Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
II
Food Resources and
their Transformation
1. Nourishment and
Beverages
quantity of the food in the various Islamic
countries, etc.
Nourishment
i .—Food of the pre-Islamic
Arabs
The food of the inhabitants of the Ara-
bian peninsula (apart from the agricultural
and civilized states of the south) was—and
in large measure still is today—typical of
the diet of a pastoral people in a desert
region with scattered cultivated oases. We
can get an idea of this food from ancient
poetry, the classical texts and the urān.
We have examined in addition the
adī
s,
the data of which are acceptable on this
matter, since even forgers took great pains
to add to the credibility of their work by
the archaism of the customs to which they
referred.
The essential product from the raising
of domestic animals was milk (
laban
rather
than
alīb
), one of the two basic foods of
the Arabs. The urān (XVI, 68/66)
pays an eloquent tribute to this liquid,
calling it “sweet to drinkers”, and numer-
ous traditions witness how greatly the
Bedouin longed for it (
ayma
) when they
Ghidhā
(Ar., plur.
aiya
) indicates
strictly in Arabic “that which ensures the
growth and the good health of the body”,
in other words feeding and food. We shall
deal here only with the factors which
determined the diet of the principal Mus-
lim peoples in the classical period (though
sometimes making modern comparisons),
in particular with the laws of the Muslim
religion concerning food. The descriptive
section will be limited to the pre-Islamic
period. The more particularly culinary
aspects,
i.e.
, those concerning the prepa-
ration of special dishes, will be dealt with
in the article ab, “cooking”. We have
omitted for lack of space several aspects of
the subject: the variations of food in the
contemporary Muslim world, its place in
social life (and in particular the question,
often dealt with by Muslims, of the
ādāb
al-akl
—rules of table manners), the esti-
mated nutritional value in quality and in
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