FAITH AND FOODSTUFFS

83
CHAPTER
8
FAITH AND FOODSTUFFS
Religious contention is the devil’s harvest.
Jean de La Fountaine (1621–1695)
ISLAM
The expansion of Islam began shortly after the Prophet Muhammad died
in 632. By 750 the Muslims had conquered an area running from the Indus
Valley westward through the Middle East to the Iberian Peninsula, and
elites were speaking Arabic from Spain to Central Asia.
1
The Arabs, like the Romans before them, learned to use the wind sys-
tems of the monsoon (the winds reverse themselves seasonally) to sail
from the Persian Gulf eastward into the Indian Ocean in November, and
then return to port during the summer months. Regular eighth-century
trading voyages to China saw wool and iron exchanged for silks and spices.
About two centuries later, when trade with China was disrupted by the fall
of the Tang Empire (907), the Arabs skipped the middleman and headed
directly to the East Indies, capturing the spice trade and spreading Islam
as they went.
2
Christian Europe, an implacable enemy of Islam, nonetheless admired
Islamic cuisine and benefi ted from Islam’s commercial activity.
3
That activ-
ity ensured that spices reached the Continent on a circuitous path from the
East Indies, as well as new foodstuffs such as sugarcane (genus Saccharum),
mangos ( Mangifera indica), dates, and bananas. Moreover, toward the end
of the twelfth century, the wooly merino sheep was introduced to Spain – an
animal originally developed by the Romans and later exported to Africa.

The Arabs also pointed their ships south along Africa’s east coast to
Zanzibar and Madagascar, where they had been trading and colonizing for
84
A Movable Feast
a millennium or more, and bartering wine and
iron implements for slaves, ivory, and edibles
such as palm oil and cinnamon.
Such wide-ranging activities ushered in a
widespread Muslim dissemination of existing
foods within a huge region extending from
Afghanistan to Spain. Under the Abbasids
(750–1258), rice from India reinforced earlier introductions to Syria,
Iraq, and Iran and eventually reached Spain. Saffron ( Crocus sativus),
sugar, and spices also moved freely throughout the empire, as did goats.
4
Their fl esh, the favored meat in the Middle East, achieved a similar sta-
tus in Islamic Africa, including that considerable portion south of the
Sahara, where disease spread by tsetse fl ies discouraged the raising of
larger animals.
5
Mohammed had stressed that food was a divine gift to be enjoyed, and
this perspective percolated throughout Islam along with new foodstuffs.
However, despite the many cultural similarities wrought by this dynamic
religion, a number of distinctive types of cookery emerged (or remained) –
among them those of Iran, the Fertile Crescent, and Turkey, along with that
of the Arabs or Bedouins, and the styles that evolved among Muslims of
the Indian subcontinent.
6
The style most diffi cult to recognize today is
that of the Bedouins. Theirs was a simple fare of meat (lamb or mutton),

yogurt, and dates, a menu that practically disappeared in the whirlwind of
cuisines and cultures absorbed by the expanding Arabs.
Of these, perhaps the most infl uential (and ecumenical) was the Iranian.
Cultural infl uences of the Macedonians, Parthians (northwestern Iran),
Greeks, and Romans were all infl uential in the Persian Empire and, with
the imperialism of Alexander, Persia had been linked to the cooking tradi-
tions and ingredients of India. Persia’s seventh-century Muslim conquerors
embraced the local cuisine and, with the establishment of the Baghdad-
based Abbasid Caliphate in 750, a characteristic haute cuisine was estab-
lished that spread throughout the empire and beyond.
7
Not surprisingly
it even reached renegade al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) where the Muslims
introduced rice eggplant, spinach, saffron, and quince (Cydonia oblonga)
from Persia. Later, Italian traders and returning Crusaders proved instru-
mental in carrying aspects of Persian cuisine to Europe.
Baghdad served as a vast warehouse of spices, fresh fruits, vegetables,
grains, and preserved fi sh and meats for a few centuries until the Mongols
Faith and Foodstuffs
85
(the Arabs called them Tartars) destroyed the city in 1258 along with the
region’s vaunted irrigation systems. They also massacred the Caliph and
many inhabitants, bringing the Abbasid dynasty to an end.
8
But like the
Muslims before them, the Mongols adopted the local cuisine and a cou-
ple of centuries later took it to India where Moghul (Persian for Mongol)
cooking joined the many other culinary infl uences.
Despite Baghdad’s destruction, plenty continued to prevail to the
east on the Persian Gulf. When the young Venetian, Marco Polo, traveled

through Persia to reach Hormuz shortly after the rape of the city, he was
impressed with the great variety of available foodstuffs, reporting that even
the people of the countryside ate wheat bread and meat. A favorite was
the fried tail of fat-tailed sheep.
9
The massive diffusion of food and cuisines continued as Muslim trad-
ers, soldiers, missionaries, and administrators moved even further eastward
precipitating a fl ow of crops from the tropical and subtropical regions of
the east and south to the more temperate regions of the west. The arrival
of sugar cane in the Mediterranean basin has already been mentioned, as
has rice from Asia, mangoes, and spinach from Southwest Asia and banan-
as from Southeast Asia, but to this list we might add a few more such as
aubergines or eggplants from South- and East Asia; domesticated coconuts
(Cocos nucifera), lemons, limes, and the bitter orange (also called the Sevilla
orange) from Southeast Asia; and watermelons from sub-Saharan Africa.
These and other western Asian and Mediterranean foods, like almonds
and saffron, were esteemed throughout the Islamic empire, the latter
prized for its ability to color foods as well as its fl avor. They were planted
wherever there were territories to administer. Rice was grown in Moorish
Spain for centuries before any other Europeans cultivated it. Only in 1468
did the Spaniards take rice outside of the Peninsula to the Lombardy plains
of Italy where the Arborio variety, grown in the Po Valley, gave birth to
risotto. The Moors also planted almond trees in Spain, and cultivation of
the autumn crocus, if it had not occurred earlier under the Romans, com-
menced to produce what the Arabs called za’ faran.
The Koran (633
AD
) was initially enthusiastic about wine, then wavered,
and fi nally prohibited it altogether. Five other food categories (blood,
carrion, pork, those containing intoxicating drugs, and foods previously

