Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Habb al-Qilqil is the hard grey seed of the thorny shrub Caesalpinia bonduc, known in English as fever nut or nicker nut. In Unani medicine it is a single drug, used mainly as a bitter remedy for fevers that come and go, for worms in the gut, and for painful periods.
The seed kernel is intensely bitter. It is usually taken as a small amount of powder, sometimes roasted first, and the leaf and bark are used in related traditional preparations.
Here is the plain verdict: this seed has a long and well documented place in Unani, Ayurvedic and Siddha practice, but almost all modern testing has been done in test tubes and in animals. Long traditional use tells you people valued it; it does not prove the seed works in humans, and that point is made once here rather than repeated in every section below.
Nobody has shown clearly how this seed works in the human body, so what follows is a best guess from laboratory work.
The kernel is full of bitter compounds. Bitter plant drugs of this kind can irritate the gut lining, which may explain the traditional use against intestinal worms and the nausea some people report.
Animal studies report drops in blood sugar, lower fever and some anti-parasite activity in the test tube. These are early findings in rats, mice and dishes, not evidence of an effect in people.
Common forms include:
Roasted or raw kernel powder, the usual Unani form, taken by the pinch.
Kernel powder pressed into small pills, often combined with other drugs in compound Unani formulas.
Seed oil, used on the skin in traditional practice for joint pain.
Leaf or bark decoctions (boiled water extracts), used separately from the seed.
Capsules and powders sold online as 'Bonduc nut' or 'Latakaranja'. These are not tested for strength or purity in most countries.
The seed appears in classical Unani texts under the name Habb al-Qilqil and in Persian and Arabic pharmacy as a bitter, warming drug for intermittent fevers.
It is equally at home in Ayurveda and Siddha as Latakaranja or Karanjwa, and spread with trade across coastal Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean, where the floating seeds wash ashore.
Because the same seed is a named drug in several separate written traditions, its traditional standing is strong even though its modern test record is thin.
See a doctor straight away if you have a fever that keeps coming back, shaking chills, or a fever after travel to a country where malaria occurs. Do not try to treat that yourself.
Get urgent help if you feel shaky, sweaty, confused or faint, which can mean your blood sugar has dropped too low.
Stop and see a doctor if you vomit repeatedly, have severe stomach pain, see blood in your stool, or notice unusual bruising or bleeding. If you are pregnant and have taken this seed, contact your midwife or doctor now.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Habb al-Qilqil (Karanjwa) is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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