Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
nomadic populations retained the more
primitive methods of food preparation.
The technological gap between the urban
and rural domains can be explained as a
function of the distribution of power in
the economic sphere and ultimately of
social stratification and its ramifications
in the political sphere.
Data relating to the kitchen in the clas-
sical period (
ca.
200-800 A.H.) are found
most abundantly in the specialist culinary
treatises. Few of these, unfortunately, are
extant. The social milieu reflected by
the cookbook is clearly that of prosper-
ous urban households, although it would
be safe to assume that both palace and
domestic kitchens shared a culinary lore
and a range and type of utensils in com-
mon. Apart from this we know little of
the operations and personnel of the pal-
ace kitchens in particular, except that
they were of a far greater scale than
those in the domestic sphere. For exam-
ple, Hilāl al-ābī reports that in the time
of al-Mutaid (d. 289/902) the imperial
“cook houses” (
maābi
) were separate
from the bakeries (
maābiz
) and the caliph
was served from his own private kitchen
while the public's needs were catered to
from a different one. Domestic households
of a comfortable standard would have had
their bread baked and food cooked in the
same complex.
The concept and design of the kitchen
in a traditional open courtyard house
has probably remained unchanged
from mediaeval times to the last surviv-
ing examples in modern-day Baghdad.
Indeed, the essential characteristics of the
mediaeval open courtyard house in Irā
are said to be the Mesopotamian in origin
and inspiration. The kitchen (the contem-
porary expression
bayt al-maba
being
equivalent to the lexicographers'
bayt
al-abbā
and
maba
) in multi-courtyard
dwellings was a whole complex compris-
ing the kitchen proper, opening on to
its own courtyard with adjoining ancil-
liary areas such as store rooms, latrine
and bathroom, well and possibly a cook's
room. The upper part of the courtyard,
level with the first floor of the house, was
surrounded by blank walls and open to
the sky. The kitchen of a single courtyard
house faced directly on to the courtyard
itself and had either fewer or no ancilliary
areas attached to it. Larger multi-court-
yard houses might have a second kitchen
adjacent to the rooms where guests were
entertained. Palaces of the caliph and the
Abbāsid princes were doubtless fashioned
on a much larger scale but along essen-
tially similar lines. Contrast this special
function kitchen complex with Lane's
description of a peasant's house in Lower
Egypt in the 19th century, in which one
room generally had an oven (Eg.
furn
) “at
the end farthest from the entrance and
occupying the whole width of the cham-
ber. It resembles a wide bench or seat and
is about breast high: it is constructed of
brick and mud, the roof arched within and
flat on top.” During the cold months, the
inhabitants would sleep either on top of a
warmed oven or on the floor of the same
room. Along the social spectrum, there-
fore, food preparation was performed in
areas ranging from greater to lesser spe-
cialisation: from the separate public and
private kitchens and bakehouses of the
palaces to the shared kitchen-habitable
area of the peasant's dwelling.
The well-equipped kitchen in an urban
household generally contained two major
appliances. One was the baking oven, the
tannūr
, of Mesopotamian origin (Akkadian
tinûrû
). Cylindrical and bee-hive shaped, it
gave the appearance of a large, inverted
pot, from which it probably evolved. Fuel,
preferably good charcoal, was inserted
through a side opening, ignited, and when
the oven was sufficiently hot, baking could
commence. The oven's temperature could
be adjusted to some extent by closing its
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