[Sca-cooks] OT: Rome and medieval Egypt

[Sayyeda al-Kaslaania]

Agreed. Aramco World is an awesome magazine. It's offered as a free 
publication.

On Middle Ages Egyptian culture, the gal/guy could look up Abbasid, 
Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk cultures. They all took turns controlling 
Egypt. Research into the Cairo Geniza yields spectacular results on 
these. (The Fatimids created Cairo next to Fustat).

As far as Egyptian food, there are at least two cookbooks from Egypt in 
the period. AFAIK, neither has been translated in it's entirety into 
English. Lilia Zaouli has a few of those recipes translated in /Medieval 
Cuisine of the Islamic World,/ but it's good to know that these were 
translated from Arabic to Italian (?) to English. Charles Perry did the 
Forward for the English version, so it has some good kudos.

It's also important to know that in the Middle Ages there was a cultural 
blanket on the Middle East/Islamic Mediterranean. Yedida Stillman calls 
it the Pan-Islamic Culture. With minor territorial variations, the 
culture is largely the same in the Middle Ages (specifically excluding 
Persian) because of the strong trade. Knowing this, people can borrow 
pretty confidently from al-Andalus, Baghdad, and Damascus to fill in 
gaps of knowledge of Cairo/Fustat.

You could also direct the person to my blog:
http://idlelion.blogspot.com/
I'm slowly putting up recipes and redactions from my first feast this 
past weekend.

Hope that helps,
Sayyeda al-Kaslaania


On 6/3/2011 10:12 PM, Daniel And elizabeth phelps wrote:
> Don't know if it would help but she could check the back issues of Saudi Aramco World on line and see if anything useful pops up.
>
> Daniel
>