The Alhagi Manna Turanjabine

In 1870, Messrs. Allen and Hanburys, pharmacists of London, presented to Berthelot a sample of a manna which had been sent from Lahore by Dr. Burton Brown it was described as an exudation from a spiny bush, Alhagi maurorum, belonging to the Leguminosae. This manna was said to be very abundant in Persia, where it was used as a purgative and even as a food under the name taranjbin. The manna was well known to Avicenna and other writers of the Middle Ages references to them may be found in Von Lippmann s Geschichte des Zuckers,  

A record that is of some historical interest discloses that the French Academy of Sciences had received a sample of this Persian or Alhagi manna from De Mirbel in 1836 and from Ravergi in 1830. 

Seven years after the termination of the researches of Berthelot and Villiers on melezitose, V. Markovnikofif, professor in the university of Moscow, began a study of the manna from the Alhagi plant. The following full quotation has been translated by Dr. Elias Yanovsky from the Journal of the Russian Physico-chemical Society, 16 chemical section), 330 (1884). 

The disaccharide component was not maltose the value of the rotation at the end of the first stage (4-64°) excluded that sugar. The fairly pure, though amorphous, disaccharide, which he freed largely from D-glucose by the use of alcohol, was considered to be a new disaccharide, to which Alekhine gave the name turanose, from Turan, the old Persian 

Alekhine discovered the fully acetylated crystalline derivative of melezitose, the hendecaacetate, which has become of aid in the precise identification of melezitose. It crystallizes readily m. p. 117°, Cajn + 111° in benzene and +104° in chloroform (ref. 17). 

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