[Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern Food

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Fri Jan 15 15:41:24 PST 2010


Bear wrote:
>It depends on whether you are thinking of Middle East geographically or
>culturally. Geographically, it usually refers to those countries under the
>control of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century snf Iran, basically
>Turkey, Libya, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and everything east to the
>Afghanistan border. When it is used culturally, Libya usually gets dumped
>into North Africa

With good reason. It, like Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco to its west, 
was a home to indigenous Berber/Amazight people.

>and Afghanistan and Pakistan get added.

Yeah, well... Afghanistan makes sense, since it was an important 
center of Persian culture and arts as part of the Persian Empire. 
Herat, for example, was home to a particularly important school of 
Persian miniature painting.

Pakistan... well, its relationship is less clear. It might be better 
connected to Muslim Mughal India, which is strongly Persian 
influenced, but also strongly influenced by local South Asian 
non-Muslim cultures.
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita


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