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Bubalus Bubalis & How
He Got to Naples
 Bubalus bubalis
is Yiddish for "buffaloes that stutter." No, actually,
it's the Linnaean binomial taxonomy—meaning that the
genus is bubalus
and the species B.
bubalis—for what is generally called the water
buffalo. It is also called the domestic Asian water
buffalo and in Italy is now also termed the
Mediterranean Italian buffalo. It is a bovine, but, in
spite of the term "buffalo," is a separate genus from
other bovines that may also be popularly called
"buffalo" in some parts of the world—the North American
bison, for example. (I mean, would you even go out with a woman
called a "bubalus gal"?)
Most of the world's 160 million water buffaloes are in
Asia where the animals are used as draft, meat and dairy
animals; the dung is also used as fertilizer and fuel.
In some parts of Asia, they have buffalo races and
buffalo fights, and some cultures even have sacred water
buffaloes. In southern Italy—primarily Campania—however,
the many thousands of female water buffaloes serve a
much loftier goal—producing milk to make mozzarella cheese.
Italian use of the term "buffalo" reflects that, and the
feminine form, bufala,
has almost become generic. The male animal, bufalo, serves
primarily to keep the female happy, and many of us know
what that is like. Finally, the female form, bufala, may be used
to mean "nonsense" or "rubbish," in the way that
speakers of English use the term "baloney," which may or
may not have to do with the city, Bologna. (More on that
at this link.)
How did bubalus
bubalis get to Naples? Some sources say that
the Goths brought them from the north during the
invasions following the fall of the Roman empire. (Those
sources don't explain how northern Europeans got Asian
water buffaloes in the first place.) Also, say some,
perhaps the Crusaders brought them back from the Middle
East. (That is unlikely since the animals were in Italy
before the
Crusades.) The chronology of the domestication of the
animal speaks for itself. The Asian water buffalo is a
domesticated variation of the Bubalus arnee, the wild buffalo of the
Indus valley, where they were first tamed for
agriculture before 2500 B.C.; thus, they were present in
the famous Harappa Indus valley civilization of the
Indian subcontinent and then spread west shortly
thereafter to Mesopotamia during the period of the
Akkadian dynasty. In light of that, the most commonly
accepted explanation for their presence in Italy is
relatively straightforward: Arab/Islamic colonizers and
traders found the buffalo as they moved east in the 600s
and then introduced it in the west in North Africa and
Sicily. From there the animals spread to the Italian
mainland at various Arab enclaves in the south. The
Arabs brought with them the art of making dairy products
from buffalo milk and imparted that art to the natives
(captured Benedictine monks, according to some sources).
The tradition of making mozzarella became firmly
entrenched and stayed even after the Arabs lost their
footholds on the southern mainland and eventually lost
Sicily, itself, to the Normans in the 1000s. Sources
document the presence of producers of mozzarella in the
area of Aversa, the initial Norman holding in the south,
as early as the 11th century. After that, the tradition
of mozzarella
in Campania is solidly established.
There is some confusion in distinguishing mozzarella and fior di latte, a
cheese made from cow's milk. Mozzarella is made only
from buffalo milk. That confusion exists elsewhere, but
not in Campania or anywhere in southern Italy. That is,
they—who know the difference—might try to sell you a
pizza with cheese made from pasteurized cow's milk, but
they know they shouldn't. A real Neapolitan pizza has to
be made with real Campanian mozzarella as defined by the law
governing foodstuffs of Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC)—Protected
Geographical Status. There is, in fact, a consortium
responsible for the "protection, surveillance, promotion
and marketing" of the Buffalo Cheese of Campania.
Finally, although I have used it here, the term
"mozzarella cheese" makes no sense in Italian. You
either want mozzarella
or cheese. It can't be both. That would be as confusing
as, well, bubalus
bubalis, and we don't want that. Also, the term
mozzarella
comes from the verb mozzare,
meaning "to break off" and refers to a step in the
shaping of the finished product. It does NOT mean "cut"
and it's not cheese, so you can forget that joke you've
just been dying to blurt out, you vulgarian, you.
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