[Sca-cooks] Thirteenth Century Turkish

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Fri Apr 9 23:14:26 PDT 2010


emilio
>Urtatim, as for the name "Rumi", yes, however, many book titles etc. 
>just speak of him as "Rumi", and Wikipedia says:
>"known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi".

On email lists, when i reply to a message, i often mix several things 
in a reply. First, some of my answer directly addresses things 
brought up by the original poster. But i also often expand on the 
topic for the benefit of other listees. In this case, i'm sure a lot 
of people don't know about the Seljuk Turks of Rum.

And often websites are not terribly helpful. Seljuk art, for example, 
is often identified by the place it was found, such as Iraq or 
Iran/Persia, rather than the culture that created it. Yet Seljuk art 
is stylistically quite distinctive, regardless of where it was found.

Additionally, far too many SCAdians say "Turks" or "Turkish" without 
specifying which, as if there is only one. Often it turns out they 
mean the Ottoman Turks, but they don't say so, and i suspect they 
often don't know about other important SCA period Turks, such as the 
Seljuks. So i expanded a bit on the Seljuks.

That is why i added all that info. I was not specifically directing 
it at you, Emilio.

>>Bear in mind that the recipes in Halici's book are **inspired by**
>>what she read.
>
>I thought I had made that clear by referring to what I called the 
>layers. There are no recipes in the work of Dschalal ad-Din ar-Rumi 
>(fill in your preferred name variant).

I guess i didn't understand what you meant by layers... Jalal al-Din 
Muhammad, originally al-Balkhi (that is, from Balkh, the city where 
he was born), eventually al-Rumi (that is, the region/sultanate where 
he spent most of his life, in the city of Konya)

>As she comments on her practice explicitly, I find it clear most of 
>the time what comes from Rumi and what comes from her recreative 
>activity.

I have ordered the book because, as i have said, more information is 
always good, in my opinion. Heck, i sometimes buy bad books just so i 
know what other SCAdians are citing.

>Of course, there are things that cause some reflection:
>"Many of the sweets from Mevlana's era are still available in 
>present Konya cuisine".
>
>How do we know that 13th c. kadayif mentioned by Rumi was the same 
>thing as the present day sweet?

Exactly!

 From what i've been reading about Ottoman food, it is clear that for 
many dishes, the ancient name remains, but the 19th, 20th, and 21st 
c. versions are quite different, often including none or only one of 
the ingredients of the 15th and 16th c. versions.

In the case of a few dishes, the modern versions are similar to the 
old ones in some ways, but often the preparation and cooking 
procedures are different enough to be worth noting.

>Is anybody here familiar with the texts of Rumi in its original 
>form? The author quotes the passages in English translation, and I 
>would like to know about translations like "B?rek" (Boerek) and 
>"Kebap" (p. 109).

Alas, i cannot read 13th c. Persian.

And i don't know about the composition of 13th c. Anatolian Seljuk 
borek. 15th and 16th c. Ottoman borek were made of leavened bread 
dough, with a filling of chopped sheep meat and onions, as specified 
in various 16th c. market regulations. In contrast, modern borek use 
thin flaky phyllo or yufka and contain a wide range of fillings, 
which means they are *very* different from those of the past.

As for the word kebab (various spellings) means different things in 
different times and places. In Arabic cookbooks of the 9th through 
14th centuries, kebabs are meatballs which can be made of chopped or 
pounded sheep or chicken meat, often added to and cooked in another, 
often braised, dish with chicken pieces or sheep meat cut in slices 
or chunks. In Ottoman cuisine kebabs are pieces of meat, sometimes 
cooked on skewers in a tanour, but more often cooked on a grill. The 
modern American idea of a kebab as meat on a skewer is not 
necessarily what kebabs were in the past, nor what they are in other 
places today. At the moment, i am not clear on what a 13th 
c.Anatolian Seljuk kebab would be.
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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