both soul and matter. Although it is a bit difficult to understand how spiritual diseases such as lying, jealousy, greed, prejudice, backbiting, etc. can be cured with honey, for believers it is not difficult to understand. Similarly, the word “man” in the third point also shows that the scope of healing with honey is not limited to those diseases that are present in the books of the world today but also includes all those diseases that will be discovered or have been discovered in humans in the future. Moreover, those diseases are also included in this list. Which no human has been able to understand yet or will never be able to.
These are some indications that my imperfect understanding has gleaned from these verses, but I cannot say for sure that these indications are the intention of Allah Almighty, but they are only the result of following His command. The Lord of the Universe himself has said, “Why do you not ponder over the Quran?” Are your hearts locked?
The benefits of honey have also been explained in detail in the Prophetic hadiths. According to science, honey is a semi-transparent mixture of complex sugars that bees carefully collect from different flowers and convert them into honey with a specific composition. Due to these components, honey becomes an acidic mixture that contains 3.0-4.5% phosphorus. This is the acidity at which most bacteria cannot grow. Secondly, due to its high solute content, it becomes an osmotic mixture, due to which it attracts bacteria or objects around it. Even if other antibiotic systems are not considered, the above two reasons alone are sufficient to kill germs.
Methods of Identification of Honey
Honey is available in cities and villages in Pakistan today on a large scale. According to recent newspaper reports, about one thousand tons of honey are being produced annually, which not only meets the country’s needs but is also being exported. However, it is certain that a large number of people are still unaware of the real importance of honey and beeswax. That is why this industry is not given the real attention it deserves. Compared to our country, it is being obtained on a large scale and through scientific methods in Germany, America, Australia, and other countries in Europe. In our country, the means of quality testing of food items are also limited, so when buying honey, one is always worried about which honey is genuine and reliable among the domestic honey that is easily available at a price ranging from one hundred rupees to three hundred rupees per kilogram.
Thus, many identities are famous, but most of them are baseless, and the biggest reason for this is that these identities do not have any international status; rather, in our country itself, different methods of identifying honey are prevalent according to the provinces. There are differences of opinion in all of them. Just as the book of Allah, the Holy Quran, is given excessive sanctity and respect, it is locked in a box and placed on a high pedestal; similarly, people have been deprived of its usefulness by issuing supernatural statements about honey. However, what is needed is that along with reciting the Holy Quran, we should also ponder over its commands and messages and gain full awareness of the system bestowed by nature and should examine honey with a modern perspective and get maximum benefit from it.
The doctor says that in my opinion, there are four excellent methods of identifying honey, three of which are present and proven in the traditions of the Hadiths, and by chance, researchers have also confirmed them.
Feeling of dryness and slight burning sensation in the throat after smelling and eating honey:
It is a fact that honey is highly acidic, which is why it feels bitter in the throat. It has high solute content, which dries up the moisture in the throat, meaning that the water in the throat gets absorbed with the honey and goes down into the stomach, creating a feeling of dryness and bitterness.
Heat generation in the body after eating honey
Medical science tells us that the glands use glucose to get instant energy in the body, and to break down glucose and metabolize the energy ATP, the glands need vitamin B complex, which is present in honey in abundance. This is why after a few hours of eating honey, the body’s temperature increases and we start feeling hot.
Increase in libido after a short period of eating honey:
At this stage too, we find out from medical science how excess libido is possible just a few hours after eating honey. Lust is mainly related to three organs, namely the adrenal glands, the pituitary gland, and the thyroid gland. Incidentally, the similarity between these three is that they use only glucose or fructose for energy and for their performance. These are organs that cannot use fat or anything else as food. There is a special system for breaking down fructose, which is called MP Shut. All these organs get energy through this system, and the performance of these three glands is controlled by some hormones that control lust. Apart from this, a milky or alkaline water is secreted from the prostate gland, which is called “prostatic fluid.” The reproductive fluid is always excreted from the body along with this water because this water contains a lot of fructose, which also causes the reproductive fluid to survive for a long time. The germs of the reproductive fluid get their food from this mixture. Honey thickens the semen and strengthens the sperm cells in it, which affects conception and the development of the fertilized egg.
