Marzipan

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   OED News for March 2001 (dictionary.oed.com) mentions "marzipan."
   From Maxime Rodinson's essay in MEDIEVAL ARAB COOKERY (2001), pg. 213:

   It is possible that this Byzantine coin of Arab origin was called _mauthaban_, and that this was rendered as _matapan_.  On the other hand, Kluyver puts forward a number of phonetic arguments to show that _matapan_ and _mauthaban_ could have given rise to marzipan.  I am somewhat sceptical, because _mauthaban_ is a very rare word which has never been much used, to our knowledge, to signify either a wood, a box, a coin, a measure or a sweet.  For this reason, the entire theory is not very likely.
   For my part, I believe marzipan had nothing to do with the coin _matapan_.  With regard to marzipan being a word describing a measure equal to a tenth of a _moggio_, I think this may derive from the Persian and Armenian word _marzuban_, meaning "margrave," a governor of frontier provinces, which later came to signify governor in general.  (the Persian has the same etymology as margave, _marchese_, marquis, etc. in various European languages.)  Was _marzuban_ also used in the sense of a measure of capacity?  I cannot be certain, but I have found indications of this use at Aleppo in Syria in the twelfth century, in Syriac and in Armenian, and evidence of its use in Arabic in the thirteenth century.  It means a measure of capacity for grain and wine in all these languages.  Therefore, I believe that Kluyver's assertion is fair, and that the measure could have given its name to the baskets made in Famagusta, and consequently to the sweetmeat they contained; also that Venice pla!
yed an important role because of
 its continuing links with Famagusta and Cyrprus, and with Armenia, with which it had a special treaty.  There is a book entitled _Il Veneto armeno_, which makes special reference to the region's links with Armenia.
   When the word returned to the East with the new meaning of sweetmeat, it took a slightly altered form.  In Syria, marzipan was called _marsaban_.  Did it return from Italy or was it derived directly, with a slight phonetic modification, from _marzaban_, i.e. the word for governor?  I do not know.  This example shows the difficulty of such investigations, so important to the history of civilization.