Mediaeval Islam

[Grymm]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Medieval-Arab-Cookery-Maxime-Rodinson/dp/0907325912/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292791594&sr=8-1
Includes The Baghdad Cookbook plus essays and some other translations of Arabic cookbooks.

Paul Meekins also stocks it http://www.paulmeekins.co.uk/cookery/cookeryindex.htmas do Prospect Books, well they are the publishers https://prospectbooks.co.uk/books/0907325912

[Captain Reech]

I hadn't heard about it before either, but it does sound fascinating. Have to be on the Birthday list as I appear to have exhausted the resources for Christmas!

[cannontickler]

nothing ever to be purchased from Amazon ever again by me after their naughtiness i'm afraid.

but i might pester Paul for something along the lines as its just such an interesting subject .
what was coming back over here in the form of Arabic foods with the crusaders then......?
you've got the trade routes already in full swing from previous empires, so do we take advantage of them at this point
or were we as dumb as we are today as regards communication with the rest of the planet...?

[Brother Ranulf]

what was coming back over here in the form of Arabic foods with the crusaders then......?

Trade routes had been established long before the Crusades (witness the import of peacocks as a foodstuff in early Saxon times). Roman trade links naturally suffered a decline with the collapse of the Empire, but it wasn't long before they were re-established and strengthened under the Vandals (5th century trade from Africa to Italy), Visigoths (6th century Spain, North Africa, France) and by 700 AD the southern Italian cities of Salerno, Amalfi, Naples and Otranto were engaged in Oriental trade with Syria and Egypt. Constantinople was a major player, trading goods from as distant as the Far East through Persia as well as with Italy and Egypt.

This trade included goods such as silk, aloes, cloves, sandalwood, pepper, copper, sesame wood, spices of many kinds, frankincense, dried dates, dried figs and many other commodities.

Far from interrupting all this trade, the Crusades provided additional opportunities, in particular for Venetian merchants; the kinds of goods expanded to include carpets, damasks, jewels, gold and silver work, drugs, coffee and sugar, alum, glass, sweet wine, currants, flax and perhaps paper and cotton fabric.

[cannontickler]

what was coming back over here in the form of Arabic foods with the crusaders then......?

Trade routes had been established long before the Crusades (witness the import of peacocks as a foodstuff in early Saxon times). Roman trade links naturally suffered a decline with the collapse of the Empire, but it wasn't long before they were re-established and strengthened under the Vandals (5th century trade from Africa to Italy), Visigoths (6th century Spain, North Africa, France) and by 700 AD the southern Italian cities of Salerno, Amalfi, Naples and Otranto were engaged in Oriental trade with Syria and Egypt. Constantinople was a major player, trading goods from as distant as the Far East through Persia as well as with Italy and Egypt.

This trade included goods such as silk, aloes, cloves, sandalwood, pepper, copper, sesame wood, spices of many kinds, frankincense, dried dates, dried figs and many other commodities.

Far from interrupting all this trade, the Crusades provided additional opportunities, in particular for Venetian merchants; the kinds of goods expanded to include carpets, damasks, jewels, gold and silver work, drugs, coffee and sugar, alum, glass, sweet wine, currants, flax and perhaps paper and cotton fabric.

well how very marvellous indeed..........we were in Tunisia a few years back.....walked into a medina and turned around on ourselves to see two massive Byzantine empire doors that had been half inched and lugged back co's they had just the right sized doorway to bung them in.........the world is a fascinating place.

[cannontickler]

a rather more exact question for you then............Mr. Grymm probably knew this was coming along........what arabic based foods are well established by the late 17th - early 18th centuries then......??
and what arabic based foods would the East & West India companies be heavily traiding at this point.
yes i know, but you know i've got a secret EIC fetish.

[Timothy]

Firstly, it is misguided to assume that Muslims in general have ever been any more adept at following their commandments than Christians. Hence, some Muslims have always drunk prohibited forms of alcohol. In fact, one of the most prevalent genres of medieval Arabic poetry was that in praise of wine. The Islamic prohibition was against anything fermented for more than 3 days. A common drink was date beer fermented for up to the three day limit, and drinks of the kumiss sort, that is fermented or soured milk products, were consumed in parts of the Near East as well as Central Asia. And it is not sufficiently appreciated that before black tea and coffee came to dominate the scene, all sorts of vegetable infusions and decoctions were drunk all over the place, both hot and cold.

[Brendan C]

Firstly, it is misguided to assume that Muslims in general have ever been any more adept at following their commandments than Christians. Hence, some Muslims have always drunk prohibited forms of alcohol. In fact, one of the most prevalent genres of medieval Arabic poetry was that in praise of wine. The Islamic prohibition was against anything fermented for more than 3 days. A common drink was date beer fermented for up to the three day limit, and drinks of the kumiss sort, that is fermented or soured milk products, were consumed in parts of the Near East as well as Central Asia. And it is not sufficiently appreciated that before black tea and coffee came to dominate the scene, all sorts of vegetable infusions and decoctions were drunk all over the place, both hot and cold.

Dr Dawson is spot on. To quote from the book by Geoffrey Hindley, "In his forties, he told his secretary Baha'-ad-Din that when he became vizir of Egypt, 'in recognition of the blessings that God had vouchsafed to him, he gave up wine and the pleasures of the world'. Until that time he seems to have indulged them freely.'

The person in question would have been about 33 when he became vizir of Egypt. His name was Saladin (Yep, THAT one!)

Brendan C

[Chris T]

I have been told that a good case can be made that the Islamic prohibition was against spirits (not a good idea in desert areas where at least partial dehydration is often the base level), rather than alcohol in general. At root almost all early religious requirements / prohibitions are simply attempts to keep the faithful as allive as possible, however much they may have changed over time.

[Timothy]

While at university I made an intensive study of the advent of Islam with a particular goal of understanding the underlying motivations. As a result of that I concluded that many of the social customs of Islam are founded upon the the consistent premise of removing any stimulus that would provoke a passion and therefore disturb a believer's peace of mind and/or cause socially disruptive behavior. That consideration applied to an entire population seems to me more important than a few guys dying of avoidable dehydration.

T.

[Chunnetter]

I understand this to mean running water or well water.

No doubt they didn't realise these sources could be contaminated but knew pond water wasn't a good idea.

[nathy8]

what is strange to me is that we were writing a blog thing or infographic actually and were covering the history of the fountain, I want to know why the Islamic fountain section was covered in its own separate topic on Wikipedia... almost as if it was treated as a separate evolution of fountains? are we that separate?