Scheherazade S Feasts

The author of the thirteenth-century Arabic cookbook Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh proposed that food was among the foremost pleasures in life. Scheherazade's Feasts invites adventurous cooks to test this hypothesis. From the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, the influence and power of the medieval Islamic world stretched from the Middle East to the Iberian Peninsula, and this Golden Age gave rise to great innovation in gastronomy no less than in science, philosophy, and literature. The medieval Arab culinary empire was vast and varied: with trade and conquest came riches, abundance, new ingredients, and new ideas. The emergence of a luxurious cuisine in this period inspired an extensive body of literature: poets penned lyrics to the beauty of asparagus or the aroma of crushed almonds; nobles documented the dining customs obliged by etiquette and opulence; manuals prescribed meal plans to deepen the pleasure of eating and curtail digestive distress. Drawn from this wealth of medieval Arabic writing, Scheherazade's Feasts presents more than a hundred recipes for the foods and beverages of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan empire. The recipes are translated from medieval sources and adapted for the modern cook, with replacements suggested for rare ingredients such as the first buds of the date tree or the fat rendered from the tail of a sheep. With the guidance of prolific cookbook writer Habeeb Salloum and his daughters, historians Leila and Muna, these recipes are easy to follow and deliciously appealing. The dishes are framed with verse inspired by them, culinary tips, and tales of the caliphs and kings whose courts demanded their royal preparation. To contextualize these selections, a richly researched introduction details the foodscape of the medieval Islamic world.

The Arabic culinary tradition burst onto the scene in the middle of the tenth century, when al-Warrāq compiled a culinary treatise titled al-Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) containing over 600 recipes. It would take another three and half centuries for cookery books to be produced in the European continent. Until then, gastronomic writing remained the sole preserve of the Arab-Muslim world, with cooking manuals and recipe books being written from Baghdad, Aleppo and Egypt in the East, to Muslim Spain, Morocco and Tunisia in the West. A total of nine complete cookery books have survived from this time, containing nearly three thousand recipes. First published in the fifteenth century, The Sultan's Feast by the Egyptian Ibn Mubārak Shāh features more than 330 recipes, from bread-making and savoury stews, to sweets, pickling and aromatics, as well as tips on a range of topics. This culinary treatise reveals the history of gastronomy in Arab culture. Available in English for the first time, this critical bilingual volume offers a unique insight into the world of medieval Arabic gastronomic writing.

This fascinating cookbook offers the modern cook a tempting selection of ten historical feasts from around the world. Drawn from a vast range of sources, the recipes are compiled and described in their historical context by the author, an expert in recreating historical recipes. From the lavish dishes of the Mughal emperors to the exotic cuisine of the Aztecs, all fifty recipes have been thoroughly modernized and tested, and each menu comes complete with alternative ingredients and serving suggestions. A perfect gift for year-round entertaining, Festive Feasts Cookbook is beautifully designed and features sumptuous color pictures of food and feasting, including period paintings, illuminated manuscripts, decorative ceramics, prints, and etchings. With lively introductions that provide a cultural background for the recipes, this book has much to offer those interested in creative cooking within a historical context. Festive Feasts Cookbook includes: The Return of Odysseus: A Homeric Banquet The 1001 Arabian Nights: Feasting with the Caliph Dining at the Court of Lucrezia Borgia Hiawatha's Wedding Feast Banqueting with Mughal Emperors The Cuisine of the Aztecs Dinner with Queen Elizabeth I Jewish Passover Supper: Centuries of Tradition An Imperial Birthday Banquet in the Forbidden City Georgian Christmas with Parson Woodforde Co-published with The British Museum Press, U.K. The Wisconsin edition is for sale only in the U.S.A. and it's dependencies, Canada, and the Philippines.

Ideal for high school and college students studying history through the everyday lives of men and women, this book offers intriguing information about the jobs that people have held, from ancient times to the 21st century. This unique book provides detailed studies of more than 300 occupations as they were practiced in 21 historical time periods, ranging from prehistory to the present day. Each profession is examined in a compelling essay that is specifically written to inform readers about career choices in different times and cultures, and is accompanied by a bibliography of additional sources of information, sidebars that relate historical issues to present-day concerns, as well as related historical documents. Readers of this work will learn what each profession entailed or entails on a daily basis, how one gained entry to the vocation, training methods, and typical compensation levels for the job. The book provides sufficient specific detail to convey a comprehensive understanding of the experiences, benefits, and downsides of a given profession. Selected accompanying documents further bring history to life by offering honest testimonies from people who actually worked in these occupations or interacted with those in that field.

Indispensable for the student or researcher studying women's history, this book draws upon a wide array of cultural settings and time periods in which women displayed agency by carrying out their daily economic, familial, artistic, and religious obligations. Since record keeping began, history has been written by a relatively few elite men. Insights into women's history are left to be gleaned by scholars who undertake careful readings of ancient literature, examine archaeological artifacts, and study popular culture, such as folktales, musical traditions, and art. For some historical periods and geographic regions, this is the only way to develop some sense of what daily life might have been like for women in a particular time and place. This reference explores the daily life of women across civilizations. The work is organized in sections on different civilizations from around the world, arranged chronologically. Within each society, the encyclopedia highlights the roles of women within five broad thematic categories: the arts, economics and work, family and community life, recreation and social customs, and religious life. Included are numerous sidebars containing additional information, document excerpts, images, and suggestions for further reading.

The traditions of Syrian cooking go back hundreds of years, and is notable for its sensory components, in which aroma and texture are as important as taste and nutrition. Over the centuries, the unique dishes of Greater Syria (bilaad al-shaam) were preserved by those who cooked them. For cooks in imperial households, family homes, or on simple peasant farms, recipes were handed down from generation to generation. Despite centuries of occupation, unrest, economic hardships, and political strife, the people of Greater Syria continued to cook their burghul, lentil, chickpeas, kishk, and yogurt dishes as if life around them never changed. Syrian-born Habeeb Salloum and his daughters Leila Salloum Elias and Muna Salloum have researched and explored the far reaches of Syrian cuisine for many years (and in Habeeb’s case, decades). Their resulting cookbook, Pomegranate and Rose Water, provides a succinct window into the dining tables of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Syria, featuring many delectable, heart-healthy recipes that have never before been published in English. The book also provides a poignant window into Syrian culture and everyday life then and now—bound together by ageless and truly beautiful food traditions. Includes 144 recipes; full-color throughout.

A follow-up publication to the Handbook of Medieval Studies, this new reference work turns to a different focus: medieval culture. Medieval research has grown tremendously in depth and breadth over the last decades. Particularly our understanding of medieval culture, of the basic living conditions, and the specific value system prevalent at that time has considerably expanded, to a point where we are in danger of no longer seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. The present, innovative handbook offers compact articles on essential topics, ideals, specific knowledge, and concepts defining the medieval world as comprehensively as possible. The topics covered in this new handbook pertain to issues such as love and marriage, belief in God, hell, and the devil, education, lordship and servitude, Christianity versus Judaism and Islam, health, medicine, the rural world, the rise of the urban class, travel, roads and bridges, entertainment, games, and sport activities, numbers, measuring, the education system, the papacy, saints, the senses, death, and money.