The Memoirs of Jahāngīr (Jahāngīrnāma) 12.1.5

12.1.5

All the saffron of Kashmir is the product of this village. Perhaps there is no other place in the world where saffron is so abundantly produced : the quantity annually yielded there being 500 maunds of Hindustan, or 4000 maunds of Kabul (wiláyat). I visited this place once with my father in the season in which the plant blossoms. In all other trees we see they first get the branches, then the leaves, and after all the flower. But it is otherwise with this plant. It blossoms when it is only about two inches high from the ground. Its flower is of a bluish colour, having four leaves and four threads of orange colour, like those of safflower, in length equal to one joint of the finger. The fields of saffron are sometimes a kos, sometimes half a kos in length, and they look very beautiful at a distance. In the season when it is collected, it has such a strong smell that people get headache from it. Although I had taken a glass of wine, yet I was also affected by it. I asked the Kashmirians, who were employed in collecting it, whether it took any effect upon them, and was surprised by the reply, which was, “they did not know even what the headache was.”