[Sca-cooks] seljuk-era rice dish

[Ursula Georges]

Recently, we discussed Middle Eastern rice dishes in period.  I just got 
a copy of a translation of Nizam al-Mulk's Seljuk-era Book of 
Government, and one of the stories involves a dish made of rice and 
peas.  The setup is that Zaid ibn Aslam told a story in which the 
Commander of the Faithful finds a poor woman boiling a cauldron full of 
water for her children in the middle of a field:

"He ran all the way to the woman and put the bags down in front of her; 
one of them was full of flour and the other full of rice, fat, and peas. 
  He said to me, 'O Zaid, go into the fields, collect all the sticks and 
straws you can find and bring them quickly.'  I went to look for 
firewood.  Then `Umar took a ewer and fetched some water; he washed the 
rice and peas, put them in the cauldron and threw in a lump of fat; 
meanwhile the woman made a large flat round of bread, weeping all the 
time for joy.  I brought the firewood; and with his own hands `Umar 
heated the cauldron and put the bread under the fire."

--Ursula Georges.