12 - 18 April 2001
Issue No.529
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 April 2001 Issue No.529 |
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Tasteful fare
Of Dishes and Discourse, Geert Jan van Gelder, London: Curzon Press, 2000Professor Geert Jan van Gelder serves up an unusually erudite and witty meal in this book about Arab culinary culture. He starts off by quoting a classical Arab writer who, in his introduction to his cookery book, divides pleasures into six classes: food, drink, clothes, sex, scent and sound; of these he remarks that the noblest and most consequential is food. This was only to be expected in someone writing about cookery, yet, as the present book shows, food has direct links with some of man's other pleasures in life.
The writer examines the very considerable part played by food in bedouin society where generosity, that virtue held in such highest esteem by early Arabs, was shown in its most appropriate way through hospitality. Many are the stories to be found in ancient Arabic literature about extravagant, even exaggerated, displays of hospitality where individuals vied with one another in the slaughtering of camels for feeding guests. The name of Hatim Al-Ta'i became proverbial for what can only be regarded as reckless generosity in providing food for everybody and anybody who happened to be passing by. As the writer of the present book points out, hospitality, the feeding of others, becomes like procreation, a means of living on in bodies other than one's own; feeding others is also a way to create a reputation that will live on after one's death, a form of immortality on earth in stories and poems. Just as poets praised the hospitality of the generous, writers of hija' (satirical verse) often concentrated on the supposed stinginess of their opponents and the lengths to which they would go not to have to entertain guests -- such ruses are often the subject of amusing anecdotes told by Al-Jahiz in his classic work The Misers.
In Islam, too, food is given its rightful part. In the Qur'an, "al-tayyibat" (the good things) refers in general to food and we are enjoined to enjoy it. Food is described as one of the pleasures that will be offered to believers in Paradise, with the Qur'an containing numerous specific mentions of various types of food. Al-Ghazali in his compendium of Muslim practice and belief gave to the subject of food and manners relating to it, particularly the obligation of hospitality, its due importance.
Arabic literature moved from the heroic and bedouin to the sophistication of urban literature in the Abbasid period, and in the realm of writing relating to food the subject matter inevitably grows richer and more varied. However, food has inspired much less great poetry than has drinking -- there is no gastronomic poet of the stature of Abu Nuwas. This is surely true of all literatures.
The writer provides interesting information concerning those Arabic works that contain anecdotes about banquets, also the titles of early cookery books, the oldest of which, written in the second half of the tenth century, is Kitab Al-Tabikh by a certain Ibn Sayyar Al-Warraq.
Towards the end of this entertaining work the author mentions a type of literary debate known as munazara in which different types of food appear as contestants. Among such texts is a 15th century Mameluke work which describes a unique war waged by King Mutton and his men against King Honey and his army. Whereas the forces of the first contestant consist of various types of meat, those of the second are made up of vegetables, fruit, milk products and fish. King Mutton is assisted by his vizier, Goat Meat, and his commanders consist of Beef and so on and is shown to be the more powerful of the two contestants. In the ensuing struggle King Mutton is triumphant and the war ends with a banquet at the court of the sultan at which countless dishes are served. The war is in fact a war between the food of the affluent and that of the poor and must rank as one of the world's most extraordinary literary oddities.
Peasants are almost wholly invisible in Arabic literature and it is only in modern fiction that the peasant comes into his rightful own in novels such as Abdel-Rahman El-Sharqawi's The Earth and the writings of Mohamed El-Bisatie. There is, however, one conspicuous exception to this: the book Hazz Al-Quhuf by the 17th century Egyptian writer Youssef El-Shirbini. Much of this other literary oddity deals with food. While the first part describes life in the Egyptian countryside, the second part is a mock commentary on a poem in dialect by a fictional character called Abu Shaduf. The poems deal largely with peasant fare such as fuul mudammis, bisara, lentils, mish, fisikh etc. The original work has, incidentally, been given careful editorial attention by an English Arabist living in Egypt, and a new edition of the work, together with a translation, will shortly be made available.
The final chapter of the present book deals with al-atyaban, the two good things in life, namely food and sex and the connection between them. Reference is naturally made to various relevant stories in The Thousand and One Nights. Mention is also made of the role played by food in the interpretation of dreams in such classic works as those of Ibn Sirin. However, as the writer points out, Arab authors treating of such matters were blissfully unaware of Freud and thus while sexual dreams are related, no sexual links are seen with particular foodstuffs.
Whereas the giants all have 'walk-on' parts in the book, that great vegetarian Abul-Alaa Al-Ma'arri in particular, the reader must be grateful to Professor van Gelder for providing him with intriguing glimpses up some of the lesser-known alleyways of Arabic literature.
Reviewed by Denys Johnson-Davies
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