Medieval visitors to Egypt never failed to exist captivated by the uniqueness of its agronomical landscape. The Nile, they said, flowed from paradise. The land itself, with its four seasons, was no less remarkable: summertime, when the rising and flooding of Nile turned the land into a gleaming white pearl; fall, when it looked like blackness musk, the receding water revealing black, fragrant soil; winter, when it shimmered emerald green with growing crops; and spring, the harvest season, when information technology gleamed like golden amber.

The Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 CE played a major role in adding to its already abundant harvests by introducing of import crops such as rice, sugarcane, and citrus fruits. The lush, fertile lands forth the Nile ensured favourable atmospheric condition for growing these migrant crops.

Likewise crops, the Arab conquest also brought variety of some other sort to the region. With the successive caliphates and sultanates over the period of several centuries, Cairo established itself equally um al-bilad (the 'mother of all nations'). Its Arab Muslim and Coptic population was augmented as it became a cultural magnet and a oasis for the surrounding regions and peoples of multiple nationalities and ethnicities, specially after the attacks of the Mongols in western asia. Egypt gradually became home to Turks, Kurds, Moroccans, Sudanese, Persians, Iraqis, and many more than.

The Market – Cairenes seldom cooked at home. The city'southward famous markets provided them with warm take-away meals on a daily basis. At that place, you lot could notice the butcher and the farrani, who ran the commercial brick oven used for baking breadstuff and roasting casseroles for the neighbourhood customers. The naqaniqi specialized in making sausages, whereas the kubudi sold grilled liver. Al-bawaridi provided the customers with the cold meatless dishes consumed as snack foods, such as boiled vegetables, dairy, condiments, and 'ujaj (omelettes). Al-rawwas sold offal such equally head meat, trotters, and tripe, cooked or raw. Fresh vegetables were sold by al-khuḍari and fruit by al-fakihani.
Poultry had its own market, called suq al-dajjajin, where chicken along with geese, sparrows, and other birds were sold. Almost of the chicken bachelor in Arab republic of egypt was supplied by ma'mal al-farruj (the chick factory) for artificial incubation, whereas the firakh ḥamam (young pigeons) were supplied past peasants who kept cotes for the wild pigeons to lay and hatch their eggs. At that place was also the confectioners' market with its sugar figurines shaped like animals and suspended from threads, non to mention the mounds of different types of cookies and the colorful mushash (lollipops), about of which were especially made for religious festivals.

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Such a colourful multiplicity inevitably enriched the local culinary repertoire of the region. This was, for instance, how we come to meet a traditional Moroccan recipe for kuskusu in the fourteenth-century Egyptian cookbook Kanz al-Fawaʾid. A Kurdish recipe is given for a whole lamb roast and several for Farsi and Byzantine pickles. Such varieties certainly suggest a colourful culinary atmosphere, where people enjoyed each other'southward foods and had an ambition for the novel and unusual.

Merchandise with the surrounding regions, especially the Levant, was besides quite active. Products imported from that region included walnuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, apples, quinces, and pears. Arab republic of egypt, on the other hand, exported to the countries surrounding the Mediterranean its surplus of local products such every bit samak qadid (salt-cured fish); ḥalum cheese; a local variety of sugarless taffy made with germinated wheat called nayda; oils of seeds of radish and turnip; pulses; and refined saccharide. Importation of spices and other aromatics from Republic of india and beyond was carried out for centuries (1181–1484 CE) by a prosperous grouping of Egyptian merchants, called Karimi. Their economic activities were mostly conducted via Yemen, their supply centre, and the Mediterranean countries.

A Culture of Food

In times of stability, Cairo was a thriving urban heart. Medieval histories left us lavish accounts of the luxurious lives the ruling classes and the elites led. At the same time, we are told that the poor amid the populace did not become hungry considering bread was inexpensive and plentiful. Interestingly, an unexpected place for the poor to go nutritious and succulent nutrient was when they fell ill and stayed at the bimaristan (infirmary). Meat, mainly poultry, fruit, and medication were generously offered free to them. There are stories that some of them even faked affliction just for the nutrient.

