[Sca-cooks] Arabic word

galefridus at optimum.net galefridus at optimum.net
Tue Jan 24 13:50:02 PST 2012


> Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:14:46 -0800
> From: "David Friedman" 
> To: Cooks within the SCA 
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Arabic word
> Message-ID: <080E77143B394C58A35CF9FB2706F61D4 at daviddfriedman.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> At Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:40:18 -0500, galefridus at optimum.net wrote:
> >
> >
> >I've been studying the Taqwim al-Sihha, which is a table of 
> foods, spices, and other items, analyzing their humoural 
> properties and uses. The edition th at I have has both the 
> original Arabic and a French translation. Yesterday, I came 
> across an Arabic word that had been translated as "woodpeckers" 
> (pics, in French) but actually means "Sudanese [things]," at 
> least in modern standard Arabic. The word was "al-sudaniyat." 
> I'm wondering whether any of the other Middle Eastern foodies on 
> this list may have seen a similar usage.
> >
> >BTW, many of you might be familiar with the Tacuinum Sanitatis, 
> an illustrated Latin translation of the Taqwim al-Sihha that 
> became quite popular in Europe in 14th and 15th centuries.
> >
> >-- Galefridus
> 
> Did you check to see how the word was translated in the Tacuinum?
> 
> David/Cariadoc
> www.daviddfriedman.com
> daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

The problem is that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between the order of the entries in the Arabic Taqwim and the Latin Tacuinum manuscripts.  Even the Latin manuscripts vary significantly. But when I looked up all the Latin entries for birds and bird flesh, I found nothing that could be interpreted as "[birds] from the south." I even tried working backward from the name of the bird in Latin to its name in Arabic -- no help. And Lane's Lexicon does not indicate that sudaniyyat is used to as a word for any kind of bird.

I'm beginning to think that what I really need for this project is a lexicon of classical culinary Arabic, which may exist, but very likely as an Arabic-Arabic dictionary.

-- Galefridus



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