Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
As for the communal oven ( furn, kūa )
it is found in various parts of the towns
as well as in the villages, and it is there
that individuals normally cook their bread
for consumption at home. Until recently,
in the Marib at least, it was considered
dishonourable to buy one's bread out-
side, and the kneading of the dough, an
essentially feminine occupation, was the
duty of the mistress of the house or of a
servant. On a large wooden tray ( aa/
gaa ), the housewife put, sometimes with
a little bran, flour of corn or of barley or
of both, or even of semolina, in quanti-
ties sufficient to provide food for several
days, added yeast and salt, then poured in
hot water and kneaded the dough which
she then cut into pieces and left to rise
on a tray in a warm place. A journeyman
baker ( arrā in Morocco) went round the
houses, took the trays, imprinted on each
piece a distinctive mark and took it all to
the bakehouse.
The baking done, the baker came and
handed over to each family the tray and
the bread belonging to it. The wages of
the baker consisted of a piece of bread
which he baked and sold to his profit; in
al-Andalus, this bread was called poya (and
vars.) and this term has survived under the
form pīwa/pūya/būya , in some regions of
Morocco and of Algeria to designate the
salary of the baker, even after it became
the practice to pay him in cash.
Thus there were no real bakeries, and
there was no reserved for the making
and the sale of bread. However, foreign-
ers, individuals and bachelors were able
to obtain it, either from certain women
who kneaded extra pastry in order to sell
the surplus bread in the streets, at a price
fixed by the mutasib , or from bakers or
retailers; in fact the farrān sold not only
the small amounts of bread that they had
received in wages (for they were in prin-
ciple forbidden to mix the pieces of dough
to make large loaves, but also the bread
which they made on their own account.
The authors of works of isba especially
al-Saaī, enumerated in detail the frauds
committed by these bakers, in such mat-
ters as the mixing of flours of different
qualities (and even the addition of white
earth), as well as malpractices in the bak-
ing and in the weighing of the bread, and
also the rules of hygiene which were to
be observed by the bakers and the trad-
ers who, in particular, were not allowed
to work at professions such as those of
the butcher or the fishmonger. In spite
of these precautions, the quality was not
always high, and bread sometimes con-
tained gravel and other impurities.
The price of bread, sold by weight and
not by the loaf, was fixed by the mutasib ,
but it varied enormously, and it is the
price of corn which provides the most
convenient basis for estimating the cost
of living.
As in other civilisations, bread is treated
with great respect. It is always broken
and it should never be cut with a knife. A
crumb which falls to the ground is picked
up, raised to the lips and swallowed; a
piece of bread found on the road is put,
for the benefit of some destitute person,
in a place where it will not be trodden
on and soiled. And even though it does
not constitute, strictly speaking, the basis
of the diet, it is given in the Arabic dia-
lects names which refer to life and to sub-
sistence; ay/ī, maīa, kūt , etc. And it
is not absolutely certain that the magical
purposes that it served have totally disap-
peared.
However, the situation described above
has now been perceptively modified in the
sense that, in the towns at least, it is from
the bakeries that the population buys the
bread that it needs; but if the making of
bread has borrowed from the West cer-
tain modern processes, anyone can still
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