In that location were too times when the people were offered palace food. During the times of the Tulunids, the kitchens of Emir Ibn Ṭulun (d. 884 CE) daily prepared carry-out meals in pottery vessels, each containing a meat dish, breads, and dessert. The palace doors would be thrown open, and everybody was welcome. Anecdotes also recount how the harem cooks used to sell what was left of the food they cooked. It might not have been in perfect condition, such as a chicken mayhap missing a leg or its breast, or the remaining chunks of a roasted lamb, only it was good nutrient, inexpensive, plentiful, and e'er available. We are told that if someone had unexpected guests, he would immediately go to the harem gates and buy this nutrient, the likes of which he could not have cooked, or afforded, in the beginning place.

'Whether motivated by health concerns or otherwise, aphrodisiac recipes were in swell demand, and Kanz al-Fawaʾid offered them in profusion.'

The Fatimid simaṭs were formal one thousand feasts. To celebrate a religious festival, for instance, a magnificent simaṭ would be arranged for the caliph and his entourage. It would be loaded with breads, grilled lambs, poultry, and much more than, until the food was the tiptop of a alpine man. Timed with the inflow of the caliph to start the feast, was the entrance of two huge saccharide palaces, which were carried along the streets that led to the palace for the congregated public to feast their optics on. The carbohydrate palaces, beautifully aureate with gilded paper and bedecked with sugar figurines arranged in rows, would exist placed at both ends of the simaṭ. For their entertainment, the guests would exist watching a competition between two soldiers known for their fathomless appetites, each devouring ane grilled lamb, 10 sweetened chickens, and a ten-pound platter of halva. What was left of the food, which would still be plenty, would so be taken out for the public to devour.

Their simaṭs for solemn religious commemorations, however, were a different story. For the Fatimids, who were Shiites in the midst of a majority Sunni Muslim populace, the 10th twenty-four hours of Muḥarram (ʿAshura) was just such equally an occasion. A modest simaṭ was offered in a sombre way in a apprehensive place. For this occasion, everybody was invited. The food consisted of bowls of cheese, plain yoghurt, barley breadstuff deliberately made to look dark, and pickles. These were followed with lentil soups and porridges. Bowls of love concluded the meal.

A trayful of picayune delights – A large cute tray, called sukurdan, would be loaded with a variety of delicious small dishes and served as snacks and nibbles during social gatherings, including those involving the consumption of alcoholic beverages. In fact, it was the latter that gave rise to the sukurdan ritual, including its name, which was said to be a combination of the Arabic sukr significant to 'imbibe alcoholic drinks' and the Persian dan or 'vessel'. The tray was often loaded with apricot compote, pickles of carrot and quince, yoghurt condiment of jajaq (a prototype of today's jajik or the Greek tzatziki), lemon preserved in salt, cured olives and capers, and common salt-cured sparrows and ṣir (anchovies).

(Right) Illustration past Maged El Sokkary (Left) A fourteenth-century brass tray attributed to Egypt. The inscription around the raised centre is a dedication to an anonymous high-ranking Mamluk official. ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Edward C. Moore Collection

Several anecdotes survive regarding kings and sultans who were either gourmet cooks or gluttons. Al-Malik al-ʿAdil (d. 1218), youngest blood brother of Salah al-Din, for instance, was known for his gluttony. He ate like a horse and ended his meals with a pound of sugar halva as a digestive. Of the Mamluks, Sultan al-Ṣaliḥ Ṣaliḥ (d. 1354) once treated his mother, Qutlubak and a group of shut friends to a lavish feast. He wrapped an apron around his waist, cooked all the nutrient, and then spread the table with the dishes himself.

Amid the layers of social classes in medieval Egypt, the culinary distinctions were not perceived through the varieties of the dishes offered equally much as the quality of these dishes. Ibn Shahin al-Ẓahiri (1468 CE), for case, enumerates 54 varieties of dishes in his Zubdat Kashf al-Mamalik, which were commonly cooked for the palace and other banquets. At that place are recipes in Kanz al-Fawaʾid for almost of the listed dishes, including fifty-fifty ones that were commonly considered the humble fare of the common people, such equally bamya (okra), molokheyya (Jew'due south mallow), and ful (fava beans).

The commoners, we are told, had fiddling meat but consumed a lot of the cheaper dallinas (river mussels), ṣir (anchovies), ḥalum cheese, and bread. They had nayda for dessert and snacked on roasted chickpeas. When the Nile flooded, they caught and cooked dormice, which they considered a delicacy.

Provisions and Pastimes

Historian al-Maqrizi's described many of Cairo's markets in great detail (see box) but i of his fondest memories is of one destroyed by a massive fire in the bound of 1354 CE.  The charming market was made up of a stretch of twenty establishments aligned on both sides of the street selling the pop foamy drink called fuqqa'. The stores were built of colourful marble with fountains that sprayed water on the marble where the sealed fuqqa' jars were arranged.

