Download PDF | Food And Foodways Of Medieval Cairenes Aspects Of Life In An Islamic Metropolis Of The Eastern Mediterranean Brill Academic Pub, 2011.
649 Pages
PREFACE
As areas of research, “food” and “foodways” are both very capacious. Food is a pervasive social phenomenon and can be approached from many different perspectives. Foodways can be described by a number of definitions whose details vary according to the discipline in which the term is used. Due to the flexible and non-uniform nature of the term, “foodways’—very much like “food” itself—lie within a sphere of interest of anthropologists, sociologists, economists, historians, literary critics, nutritionists, and other scholars who use food as a lens of analysis. Also, “food” and “foodways” often overlap as areas of research.
In the present study, the term “food” refers both to edibles and aliments as well as to menu; “menu” means not only a list of dishes but also “those sets of principles which guide the selection of aliments from the available totality.” Since the approach I have employed aims above all at reconstructing a presumed profile of what the historical population of an Islamic urban center actually ate, such aspects of the diet as the nutritional value of foodstuffs or agricultural problems of food production are not discussed here. As for “foodways,” it refers here to the history and culture of human nourishment within a specific geographical location. Or, more specifically, to production, procurement, preparation, presentation, and consumption of food as practiced by a given population, as well as to environmental, cultural, social, political, and economic aspects of these activities.
In practical terms, the examination of “food” and “foodways” so understood implies an attempt to define what the ordinary Cairenes of the Middle Ages? ate, why they ate what they did, how they ate it, and what were the ways in which food shaped their lives. However, it should be kept in mind that defining a pattern inevitably involves generalization, and that generalized definitions of a style, or a standard, that prevailed among any sizable multiethnic and multiclass urban population over a period of 500 years cannot always be very precise.
As a corpus-based study which aims at profiling the food culture of medieval Cairenes, the present book covers a rather diverse set of subjects. The questions they touch range from the genesis of the local culinary culture to various daily practices as followed within this culture, to the profile of its menu, with all its ingredients, preparations, and cooking techniques. Also discussed are the customs and habits related to the idea of eating, as well as behavior at the table and rules which governed it. The chapters dealing with food and those dealing with eating are collected in two coherent and self-contained parts: “Part I. On Food” and “Part IL. On Eating,” with the latter constituting a logical sequence to the former. While Parts I and II discuss the ways of food, Part III is devoted to study of what might, by analogy, be called “drinkways.” Titled “On Beverages and Drinking,” it deals with various kinds of non-alcoholic, quasi-alcoholic, and alcoholic drinkable liquids consumed in medieval Cairo, about the nature of these liquids and their place in culture, daily life, and history of the city inhabitants.
Contemporary scholarship approached these topics in an uneven way. The bulk of secondary literature dealing with medieval Arabic-Islamic culinary culture is relatively rich and touches on the majority of possible aspects of food studies—dietary, literally, social, and economic ones included. Among these works, studies related to medieval Egypt, or Cairo, form but a modest part. The origins of the Cairene culinary culture have never been discussed as a separate subject. The same in fact refers to various aspects of production and procurement of food as practiced in medieval Cairo, as well as to the rules of table behavior—with the exception of Amalia Levanoni’s “Food and Cooking during the Mamluk Era,” where the author discusses the table manners as presumably followed by the Mamluks.* The problems related to the question of eating in public places have also been scarcely explored, while the private eating space, or “dining-room” (or the lack of it) was only very briefly mentioned by Doris Behrens-Abouseif in Islamic Architecture in Cairo: An Introduction,’ Laila ‘Ali Ibrahim in “Residential Architecture in Mamluk Cairo,”° and Nelly Hanna in “La cuisine dans la maison du Caire.”’
Surprisingly, topics such as beverages and drinking in the medieval Cairene context were not given much attention, either. However, it should be noted that a number of interesting comments or remarks referring to these questions were made in works whose subjects focused on other problems. These works include André Raymond’s “Les porteurs d’eau du Caire,”* Joseph Dreher’s “Un regard sur l’art culinaire des Mamelouks. Paté d'agneau, ragout de volaille et eau de rose,”? Peter Heine’s monograph Weinstudien: Untersuchungen zu Anbau, Produktion und Konsum des Weins im arabisch-islamischen Mittelater,° Eliyahu Ashtor’s “An Essay on the Diet of the Various Classes in the Medieval Levant,”" Daniel De Smet’s “Les interdictions alimentaires du calife fatimide al-Hakim: marques de folie ou annonce d’un régne messianique?”” and S.D. Goitein’s Daily Life.”
As for food itself, it has attracted scholars’ interest much more effectively than any other topic discussed in the present book. Critical editions and annotated translations of the medieval Arabic cookery books of Egyptian (or partly Egyptian) origin have been crucial for studies on Cairene foodstyle. Without Manuela Marin’s and David Waines’s critical edition of Kanz al-Faw@id,* without Charles Perry’s annotated translation of Kitab Wasf al-At‘ima al-Mu'tada,® and without Sulayma Mahjib’s and Durriya al-Khatib’s edition of Al-Wusla ila-l-Habib," any attempt to discuss the cuisine and food culture of medieval Cairo would have proven a much more laborious, perplexing and thorny undertaking.”
