Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 112

The settled agricultural populations
were able to enjoy also some vegetables.
Among the buūl , “herbs”, the Prophet
preferred hindibā , “chicory”. He was also
fond of beets ( sil ) and of some vegetables
belonging to the gourd family which are
difficult to identify exactly ( dubbā “a kind of
marrow?”, kuā “a kind of cucumber”,
ar “marrow”). Leeks ( kurrā ) were forbid-
den, though not arām , and so were raw
garlic and onions. But according to other
traditions, Muammad merely expressed
his personal dislike of them and forbade
those who had recently eaten them to
come to the place of prayer. Olives also
were eaten (urān, VI, 142/141) and
the pith of the palm-tree ( ummār ). Fruits
mentioned are the citron ( utrua ), which
is thought to be found also (according
to the parallel Jewish text and certain
Muslim commentaries) in urān, XII,
31 (under the name of mitk, matk , to be
read in place of muttaka , or disguised by
a corruption in the text), the pomegran-
ate (urān, VI, 99, 142/141; lv, 68), the
grape (cf. urān, VI, 142/141; the dried
raisins of āif were famous. The apple
and the fig are scarcely mentioned by the
poets or in adī s.
The pastoral nomads were able to use
also, in addition to the meat and the
milk-products provided by their flocks,
wild vegetables, game and small desert
animals. Among the plants may be men-
tioned kabā , the ripe fruit of the thorn
tree arāk ( Capparis sedata ), desert truffles,
which, according to a saying attributed to
Muammad, came from the manna sent
to the Israelites, etc. The game mentioned
in the traditions are the hare and the bus-
tard ( ubārā ); in addition they ate the flesh
of the large desert lizards, food which is
said to have disgusted Muammad, as
a member of a settled community; he is
said to have regarded these lizards as the
metamorphosis of an Israelite tribe.

The inhabitants of coastal regions
could also add fish to their diet (urān,
V, 97/96).
Besides milk and water (often muddy
and seldom plentiful ), the Arabs were
familiar with a certain number of fer-
mented drinks prepared from dates,
honey, wheat, barley, raisins. But wine
made from grapes, which (in spite of the
fact that there were vineyards at āif for
example) was generally imported, was an
expensive luxury. It was drunk in the tav-
erns ( ānūt ) which were run by the Jews
or the Christians of īra ( Ibādī ) and in
which women singers ( ayna ) performed.
These various resources, which com-
bined foods of agricultural and pastoral
origin but which included no, or very
few, products from countries outside Ara-
bia, were prepared in a very elementary
fashion. The meats were roasted (roots
.w.y, .n., .l.y. ) or baked ( .b. ). The
meat was cut in slices or in thin strips
which were left to dry in the sun ( adīd ).
A adī is cited according to which the
Prophet announced “I am only the son
of a woman of the uray who fed on
adīd ”. The oven proper seems to have
been little known. The only word for
oven attested in early Arabic, tannūr, is a
borrowing from Aramaic and the purely
Arabic word ābūn seems originally to
have meant the cavity in which fire was
made to shelter it from the wind.
The cooking was simple and made use
of very few different combinations of food.
Two of the dishes mentioned are arīd ,
associated with the tribal tradition of the
uray, consisting of bread crumbled
into a broth of meat and vegetables, and
ays , a mixture of dates, butter and milk,
both being among the favourite dishes of
the Prophet, who said that Āia held
among women the place which arīd held
among food. They made many kinds of
broth ( mara, maraa ), to which tradition