[Sca-cooks] Tenth Century Mead Recipes

Ursula Georges ursula at tutelaries.net
Wed Aug 29 14:50:10 PDT 2012


Cariadoc wrote:

> I'm still going through al-Warraq. It turns out that he has a bunch of
> recipes for fermented drinks. Some, according to the translator, are
> permissable under Islamic law--she doesn't specify which school or
> schools--some are not.
>
> They include meads, wines, beers, ...

Ralph Hattox's book Coffee and Coffeehouses has a nice discussion of the 
different schools' rulings on alcoholic drinks, followed by a discussion 
of how the schools treated coffee.  The Qur'an is quite clear that 
"khamr" is banned, so the question is what constitutes "khamr". 
According to Hattox, the Hanafi school used a strict definition of 
khamr, which allowed for the consumption of other: they banned wine made 
from uncooked grape juice and uncooked intoxicants made from dates or 
raisins, but allowed infusions (nabidh) made from cooked dates or 
raisins as well as honey, wheat, barley, figs, or millet, as long as 
they weren't consumed to the point of drunkenness.  Other legal schools 
had a less strict definition of khamr, and therefore prohibited more drinks.

--Ursula Georges.



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