The coconut or Indian nut. These trees look exactly like date-palms, except that their fruit is the coconut and not the date. This coconut fruit is just like a man's head, having what look like two eyes and a mouth; the innards when green look like human brains, and attached to it is a fibre that looks like hair. From the fibre, the Indians make cords with which they sew up ships instead of using iron nails, and they also make ship-cables from it.

There is this story told about it. In past ages, a certain philosopher was held in high esteem by a certain powerful king. This king has a vizier who was the philosopher's enemy. Thus, the philosopher said to the king, "O master, I had a dream. Cut the vizier's head off and bury it in your garden. For I foresaw that you did so, and the tree which grew from it made your whole kingdom rich beyond dreams themselves." The king replied, "And what if I do this, and nothing grows from it?" "Then," said the philosopher, "you may cut my own head off, and bury it too." So the king gave orders to behead the vizier, and the philosopher took the head, planted a date-stone in the brain, and tended it until it grew into the first coconut-tree.

These are the uses of the coconut: when it is green, one holes its rind with a knife, and drinks out of it a liquid of extreme sweetness and coolness, but whose temperature is hot and aphrodisiac; after drinking this, one fashions a spoon from the rind and with it, eats the pulp. The taste of the pulp is then like a broiled egg which is not quite cooked through.

Honey is made from it thus: men climb it morning and evening, and cut its stalk to tap the sap. They tie a small cup made from half a coconut to this stalk, and exchanged cups when they come back. When they have collected a large quantity of sap, they cook it in the same manner that grape-juice is cooked to make rubb. (?) It then makes delicious honey, and the merchants of India, the Yemen and China ship it to their countries and make sweetmeats of it.

Milk is gotten from it as follows: the woman of the house sits in her chair, taking up a stick with a pointed end. She holes the coconut with a hole just large enough to admit the stick, and then she mashes the contents until everything inside has come out, gathering it on a plate. This mash is steeped in water and becomes just like milk. This coconut milk is used as a sauce.

Oil is gotten from it also: ripe nuts are gathered, peeled and cut in pieces. They are then dried in the sun, and finally cooked in cauldrons to extract the oil. This is used for lighting and also as a sauce, and women put it in their hair. Source: Ibn Battuta Vol II.

On one island in the south pacific, coconuts are used as follows: they are allowed to germinate and the young coconut-tree shoots up for perhaps six months, at which time the coconut is pulled loose of the sapling and eaten; its flesh is gone and it is full of the most delicious milk, quite unlike that of an ungerminated nut.

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