Example of an ancient Egyptian mifrak, a Graeco-Roman-era hand mixer/blender. – Kanz al-Fawa'id is the only medieval source, including the lexicons, where a blending tool called mifrak is mentioned. A tool with the same proper noun is withal used in southern Arab republic of egypt and Sudan to alloy an okra dish called wika and to whip the traditional stew of molokheyya. The handle is rolled dorsum and along betwixt open palms to alloy ingredients together. A like tool belonging to the Graeco-Roman Menses was excavated in Egypt.

Christoph Gerigk; Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Antiquities Museum

This market was one of many frequented past Cairene shoppers. They were so crowded people needed to learn ways to manoeuvre through the flow. The largest was al-Qaṣaba, which in its heyday independent 12,000 stalls, brimming with shoppers and countless varieties of nutrient and drink. At that place was also the confectioners' market, which, co-ordinate to al-Maqrizi, was near the fun to frequent.

For their quick daily shopping, people did not demand to go to the large markets equally each neighbourhood had its own pocket-sized shops, as well as a public bath and a bakery. As al-Maqrizi reports, Cairenes used to throw out one thousand dinars-worth of disposable items daily in the trash and at the dumpster mounds exterior the city. These items included earthenware bowls used for yoghurt and cheese and to serve food to diners at cookshops and food stalls besides equally  whatever paper and thread the grocers used to wrap the purchased goods.

A vital aspect of the food culture that evolved in Egypt at the time was the development of an active system for market place inspection with regulations involving proper treatment of food and detecting cheaters and adulterators. Personal hygiene was emphasized. The kneaders in detail were required to shave the hair on their hands and wear apparel with tight-fitting sleeves. They had to cover their mouths and noses with face mufflers lest they should sneeze or cough, and their saliva and mucus would end up in the dough. They also had to habiliment headbands lest their sweat fall into the dough. During the daytime, they had to have people next to them with hand fans to shoo the flies away.

When the beloved molokheyya and qulqas were taboo – The infamous Fatimid caliph al-Ḥakim bi-Amrillah (d. 1021 CE), a Shiite Isma'ili, restricted sure types of nutrient for sectarian reasons. He forbade people from eating their beloved molokheyya (Jew'south mallow) because it had been favoured past the Sunni Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya (d. 680 CE). He likewise banned a popular dish cooked with qulqas (taro) called al-Mutawakkileyya because information technology was named later the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 861 CE), who was a Sunni. After al-Ḥakim's death, however, Egyptians resumed eating their favourite foods and al-Mutawakkileyya acquired another name, sitt al-shana' or 'the best of the maligned dishes'.

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Most city dwellers depended on the services offered by the food markets, either partially or entirely. For those who had pocket-size kitchens, the preference maybe was to put the dish together in a ṭajin pot and send it to the furn for cooking. Otherwise, there always was the sharaʾiḥi, the professional melt who cooked dishes with the needed ingredients brought to him by his customers. As for those who lived in rented units in the multi-storeyed housing complexes characteristic of the living atmospheric condition of low-income people, their simply option was to avail themselves of the services offered past a great variety of cookshops and stalls. At that place were haraʾisiyyin (porridge-makers), shawwaʾin (grillers), qallaʾin (fryers of meat and fish and zalabiya or syrupy fritters), and many more. Apart from the high cost of fuel, fearfulness of causing fires in the chronically congested metropolis centres was a major factor for such weather condition.

In the Kitchen

Cooking in one's ain kitchen in the medieval Egyptian urban centres largely took place in the well-off households or those in the suburbs, where the kitchens were well equipped, and a good supply of clean water was available.

The medieval cookbook, Kanz al-Fawaʾid fī Tanwiʿ al-Mawaʾid with over 820 recipes, suggests household weather where many easily were put to work to prepare dishes that oft required various chores such as pounding, sifting, mashing, stirring, squeezing, taking care of the burn down, and so on. Good cooking required the use of several types of knives: a cleaver for splitting the basic, a potent one for disjointing the meat, a sparse and very abrupt one for slicing it, and a separate pocketknife and lath for cut onion and garlic.

