British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

In a Caliph's Kitchen: Mediaeval Arabic Cooking for the Modern Gourmet by David Waines
Review by: R.B. Serjeant
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1991), p. 143
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/195416 .
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of Islamic religion and culture with its own esoteric perceptions and exegesis. It is inspired also by
a highly idealistic view of the history and experience of the Islamic peoples, both as individuals and
societies, which pays but scant attention to the manifest actualities recorded by history and evident
today. This is particularly evident in the chapters on Jihad and the Islamic view of the male and
female, both chapters being very much examples of special pleading-which in the second case
completely ignores the very great significance of the patriarchal nature of Islamic social structures.
Lastly, it is inspired as well by certain anti-modernist and conservative trends of thinking in the
Western world-notably, that of Guenon and his school, which preaches a strongly millennial
approach to the contemporary world.
Provided these clear biases in the writing are recognized and taken into account, the book
affords many valuable insights and interesting analyses.

DURHAM R.W.J. AUSTIN

IN A CALIPH'S KITCHEN: MEDIAEVAL ARABIC COOKING FOR THE MODERN

GOURMET. By DAVID WAINES. London, Riad el-Rayyes Books, 1989. 119pp. 44 colour
plates. ?14.00.

This attractive coffee-table book aims at presenting and adapting dishes of 'Abbasid Iraq so that
the recipes may be followed in a Western kitchen. Each item comprises a list of ingredients with
requisite quantities, directions for preparation, a comment on the origins of the dish, and a
description generally translated from an Arabic text. The pleasant, slightly romanticized
introduction gives a sketch of the Caliphal court and the cultured leisured Baghdad society, in
particular the personality of the epicure prince Ibrahim, brother of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, to
whom the contriving of certain dishes is accredited. Some forty recipes from his cookery book
appear to have survived. The medieval kitchen described is not unlike that of twentieth-century
San'a'. Mr Waines displays an enthusiastic initiative and practicality in working out how to treat
preparation of these Iraqi dishes, but a fly-leaf tells us that the actual cooking and styling is by Ian
Frazer and photography by Anthony Dawton-surely their important contribution to this part of
the book ought not to be relegated to the small print?
Arabic writing on matters culinary goes back to the first half of the 3rd/9th century, but Mr
Waines relies in part on al-Warraq's Kitib al-Tabikh; the manuscript of this was first noticed by
A.J. Arberry, but a printed edition has now recently appeared. But Mr Waines also relies heavily
on Arberry's 'A Baghdad cookery book', by another author-a translation that appeared in
Islamic Culture, 1939 (a separate reprint is in the SOAS Library). Yet while printing verbatim
Arberry's translations of between a third and half of the recipes, he has chosen to ignore the very
existence of Arberry's elegant and well-annotated rendering of Ibn al-Karim al-Katib al-
BaghdadT'sKitib al-Tablkh from which he took them. He even goes so far as to quote the epitome
of al-Baghdadi's philosophy: 'I subscribe to the doctrine of the pre-excellence of the pleasure of
eating above all other pleasures', verbatim from Arberry! There would be no harm in this, or the
references to Arabic literature culled from Arberry, if he acknowledged their provenance, as does
Claudia Roden, surely the doyenne of today's many writers on Middle East cookery.
Nor does Mr Waines's theory of a 'new wave' generation of gastronomes seem to have any
substantial basis. He does add a caveat that 'the new cuisine was most heavily influenced by
Persian traditions'. But why should there not be an uninterrupted tradition of sophisticated
cookery in high society remounting to Sasanid times, even if Prince Ibrahim did show a penchant
for the aubergine which, Mr Waines maintains, was a novelty about this period? The Bukhald' of
al-Jahiz provides a very good survey of the kind of foods consumed about this time and this might
have been utilised by Mr Waines. 'Loaf is not a good translation for the various Arab words for
bread-a 'round' of bread gives a more accurate impression of the shape. One might also have
expected to see a recipe for toasting the shabbut fish so characteristic of Iraq and described by al-
BaghdadT,but today (1988) become so expensive that few can afford it. In a well-designed book of
popular appeal one may not cavil at misprints but Zubayba-'little raisin'--for Zubayda, wife of
Harun al-Rashid, has, in the culinary context, a certain felicity.

ST ANDREWS R.B. SERJEANT

143

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