Honey coagulation
Honey coagulation is a natural process that depends on the ratio of glucose to fructose. Real honey will coagulate sooner or later, unless it is heated too much or its coagulation ability is destroyed from some other angle. The ratio of glucose to fructose depends on the flowers from which the bee sucks the nectar. In some flowers, such as mustard, sunflower, etc., its ratio is high, as a result of which the honey made from these crops coagulates more. Similarly, in other crops, this ratio is low, due to which honey coagulates very slowly. Apart from this, one of the reasons for its coagulation is the specific temperature at which it is more likely to coagulate, i.e. 10 to 25 degrees Celsius.
In the international market, honey freezing is considered a big problem, and new methods are being adopted every day to avoid it. One of these methods is to heat honey to a specific temperature at which honey does not suffer any damage, which is the international temperature of 60 to 70 degrees Celsius. Provided that this heat is not given to it for more than twenty to twenty-five minutes. But very few people in the world do this so that the temperature does not increase, and they worry about their reputation and business in the market. Some people add various types of fragrances and colors to honey to prevent it from freezing so that their honey looks more attractive, and many people solve their problem with acid, which is in no way suitable for the real benefits of honey. It should be remembered that heating honey excessively produces a special type of poison called HMF, which is extremely harmful to the human body.
In America and Europe, etc., chemical methods of testing or quality of honey are prevalent, but in our country, it is identified by these old non-standard methods.
Identifications of organic honey ( Traditional methods)
When eating or tasting real honey, a slight bitterness is felt in the back of the throat.
Its thin string breaks and bends upwards.
Real honey does not dissolve easily when put in water. If it is dripped drop by drop into a glass of water, these drops go intact until the water reaches the glass, while a drop of fake honey breaks in the water and dissolves before reaching the glass. That is, the water does not dissolve for long after a drop of honey is added.
If real honey is put on bread and put in front of the crackers, it avoids eating it, while artificial honey made from sugar is eaten immediately.
If a drop of honey is burned, it does not make a crackling sound, or it does not burn and form crusts.
Similarly, put honey in a container, make a hole in its lid, and place a plate below it. If the honey slowly collects on the plate like a snake’s coil, then it is real honey.
If honey is applied to cotton and burned, it burns well. If honey is made from ash, it does not burn well but leaves coals in the end.
Take a little honey on your palm and mix a small amount of slaked lime used in betel nuts. If the honey is pure, then after a while you will feel a sensation of heat in your palm, and after a while your palm will start to burn strongly. In some types of honey, the burning sensation is slightly less.
Place the honey on a plate and increase the heat under it; if it does, the honey will start to burn and then burn completely. If it retains its original color during burning, then consider that the honey is real. If it is white and then charcoal when burning, then it is fake honey.
All these are non-standard methods. As mentioned earlier, the amount of sugar in it, that is, cane sugar, is between two and a half to three percent, so food laboratories should find out how to determine the percentage of this amount of sugar through chemical methods. It is also said that if carrot jam is prepared in a thick consistency or syrup of sugar and citric acid is added to it in a special way, then it becomes difficult to distinguish between the thick syrup and honey. If mustard flowers or neem is added to it for fragrance and it is kept for some time, then it produces a smell like honey, and then the food colors are present; thus, artificial honey is prepared, but despite this, one thing is missing from it, and that is those fine particles of agarwood suspended in it. Which are not only visible through the microscope but can also be seen by the common human eye. In fact, pollen is also an important nutritional component of honey, but some honey sellers today heat the honey and filter it with a thick cloth or fluff it, which makes the honey look more transparent and beautiful, but the pollen present in it is left in very small quantities.
Storage and heating effects
Heating honey above a certain temperature (63 degrees Celsius) destroys or loses all its nutritional properties. Storing honey for a long time also reduces these properties. In this regard, experts say that heating and storing the hexoses present in it causes the process of decomposition. Various organic substances or acids or organic acids present in honey start to affect it and convert these simple sugars into a new compound, which is commonly known as HMF, i.e., hydroxymethylfurfuraldehyde. The smallest amount of this compound is found in fresh honey, ranging from 0.6 mg to 0.2 mg per 100 grams of honey. Even if this amount increases to three or four mg percent, the nutritional value and usefulness of honey are maintained, but as its amount increases with heating or storage.
