Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 156

(those unable to make a livelihood) and
musāfirīn (travellers). Sometimes poor
orphans ( yatīm) and school children are
also mentioned in the waf deeds among
the beneficiaries. Dervish zāwiye s are
included in the category of establishments
which offer food and shelter to travellers
and the needy. In the documents grant-
ing arable land as mulk/waf to the ay
of a zāwiye , it is always stipulated that
his primary duty is to provide food and
shelter to travellers. In the countryside,
the zāwiye was thought indispensable for
people travelling and a factor promot-
ing settlement and prosperity. Anyway,
helping travellers was included among
the zakāt duties and the performance of
this duty in the name of the Sultan was
given to the care of a dervish community,
as an old Islamic tradition. The zāwiye s
of the aī s were particularly active dur-
ing the first period of Ottoman expansion
and settlement, when hundreds of zāwiye s
and similar institutions were established
throughout the empire; in 936/1530
there were 626 zāwiye s and ānaāh s, 45
imāret s, 1 alender-āne and 1 mevlevī-āne
in the province of Anatolia (western Asia
Minor).
As a rule, a zāwiye encompassed two
sections, a tekke (convent), where the der-
vishes performed their religious rites, and
a maba or ā-evi , where food was pre-
pared and distributed to the dervishes, to
travellers and to the needy. The maba
was considered so important that usually
it dominated the whole zāwiye structure,
and took up by far the largest share of
the zāwiye 's revenue. In the urban zāwiye s,
the residents of the quarter where the
zāwiye was built set up additional waf s to
supplement the salaries of the servants or
to pay for the preparation and distribu-
tion of food on holy days ( andīl s). Thus
the zāwiye , like the mosque of the quar-
ter, constituted a common religious centre

as well as a charitable institution in the
maalla .

(Halil İnalcık)

3. In Persia
The Persian word for kitchen
āpazāna , was not in general used
before the 19th century, though the terms
ā “soup” and āpaz “cook” do occur in
earlier texts. Before the āār period,
the Arabic maba was the common term
for kitchen.
A tradition with a long history, Persian
cuisine ranks, with that of the French and
the Chinese, as one of the great cuisines
of the world. Its origins and influences are
to be sought in the East, and more specifi-
cally in Transoxania. The traditional use
of wheat as a staple and the basis of veg-
etable soups ( ā ), the mixing of meat and
fruit in dishes, the use of various types of
yoghurt ( mast and kak ) and other dairy
products, and ways of preparing meat,
all point to Central Asian origins. Con-
versely, olives and olive oil, so abundant
in the Mediterranean and Ottoman Turk-
ish cuisine, are virtually absent in Persian
cooking (except in the Caspian provinces);
Persians traditionally cooked with animal
fat (except for Jews, who used sesame oil ).
The important place of rice in Persian
cooking similarly suggests Asian origins,
in this case Southeast Asia and India.
Legend ascribes the art of cooking to
Ahriman (the Zoroastrian spirit of evil )
who is said to have taught a mythical
King Zahāk to prepare the flesh of ani-
mals. It is mainly Greek texts that offer
some information on royal banquets, but
otherwise we know little about food and
ways of preparing it during the Achae-
menid period, though borrowings from
Lydia and Assyria seem plausible. The
situation for the Sāsānid period is a little
better, with information and recipes being