[Sca-cooks] Persian cooking manuscripts

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Madhavi wrote:
>My copy of Medieval Arab Cookery has finally arrived and I spent all last
>evening poring over it. I have seen the book before and read through the
>recipes but never really *read* the book. It was stuck in my head for some
>reason that the Description of Familiar Foods was Persian, but the
>manuscript was actually found in Turkey, written in the Arabic language, and
>though the original culinary influence was the Persian culture, little seems
>to have remained of that influence by the writing of the manuscript. I am
>stumped. Is there, or is there not, an extant medieval cooking manuscript
>which is truly Persian?

While a copy of The Book of the Description of Familiar Foods is in a 
library in Turkey, the manuscript was originally written in Cairo. It 
includes, among other things, a vastly expanded version of 
al-Baghdadi, part of a confectioners manuscript, and a complete 
chapter from another book with recipes for dishes for invalids and 
what monks and Christians eat during Lent. I have posted here about 
it, and have some worked out Lenten recipes on my website.

All Arabic language cookbooks, as well as the one known pre-17th c. 
Ottoman cookbook, show much evidence of Persian influence, but cannot 
be trusted to reproduce those recipes with Persian names as the 
Persians would have cooked them.

>...the earliest classical cookbooks in Persian that have survived 
>are two volumes from the Safavid period. The older one is the 
>Kar-nama dar bab-e tabbaki wa shan'at-e an ''Manual on cooking and 
>its craft'', written in 927/1521 by Haji Mohammad-'Ali Bavarchi 
>Baghdadi for an aristocratic patron at the end of the reign of Shah 
>Esmail I Safawi (907-30/1501-24).
SNIP
>The second surviving Safavid cookbook, Maddat al-hayat, resala dar 
>'elm-e tabbaki ''The substance of life, a treatise on the art of 
>cooking'', was written about seventy-six years after the Kar-nama by 
>Nur-Allah, a chef for Shah 'Abbas I (r. 996-1038/1588-1629; Af??r, 
>p. xxx).
SNIP
>However, neither seems to have been translated, dammit.

I have a photocopy of the two cookbooks that was published in Iran in 
the 1980s. It is entirely in Persian, which i don't yet read. 
However, for the time being, i have not been able to find it, because 
my craft room, where i keep my cookbooks, is still in disarray.

The chapter on Polow from the Maddato l-hayat (1594) has been 
translated into German by scholar Bert Fragner. As i have posted here 
already, i have translated all those recipes into English. I suspect 
he picked that chapter because he seems to have a particular interest 
in the spread and development of rice dishes. I am willing to share 
but cannot post them for copyright reasons.

I think many of the recipes from Mehmed ibn Mahmoud Shrivani's 
mid-15th c. Ottoman cookbook and appended to his translation of 
al-Baghdadi, show even stronger Persian influence, since Azerbaijani 
cuisine is in many ways a regional form of Persian (the city of 
Shirvan is in Azerbaijan, and renowned for its cuisine). The Persians 
lost control of it to the Ottomans. I have a CD of the original 
manuscript, given to me by Charles Perry, but finding someone who 
knows Eski Osmanlica is extremely difficult). I also have a copy of 
Shirvani's whole book transcribed into the Roman alphabet and 
translated into modern Turkish, which i also can't read, but at least 
is learnable.

About 1/3 of them are available in French, in ''A la table du Grand 
Turc'' by Stephane Yerasimos. I translated those (and the whole book) 
into English. I am willing to share but cannot post them for 
copyright reasons. I have written to the French publisher repeatedly 
asking about the process, since i would like to publish my 
translation of Yerasimo, but i have never gotten a single response. 
Sigh.
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita