Food, Cooking and Meals in Abbasid Lands

The Abbasid caliphate, the state ruled by Muslim leaders called caliphs, lasted from 750 to 1258, and Baghdad in Iraq was a major center of its political and culinary life. Written evidence presents meals in different settings: a tenth-century cookbook preserves a recipe associated with a caliph, a ninth-century writer makes shared dining the subject of comic etiquette, and later Baghdad guesthouses supplied meals during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Ingredients reached cooks through household stores and local markets, but the recipes also show how those ingredients were turned into dishes and served.

On this page4 sections

A courtly recipe assembled in layers

The tenth-century Baghdadi cookbook of Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq includes a rolled dish called bazmaward. In Nawal Nasrallah’s translation, this pinwheel recipe is described as specially made for the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil, who died in 861. The cook begins with cold cooked meat from a kid (a young goat) or lamb, shreds it finely, and chops leafy greens and herbs. Scraped cheese, coarsely ground walnuts and chopped olives join some of the vegetables, while another portion of the greens remains separate.

The filling is layered across a large, soft sheet of ruqāqa, a thin flatbread. The cook spreads a meatless vegetable mixture on the bread, adds seasoned meat mixed with greens, and lays lengthwise egg slices over it. Another meat-and-greens layer follows, finished with the reserved meatless vegetables. Sweet vinegar and rose water finish the filling. The bread is rolled tightly, cut crosswise into discs and arranged on a platter to pass among diners. Because the meat is already cooked, this recipe concentrates on fine chopping, seasoning and assembly; its deliberate order produces slices with distinct rings of filling.

A second recipe in the same chapter gives a hot preparation associated with the Abbasid prince Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi, who died in 839. The cook trims the crust from a brick-oven loaf, spreads its face with binn, a fermented condiment, and walnut oil, then toasts it on a grill set over a brazier. The cook finishes the bread with soft-cooked egg yolk and, if desired, grated cheese. The brazier supplies the heat while the grill lets the cook toast the prepared loaf before serving.

A pickle prepared for later

Another recipe in al-Warraq’s tenth-century collection shows preservation as a sequence of tasks. Nawal Nasrallah’s account of the cookbook describes sihnāt al-jarād, a locust pickle. Newly caught locusts are put alive into brine, then strained and layered in a wide jar with coriander, fennel and dried leaves of asafoetida, a pungent seasoning. The drained brine is poured back to cover them, the jar is sealed with mud and the mixture is left to mature before eating. Brining, seasoning and sealing transformed a sudden catch into a stored condiment rather than an immediate meal.

Eating from a shared bowl

The ninth-century Iraqi writer al-Jahiz describes dining expectations in The Book of Misers. As Julia Cohen explains in the Metropolitan Museum’s account of the text, guests commonly ate from a communal bowl, each taking food from the section directly in front of them. The arrangement made restraint visible to everyone at the dish. Al-Jahiz turns breaches of that custom into comic characters: the “pot-picker” reaches into the cooking pot before food is served, while the “bread-sponger” uses bread to scoop up the fat before other diners can share it. His “stone-switcher” mixes his date pits with a neighbor’s to disguise how much he has eaten.

Ramadan meals under caliphal supervision

By the reign of caliph al-Nasir li-Din Allah (1180–1225), guesthouses in late Abbasid Baghdad also served people beyond a household’s table. Historian Mohammed A. AlQadahat reports that some guesthouses were set aside for iftar, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast at sunset, for poor people, while others received pilgrims arriving in Baghdad. Al-Nasir organized these houses under a bureau called the diwan al-tabq. It arranged their administration and provided funds from charitable endowments, property or revenue dedicated to support a specified purpose, tying food service to dedicated resources and oversight.