The first grenades of the early second millennium and theories of how they got their name

HAVE A POMEGRANATE.

Yesterday's grenade from the time of the Crusaders, found by a power-station worker in Israel, looks like a giant stone persimmon (https://telegram.me/captainpaleo/85). So one wonders: why "grenade", of all things?

I shall explain. Grenades entered active military use as early as the beginning of the second millennium. They were devised before the appearance of gunpowder. And they looked precisely like this "stone fruit" of an explosive tree. The first grenades were clay vessels filled with quicklime; on bursting, it spattered, foamed and smoked, striking down the enemy's soldiers.

Grenades were made of clay, glass, bark, cardboard and other materials that shattered properly on impact. In the Arab world, instead of lime, grenades were filled with other scalding and poisonous chemicals. In time, military craftsmen began making fragmentation grenades, covered on the outside with spikes, their filling making the fragments fly over a greater distance.

There are several versions of the origin of the name "grenade": one linked to the island of Grenada, another to the fruit of the same name, which they resemble in shape. Rabelais calls them "migraines", from the French Mille graines, which means both a headache and the pomegranate fruit.

And yes, the grenadiers you have surely thought of are throwers of grenades. But I shall tell you about this arm of the service and the more modern use of grenades later.