Before founding the religion of Islam around 610 CE, the Prophet Muhammad led camel caravans across the Arabian Peninsula, thus bridging the nomadic lifestyle of the desert and the settled agricultural villages of oases and the coast. Islam likewise synthesized diverse cultural traditions into a new civilization. Muslim armies struck out under the second caliph, Umar ibn Abd al-Khatta¯b (ruled 634–644), and subjugated large parts of the Sasanid and Byzantine empires, thereby inheriting Persian and Greek cultural traditions. Within a century, Muslim rule extended from Spain across North Africa and the Middle East to India, offering access to ingredients and cooking methods from three continents and establishing the basis for a cuisine that spanned the known world.
The unified government of the caliphate encouraged widespread trade and migration, introducing Asian food crops to the west. Islam honored the merchant profession, and Arab traders soon dominated Indian Ocean shipping routes. The Thousand and One Nights described the wealth of produce available to Baghdad shoppers: “Syrian apples and Othmani quinces, Omani peaches, cucumbers from the Nile, Egyptian lemons and Sultani citrons.” Low taxes, predominantly free labor, and the opportunity to own land enticed farmers from Persia and India to migrate westward, bringing with them sophisticated irrigation techniques and tropical Asian crops including rice, sugar, hard wheat, citrus fruits, bananas, mangoes, spinach, artichokes, and eggplants. Some plants
The first world cuisine of African origin such as watermelon and sorghum even made a roundabout voyage from the Swahili Coast to India, where they were improved, before returning to Africa and Europe. On pilgrimage to Mecca, the Spanish Muslim Ibn Jubayr described watermelons that tasted “like sugar-candy or purest honey” – a far cry from the bitter wild melons of Africa.
Despite this massive movement of people and plants, regional cuisines remained distinctive. The dairy and date-based diet of Bedouin shepherds, little changed since pre-Islamic times, contrasted with the lavish roast meats, rice pilafs, and sweet and savory combinations of Persian court cuisine. Cooks from Moorish Spain to Palestine specialized in fresh Mediterranean seafood, while others in the Middle East had access to only a limited variety of dried fish. Couscous, tiny steamed pasta made of sorghum and later hard wheat, spread slowly from Morocco and probably arrived in Syria and Iraq about the thirteenth century. By contrast, sweetmeats and pastries became ubiquitous throughout the Muslim world with the diffusion of sugar cane.
Islamic dietary laws imposed some continuity on these diverse regional cuisines. Pork was forbidden to Muslims, making mutton the favorite meat. Both Arab and Jewish butchers performed ritualized slaughter, draining the meat of all blood. The Qur’an also banned alcohol, which was eventually replaced by coffee. Muslims fasted for the month of Ramadan, neither eating nor drinking during the long, hot days, as opposed to Catholics, who abstained from meat during Lent. Although common to all societies, hospitality and charity had particularly deep roots in the harsh Arabian Desert, and the zakat or tithe for the poor ranked among the five pillars of Islam. The generosity of such caliphs as Harun al-Rashid (ruled 786–809) expressed personal charity rather than the organized welfare policy of China, but this religious requirement imposed a stronger sense of responsibility than did the civic duty of classical Rome.
Handouts to the poor notwithstanding, the extravagant cuisine of the Abassid caliphate (750–1258) challenged the ethic of equality within the Muslim community. The ninth-century Kitab al-Bukhala¯(Book of Misers) berated Arabs for eating “Persian food, the food of Chosores, the flesh of the wheat in the saliva of the bee and the purest clarified butter .... Ibn al-Khattab would not have approved.” This reference to the spartan second caliph rebuked the contemporary Baghdad court for having been corrupted by Persian luxuries. The hand of fate, omnipresent in Arab literature, could also punish those distracted by delicate foods. Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta related a tale worthy of The Thousand and One Nights about a theologian, Jalal ad-Dın, who was tempted by a sweetmeat vendor. “The shaykh left his lesson to follow him and disappeared for some years. Then he came back, but with a disordered mind, speaking nothing but Persian verses which no one could understand.” Cooks beyond the world of Islam also looked for inspiration to the cosmopolitan banquets of the caliphs. Medieval Christians had access to these recipes not so much from the Crusades as from Muslim-occupied areas of Spain
The first world cuisine and Sicily. In Italy, macaroni made of hard wheat had appeared by the thirteenth century, and two hundred years later, rice cultivation spread to the north, where cooks still make a porridge-like risotto. Scholars have traced connections between the sophisticated use of spices in Arabic cookbooks and European works of the late Middle Ages, although similar recipes in Apicius make it difficult to prove a direct influence. African cooks likewise benefited from the introduction of new ingredients and cooking techniques. The diffusion of crops tended to run westward, with fewer gains for Asia; nevertheless, the Sultanate of Delhi (1206–1526) left a deep imprint on North Indian cooking. Muslim recipes also appeared in Chinese domestic manuals of the Song dynasty (960–1279), but their influence was overshadowed by an indigenous culinary revolution resulting from improved strains of Vietnamese rice and an emerging market economy. As the Chinese population surpassed 100 million in the twelfth century, Hangzhou restaurants boasted as diverse a cuisine as that of the Baghdad court.
With their identity firmly rooted in submission to God, Muslims needed few stereotypes about barbaric foods to differentiate themselves from nonbelievers. Arab merchants and pilgrims traveled widely and expressed an intense curiosity about the customs and foods of the people they encountered. Their tolerance of “peoples of the book,” including Christians, Jews, and later Hindus and Buddhists as well, likewise helped establish the most universal cuisine of the post-classical world.
Writtten by Jeffrey M. Pilcher in "Food in World History", Routledge, New York, 2006, excerpts pp. 13-15. Digitized,adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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