SC - Suggestons Please

[LrdRas@aol.com]

My lady wife, who has been trying to catch up on the list, came 
across this message, and although it is from a while back I thought I 
should respond.

At 12:25 PM -0400 5/9/00, JVButlerJr at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 5/9/00 6:57:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
>ekoogler at chesapeake.net writes:
>
>  > Unless I'm really out in left field (which is, of course, always possible),
>  > this is the same Islamic cookery book that Duke Cariadoc included in his
>  > collection of cookery books....
>
>     No, he doesn't actually include the text of the book in his collection.
>He mentions it, but doesn't include it.

All of the Arberry translation of al-Baghdadi is included in Volume I 
of my collection, and has been for twenty years or more. Perhaps you 
are confusing the collection of source material with the 
_Miscellany_, which contains recipes but not entire cookbooks.

>     I have a problem with Cariadoc anyway.  He has set himself up as an
>expert in terms of "all things arabic", but he is very, very selective.  If
>he doesn't like something, or if it is not a part of his very narrow view of
>what it means to be arabic (which, if I remember correctly, should be read as
>"what it means to be Moorish"), then not only is it not period, its simply
>not realistic and/or true.

I have no idea where you got this impression. Of the Islamic 
cookbooks included in my collection, one (Manuscrito Anonimo) is 
Andalusian, hence to some degree Moorish; the other two are from the 
Middle East. Very few of the Islamic stories I tell are Moorish--I 
haven't been able to find much in the way of sources. My archery 
article (CA and the Miscellany) is based on a Mameluke source, the 
clothing and weapons in my Islamic costume article are almost 
entirely non-Moorish.

>     When we pointed out that the Islamic world was (and remains) bigger than
>the areas of Morocco and Algeria that he concentrates on, we were told we
>were mistaken, than we were using non-period sources, or that we were just
>plain wrong.

I have no idea what exchange, written or verbal, you are talking 
about, which makes it hard for me to figure out where you got the odd 
idea that I specialized in the Maghreb. I have a Maghrebi persona, 
and it might be interesting to restrict myself to the Maghreb if I 
could find sufficient source material, but I can't and so don't.

>     Or let me be more precise.  About the Moors and all things Moorish, yes
>he is an expert.

Unfortunately not. Would that I were.

>About the greater, larger world of period Islam, he is far
>from it, mainly because, unfortunately, he chooses to ignore anything outside
>of his own interests.

I'm not an expert in the larger world of period Islam either. I know 
more about the subject than most people in the Society, but far less 
than a competent scholar in the field.

>     Sayyid Suleyman al Rashid ibn Beyazid
>     Proud Ottoman Turk.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/