With regard to editing and translating, similar recognition is due to Joshua Finkel’s translation of (and commentary on) the unique literary work dating back to the Mamluk period and known in English as The Delectable War between Mutton and the Refreshments of the MarketPlace.* Finkel’s translation of the story, which is curious but crucial for our understanding of the culinary culture of medieval Cairo, was recently supplemented by Manuela Marin’s critical edition of the Arabic text.” Independent commentaries to the text of the Delectable War made by Geert van Gelder and Manuela Marin” complete and update Finkel’s analysis. Apart from the Delectable War, these two scholars discussed also another “culinary” work of medieval Cairo, that by Ibn Sudin al-Bashbughawi, the religiously educated son of an Egyptian mamluk and the hashish eater whose satirical collection of prose and verse throws a peculiar light on some aspects of the food and foodways of Cairo.”
Of the studies related to the culinary culture of Cairo, two articles deserve special attention. Both deal with the Mamluk epoch and both are devoted to the examination of the historical circumstances rather than to the analysis of a particular literary source. While, however, Joseph Dreher's “Un regard sur l'art culinaire des Mamelouks” concentrates on the substance of cooking, represented in the article’s subtitle by “paté d’agneau, ragout de volaille et eau de rose,”” Amalia Levanoni’s “Food and Cooking during the Mamluk Era” examines the social and political contexts of foodstuffs, eating, and feeding.” Together, the two essays form an indispensable companion to the food culture of the Mamluk aristocracy.
Al-Matbakh as-Sultani by Nabil Muhammad ‘Abd al-'Aziz, presenting the key aspects of the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultans’ foodways,"* completes the list of studies devoted to the culinaria of the post-Fatimid elites of Cairo. Apart from these, there are two more works which, although dealing with food of the medieval Arabic/Islamic region in general, should by no means be disregarded in studying the Egyptian/Cairene diet. One is “An Essay on the Diet of the Various Classes in the Medieval Levant” written by Eliyahu Ashtor.”> The other is “Recherches sur les documents arabes relatifs 4 la cuisine,”"® Maxime Rodinson’s memorable essay, the value of which simply cannot be ignored by any student of the medieval Arabic food culture.
As a study of food and foodways of a historical population, the present book constitutes an attempt to discuss otherwise ambiguous aspects of the past. Due to the very fragmentary, incomplete, and sometimes puzzling evidence based on extremely diverse source material, the historical investigation quite often stood on ground so uncertain that guesswork and speculation were the only way to proceed. Since finite statements cannot be made when the data is insufficient, cautious hypothesizing with a number of possibilities left open was often the only possible conclusion. That is why expressions such as “it is not impossible that,” “it is probable that,” “it seems that,” “it might have been that,” etc. were so frequently, if not too frequently, used throughout the book. Whenever this quantity or quality of the source information allowed me to do so, I proposed more definite solutions or theses.
However, history is not an exact science, and even when the facts are reasonably well established, historians may differ radically in their interpretations. Our knowledge of the past is a subject of change and evolution. As in many respects the present work is a pioneering study, some of my assumptions may with time have to be corrected.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Given the complex nature of food and foodways as areas of research, in my attempt to reconstruct these aspects of the medieval Cairenes’ life I had to enter the fields of many disciplines. Fortunately, I have been able to use the knowledge and expertise of many of my colleagues. They provided me with assistance in several forms, also in ways of which they were not even aware. My indebtedness to all of them is immense. I would like to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to Professor Janusz Danecki, who has devoted so much of his time to me over so many years.
Without his advice and encouragement I would probably have not enjoyed my work so much. Many thanks also to Professor Ahmad Nazmi and Dr. George Yacoub, who helped me decipher the penmanship of the Arab scribes whose MSs I used. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Michael Ursinus, for his assistance in providing access to material collected in German libraries, and for his inspiration. I would also like to thank Professor Michael Abdalla for explaining various sophisticated aspects of food production technologies; my husband, Professor Zbigniew Lewicki for scholarly support and linguistic advice; Dr. Malgorzata Redlak for her advice and comments concerning the questions related to art and archeology; Professor Katarzyna Pachniak for scholarly support and friendly understanding. It is a pleasure to express my special gratitude to Professor Amalia Levanoni, for her help, support and inspiring attitude. I also owe special thanks to the reader of the manuscript of this book, who shall remain nameless, for his comments, criticisms, suggestions and encouragement.