For cooking and baking purposes, stoves were used along with a tannur and/or furn built outside the kitchen. The tannur was an immobile open-topped, bell-shaped dirt oven. Besides baking flatbreads by sticking them to its heated inner sides, information technology was too used for roasting meat or simmering pots of beans in its residual heat. The furn was a brick dome oven, with a frontal opening and a apartment floor, fuelled from a split compartment underneath it. Alternatively, fuel was burnt on the oven floor itself, and when heated, the ashes were removed, and baking commenced. It was used for baking breadstuff and trays of biscuits also every bit for other, simpler tasks. The neighbourhood furn was also used particularly for fish.

Spices and herbs were used in all the dishes, each of which required its own set of seasonings. What attracts the attention, still, is the use of mastic gum in all the meat dishes. The rationale for this culinary practise, which is indeed uniquely Egyptian, may exist attributable to the stiff gamey olfactory property of the local meats, and the ability of mastic to dispel putridity for which Egypt was known due to the nature of its air and climate, every bit postulated by the physicians of the fourth dimension.

Too the familiar dishes, some of the recipes were preparations of travellers' provisions, such equally the beverage sukkar wa laymun (sugar and lemon). Some recipes were intended to comfort the sick, others were cures for nausea, and some were digestives. These were also the responsibility of the household melt. Like the rest of the medieval Islamic world around them, the Egyptians believed in the healing power of foodstuffs, which is based on the Galenic theory. Simply put, the key to enjoying practiced health was in keeping the bodily humours counterbalanced, neither also much nor as well trivial. Cases of imbalance were treated with counterbalancing foodstuffs. For instance, a feverish person was comforted with foods containing gourd because information technology had common cold properties.

There are also in Kanz al-Fawaʾid some repeated claims of aphrodisiac dishes to promote and invigorate bah (coitus). This should likewise be expected since i of the tenets of the Galenic theory mentioned higher up was that the well-being of this aspect of the bodily functions was deemed essential for the welfare of the entire body. At any charge per unit, whether motivated by health concerns or otherwise, such recipes were in great demand, and Kanz al-Fawaʾid offered them in profusion.

A recipe for buttering upwardly the dominate – 'If y'all want to write words in dark-green on apples, naranj (sour oranges), or utrujj (citrons), which will look beautiful served on fruit platters and for which yous will be in your principal'south good graces, mix kils (slaked lime), maghra (ochre), and vinegar, and write with them on the fruits while they are withal greenish on the trees. When the fruits are fully ripe, wipe off the residue. In its place, the skin will show the text in light-green, whereas the residue of the citrons—or whatever fruits you used—will expect yellow.'

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In addition, an essential regimen required for the maintenance of one'due south well-being was personal hygiene. In Kanz al-Fawaʾid, there are recipes and recommendations for skillful-quality khilal (toothpicks) and cleansing aromatic handwashing preparations of ushnan and lather. Add to these the numerous aromatic preparations ranging from perfumed oils and powders to fumigating incense, pills to sweeten the breath, distilled waters, and deodorants. Perfumes were valued not just for their pleasant scents, but also for their therapeutic and cleansing backdrop, such every bit purging the air, immigration the head, and improving 1's mood. And for playing tricks. A recipe, for instance, instructs its user to set up at habitation a piece of cotton saturated with musk and rosewater, and then, it continues,

'When yous get to the bathroom with whomever y'all wish, once you go at that place, put this piece of cotton in the style of the water pouring into the tub. Put a piece of woods crosswise to keep the cotton from falling. The entire water [in the tub] will olfactory property every bit if it were pure rosewater, and whoever takes water from this tub for his bath will non doubtfulness that it is rosewater.'

Past Continuous

That a complex and sophisticated cuisine emerged in medieval Arab republic of egypt is nowhere more apparent than in the anonymous Kanz al-Fawaʾid. It is by far the only surviving cookbook from medieval Egypt and the last major cookbook from the Arab-Islamic region before the Ottomans rose to power and the limelight shifted to Istanbuli and Western cuisines.

The Egyptian culinary heritage, nonetheless, persisted. For example, a simple wooden blender called mifrak, mentioned in one of the recipes in Kanz al-Fawaʾid, is still used today in southern Egypt and Sudan to blend wika (okra) dishes and whip the traditional stew of molokheyya. Its history can be traced even farther back: a similar tool belonging to the Graeco-Roman Catamenia has been excavated in Egypt. Merely perhaps nix emblematizes the longevity of Egyptian cuisine  more brilliantly than the traditional dishes nosotros still enjoy to this day, such as molokheyya, ful, bamya, qulqas, beverages like subya, and many more than.