dedicated to idols) also made the prohibited list. Not all the faithful paid
immediate attention to the wine prohibition,
10
but most were gradually
weaned away from it by coffee (for more on these beverages see Chapter 15).
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A Movable Feast
Initially popular in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, coffee was taken throughout
the Arabian Peninsula by the mystical Shadhili Sufi to stay awake during
all-night chanting sessions, and they were probably also the bearers of
coffee to Egypt and Damascus. With public consumption came coffee
houses and by 1500, no deal was made, no ceremony celebrated without
coffee.
11
The Muslims were also instrumental in carrying coffee far beyond the
original borders of Islam to India and Indonesia, and those making pilgrim-
ages to Mecca from these far away places took coffee beans home with
them. In part, at least, this was the result of a legend that ascribed coffee’s
origin to Mohammed. The Archangel Gabriel was said to have given cof-
fee to the world through the Prophet to replace the wine which Islam
forbade.
12
CHRISTIANITY
Islam was imperial and expanding while Christian Europe was fragmented,
its pieces parochial and only tenuously bound together by the authority
of the Roman Catholic Church. In its early years that Church taught that
Adam and Eve had lived together in harmony with all living creatures.
Paradise, in other words was a vegetarian place. But the Church backed
off this position to hold that as the Flood was abating God let Noah know
that it was all right to kill living creatures for sustenance, even for plea-

sure (“ . . . the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth . . .”
Genesis 10:2) With some modifi cation and the addition of taboos, this
dictum became an anchor of the Judaic dietary tradition.
13
By contrast, the Catholic Church, and later the Church of England,
were remarkably unconcerned with food taboos.
14
But they were obsessed
with food (the Last Supper, loaves and fi shes, bread as the body and wine
the blood of Christ)
15
and relentless in imposing rules for fasting – so as to
praise God by punishing the body.
16
To fast was to abstain from meat (and
usually other animal products such as eggs, butter, cheese, and milk) and
to limit meals to one daily. This was done routinely during the “Quadrag-
esima” or Lent (the forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter) and the
thirty days of Advent preceding Christmas – winter months when meat
was normally not on the table anyway.
17
But in addition, Wednesdays and Fridays were designated as fast days
and sometimes a third day of the week was added. In Russia, the Orthodox
Faith and Foodstuffs
87
calendar tacked on the Saints Peter and Paul Fast which could last up to
six weeks.
18
In other words, most diets were circumscribed for at least
150 days out of the year and, depending on time and place, as many as half

the year – occasionally even more than half.
19
Penalties for noncompliance
could be severe. That for eating meat on Fridays in England was hanging – a
law that endured until King Henry VIII, wanting a divorce, broke with the
Vatican.
20
Feast days were bright spots in the gloom of this self-denial, often days
that had been celebrated in earlier pagan agricultural rites and tidied up by
the early church and transformed into holy days. Lamb became traditional
as Easter fare, coming as it did when newborn sheep were abundant and
people were starved for meat.
21
But the most spectacular of such feasts was
that held a bit earlier on Martedi Grasso (Mardi Gras), the day before Ash
Wednesday, when it was customary to eat all foods forbidden during Lent
for a last taste, and better than letting them spoil. It was a day of glutton-
ous meat consumption or “Carnivale” that generally was accompanied by
drunkenness, violence, and even sexual misbehavior because sexual inter-
course was also taboo for the duration.
22
Little wonder that the Church associated meat with carnal lust and
dichotomized the body (feasting) and soul (fasting). Even the consump-
tion of fi sh was initially proscribed only to later be judged pious; and fast-
ing made fi sh a major food resource for all Europeans during the Middle
Ages, and not just those living along coasts.
23
The production of preserved
fi sh – salted, dried, smoked, and pickled herring and cod became an enor-
mous seagoing industry.

24
Fresh fi sh were also harvested from lakes, rivers, streams, and ponds.
Salmon and trout were generally destined for the tables of the wealthy,
but after the twelfth century, carp, which had somehow found their way
west from Asia, perhaps with returning Crusaders, were available for the
less well-to-do. Tuna, eel, mackerel, perch, and pike could also be procured
from fi shmongers.
The Baltic Sea was especially rich in fi sh during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, and it was there that Hanseatic fi sheries developed
a method of getting herring catches salted within 24 hours. Ships from
the towns of the Hanseatic League (begun in 1241) carried salted and
dried fi sh southward to Lisbon, Porto, Seville, and Cadiz, and returned
laden with more salt from Portugal, along with olives and wines. During
the second half of the sixteenth century, the politics of nation-building