[Sca-cooks] Cookbooks Coming Soon

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Anyone interested in the cooking of the medieval Middle East is in for some treats this year.

First, and supposedly due out this month, is Prof. M.R. Ghanoonparvar's translation of a unique 1594 manuscript, Māddat al-ḥayāt, resāla dar ʿelm-e ṭabbākī ("The substance of life, a treatise on the art of cooking"), by Nūr-Allāh, chef to Shah Abbas I. This is one of only two known Persian cookbooks from before the 19th century. The other is from earlier in the 16th c. and not yet translated into any other language.
http://www.mazdapublishers.com/book/Dining%20at%20the%20Safavid%20Court/
The books includes Prof. Ghanoonparvar's translation as well as recipes he has worked out. It is also illustrated with 16th c. Persian art.


Second, Charles Perry mentioned last year that he had translated another cookbook and that it would be published this year. It will be available in May: "Scents and Flavors: A Syrian Cookbook" (Library of Arabic Literature). I am pretty certain it is the Kitab Wusla ila l-habib fi wasf il-tayyibat wa-al-tib, the oldest surviving ms of which is dated 1226, and of which there are 11 extant mss! Possibly even more popular than al-Baghdadi's cookbook! At long last! It will be $40.
http://nyupress.org/books/9781479856282/


I am so excite about both! I have 66 recipes from the Persian book and have been cooking and teaching some of them, but i look forward to the whole book. And we've been teased with recipes from the Wusla ila-l-habib since at least the 1990s, so it will be great to have the whole thing!

Urtatim al-Qurtubiyya