Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 120

the sellers of confectionery ( alwāniyyūn ),
traders who themselves preserved food for
sale. Among them should also be included
the bawāridiyyūn , makers and sellers of
bawārid , cooked green vegetables pre-
served in vinegar or other acid liquids.

( rawwās ), etc. The manufacture of oil gave
rise to a real industry, using presses which
were sometimes very costly. The indus-
tries of wine and other fermented drinks
were widespread, for the use of Christians
and Jews, although varying numbers of
Muslims did not fail to take advantage of
them; thus in the Mamlūk period Syria
was a wine-growing country while Egypt
was not. The prohibitions applied to this
manufacture were only of fairly limited
extent; e.g. , under the Ottoman empire in
the 11th/17th century it was forbidden
to make wine or rāī ( ra ) within Istan-
bul. The extraction and refining of cane
sugar formed an important industry; Ibn
Dumā mentions 58 factories at Fusā;
it is known that it was an important state
monopoly under the Mamlūks; later it
was at Cairo that sugar was refined for
the use of the palace of the Ottoman
Sultan. Sugar was also refined in Syria,
in Sicily, in Iran, etc. The confectioners
used sugar and honey in various ways
(see, e.g. , a good description of the work
of the maker of kunāfa , a kind of vermicelli
with sugar or honey, etc., in G. Martin,
Les bazars du Caire et les petits métiers ara-
bes , Cairo-Paris 1910, 60). Fish was dried
and salted so that it could be transported
long distances; in Egypt the production of
botargo ( bara, barī ) from mullet roes,
an industry known from Pharaonic antiq-
uity, still continued. In the Fayyūm, rose-
water was distilled.

3 . Preparation
Foods often went through varying
degrees of preparation before reaching
the consumer, thus reducing the work
done domestically. Flour-grinding, work
done by the women in country districts,
was often in towns done by mills which
provided flour ready prepared ( taān
“miller”). Kneading of dough was gen-
erally done at home, but sometimes by
bakers ( abbāzūn ). The Mālikī and Abāī
schools sometimes stipulated that a wife
could not be obliged to grind corn and
that her husband, in this case, was to sup-
ply her with flour and not grain. But in
most cases dough was taken to the owner
of a bakehouse ( farrān ) to be cooked. Pas-
tries and sweetmeats were also made by
craftsmen, as were the various dishes
which were sold ready cooked by the
abbāūn “keepers of cook-shops”, the
harrāsūn or harāisiyyūn , sellers of harīsa in
its popular form (minced meat and wheat
cooked with fat), the bawāridiyyūn “sellers
of bawārid ” (see above), etc., to be taken
away or eaten in the shop. European visi-
tors to Cairo in the Middle Ages speak of
10,000 to 12,000 cooks in the streets, the
'Saracens' seldom doing any cooking at
home. Meat was dealt with by specialists
who carried out the slaughter ( abbā ),
the cutting up or the final marketing
( aāb, azzār with variations in terminol-
ogy). More specialized products were pre-
pared by the maker and seller of sausages
( naāniī , see above), or of slices of meat
( arāiī , see above), the roaster ( awwā ),
the seller of cooked livers ( kubūdī ), of
cooked sheeps' (or other animals' ) heads

4. Distribution
We have given above some details of
the distribution of food when it was done
by those who had prepared or preserved
it. It should be noted that the handbook
on trade by Abu 'l-Fal afar b. Alī
al-Dimiī (5th-6th/11th-12th centu-
ries?) classifies grocers as half traders and
half craftsmen. The peasant producers
came to sell their produce either in the