 It was only in the middle of the 19th-century that Balady citrons began to feature significantly in the European market and a religious Jewish controversy subsequently erupted as to whether the citrons had been grafted and therefore deemed disqualified for ritual use.In the 1870s, Rabbi Chaim Elozor Wax devoted himself to its cultivation and organized shipments to Europe.He felt the Balady citron had the strongest traditional lineage of species pureness, and claimed it was to be found in the wild when Nahmanides (d. 1270) arrived in the county.