Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 132

Drinks

of the more luxurious ones ( e.g. , Turkish
yalanci dolma ). But attention is always paid
to the appearance of a dish, so that even
one so common as purée of chick-peas
( ummu be-īne ), a speciality of Damas-
cus, is always decorated with powdered
red pepper, whole chick-peas, etc.
The systematic discrimination of the
foods with the pleasantest taste, the draw-
ing up of the rules which govern this
according to increasingly subtle criteria,
and the search for the most delicious
combinations of food, formed the preoc-
cupations not only of head cooks but of
a whole distinguished society of gourmets
and gastronomes. Gastronomy was espe-
cially esteemed in the Abbāsid period,
hence the gastronomical gatherings orga-
nized by several of the caliphs. Gourmets
at the highest level of the social hierar-
chy took pleasure in preparing and in
inventing dishes which were often called
by their names. The abundance and the
popularity of their writings on this sub-
ject were already arousing the anger of
āli b. Abd al-uddūs (d. 167/783);
they wrote especially many treatises on
cookery which are now unfortunately
lost; poems were composed to celebrate
certain dishes. The interest in food of
the Abbāsid upper classes has left its
trace in the names of dishes created by
its most eminent members, for example
the ibrāhīmiyya , which is named after the
prince (at one time anti-caliph) Ibrāhīm b.
al-Mahdī. Within the Muslim world, gas-
tronomy, although later less widespread
and certainly less paraded because of the
growth of puritanism, nevertheless always
had its adherents and its poets.

i. Problems of identification
and of permissibility
The problem of the distinction between
“permitted” and “forbidden” in relation
to drinks is a subject of great interest to
Islamic religious literature, on account
of the prohibition, in the urān, of
the consumption of wine. By extension,
everything alcoholic is forbidden, and
doctors of law devote entire chapters,
and even independent works, to the sub-
ject of drinks ( ariba ; for example: Kitāb
al-Ariba by Amad b. anbal ). The use
of certain receptacles is forbidden to Mus-
lims, because of the ease with which they
may be employed for the fermentation of
liquids. Liquids which tend to ferment are
produced on the basis of fruits, various
berries, cereals or honey (mead is called
bit, nabī al-asal ); from syrup or from
preserves of fruit there derives the dūāb
which is sometimes non-alcoholic, but
which al-āi and other authors men-
tion in the context of drinks which can
ferment and become alcoholic. Certain
jurists of the anafī and Mutazilī schools
had a tendency to permit the consump-
tion of some of these drinks, under cer-
tain conditions, excluding only wine made
from grapes. A more limited group of the
Mutazilīs (to which al-āi did not
belong) even tried to legalise wine made
from grapes, and it is for this reason that
Ibn utayba calls them “theologians of
debauchery” ( muān ahl kalām ).
Now these tendencies count for nothing
in Islamic jurisprudence at present (even
among the anafīs), and these numerous
and rich testimonies from mediaeval texts
are cited only to show the difficulty, in a
given historical context, of distinguishing
between the “permitted” and the “forbid-
den”, the “soft” and the alcoholic, and
above all, to underline the rich variety

(M. Rodinson)