A cigar is a tightly rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco, one end of which is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the smoker's mouth through the other end. Most cigar smokers do not inhale the smoke.
The English "cigar" comes from the Spanish cigarro, which in turn derives from the Mayan word for tobacco, siyar; see the entry for cigarro at the Spanish Royal Academy's online dictionary.
Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and the United States, Havana cigars from Cuba being particularly famous.
History
The indigenous inhabitants of the islands of the Caribbean Sea and Mesoamerica have smoked cigars since as early as the 10th century, as evidenced by the discovery of a ceramic vessel at a Mayan archaeological site in Uaxactún, Guatemala, decorated with the painted figure of a man smoking a primitive cigar. Explorer Christopher Columbus is generally credited with the introduction of smoking to Europe.
Two of Columbus's crewmen during his 1492 journey, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, are said to have disembarked in Cuba and taken puffs of tobacco wrapped in maize husks, thus becoming the first European cigar smokers.
Around 1592, the Spanish galleon "San Clemente" brought 50 kg of Cuban tobacco seed to the Philippines over the Acapulco-Manila trade route. The seed was then distributed among the Roman Catholic missions, where the clerics found excellent climates and soils for growing high-quality tobacco on Philippine soil.
In the 19th century, cigar smoking was common, while cigarettes were still comparatively rare. The cigar business was an important industry, and factories employed many people before mechanized manufacturing of cigars became practical. Many modern cigars, as a matter of prestige, are still rolled by hand; some boxes bear the phrase totalmente a mano, "totally by hand," as proof.
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