Many thanks also to the ever-patient staff of the interlibrary loan department of the Warsaw University Library. My particular thanks are due to Kathy van Vliet for her friendly support. During the lengthy work on this study I discussed various questions with my friends, who provided fresh, thought-provoking opinions which have been more valuable to me than they may realize.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
MEDIEVAL CAIRO AND ITS INHABITANTS
The ever-convenient adjective “medieval,” when employed to cover the specific period of an Islamic city’s history, is also rather inaccurate and vague. In order to avoid misunderstanding here, it should be explained that the term is applied to the time frame which basically corresponds to the European understanding of the Middle Ages. More precisely, it refers to the period limited by the two events fundamental for the history of Cairo, that is the founding of al-Qahira in the late fourth/tenth century, and the Ottoman occupation of the city in the early tenth/sixteenth century.
However, the history of medieval Cairo is not that of al-Qahira alone, but also that of much older al-Fustat, the town known also as Misr, which neighbored al-Qahira from the south. True, al-Fustat was a separate urban entity whose history, urban morphology, and population composition differed from those of al-Qahira. At the same time, however, the two-mile long distance between the cities was short enough to make their fates interwoven. Therefore, while discussing most aspects of the history of medieval Cairo one can never neglect al-Fustat. After all, had it not been for al-Fustat, whose population reached at the height of the city’s greatest prosperity approximately 300,000, al-Qahira itself would probably not have been founded in its location. Nor would it have developed into a metropolis with the population of 450,000' whose name is known in its Westernized form as “Cairo.”
Actually, the location of al-Qahira was an effect of two strategic decisions taken by ‘Amr Ibn al-‘As and Jawhar as-Siqilli. ‘Amr, an outstanding Arab commander and a contemporary of prophet Muhammad, came to the then Byzantine Egypt from the Arabian Peninsula in 18/639 at the head of the Arab army. Both he and his warriors were first-generation Muslims participating in what is known in historiography as the Islamic conquests. Having signed a treaty with the Byzantine authorities whose troops he had just defeated, in 21/642 ‘Amr set up a garrison camp at the foot of the ex-Byzantine stronghold of Babylon. In a relatively short time this camp became a flourishing town of al-Fustat.
As for Jawhar as-Sigilli, a gifted Greek commander of the fourth Fatimid caliph, he came to Egypt in 358/969 from North Africa, leading a large army of mostly Berber troops. As soon as he had taken the country over from its incapable Ikhshidid rulers, Jawhar started to build there a new capital center for his suzerain. The town he founded, al-Qahira, was situated north of al-Fustat, by then an already prosperous and lively urban center. Al-Qahira, or Cairo, would later become a nucleus of the flourishing metropolis bearing the same name.”
The sandy area on which the two military settlements were established stretched between the head of the Nile Delta to the north and the entrance of the Nile valley to the south. It was here that Lower and Upper Egypt met. The muddy eastern bank of the river—or, in the case of Cairo, the canal bank that ran parallel to the river—delimited the area from the west, while the barren limestone cliffs of Muqattam Hills bordered on it from the east. Due to the silting process, the river course slowly moved westward, gradually exposing new grounds for urbanization.’
Historical records do not allow us to outline the climate of medieval Cairo in a comprehensive way. Nevertheless, they contain a number of noteworthy clues. The earliest temperature reports for Cairo were recorded at the turn of the eighteenth century by the scientists who participated in the French expedition to Egypt, even if Francois Jomard’s information in this respect is a little bit ambiguous. In one of the chapters of Description de l’Egypte he states that “the climate of Cairo is not much variable; winter is hardly felt. The warmth is very strong during the summer and so is in the winter. Average temperature is 22.4 degrees centigrade...Sometimes, but very rarely, temperatures fall below zero by night; this occurs only in the deserts which are east of the city.’* Elsewhere in the volume, however, Jomard admits he witnessed subzero temperatures in Cairo. This occurred, for example, on 29 November 1798 or on 6 March 1799, when the temperature fell to minus 4°C.
The following winters were very cold, too. As for regular temperatures at noon, they rose in Cairo to 10, 20, 25, or 30°C, depending on the season. In the morning, however, temperature could fall even to 2°C, as it “sometimes happens in January.”’ According to Edward Lane, who stayed in Egypt in the years 1833-1835, in Lower Egypt (which is however not exactly the same as Cairo) temperatures reached 90 to 100°F (32-38°C) in the hottest season (presumably June-August), and 50 to 60°F (ca. 10-16°C) in winter months (presumably January-March).°
Modern temperature records cannot be uncritically applied to the Middle Ages, if only because of climate-affecting weather anomalies which occurred in that epoch. As climate is vulnerable to change, phenomena such as volcanic winters, particularly that of 535-536 C.E., Medieval Warm Period (ca. 800-1300), and Little Ice Age (from ca. fourteenth to midnineteenth century) must have influenced the southernmost limit of the Nile Delta, too.’ Inapplicable directly as they have to be, Jomard’s remarks in Description de Egypte are nevertheless consistent with what the medieval records say about the Cairo weather. Information included in the Geniza documents and in the Arab sources allow us to conclude that the temperatures in the area were agreeable for most of the year. The heat, whatever its strength, was the norm: it provided thermal comfort and was not considered oppressive.
High temperatures, whatever they were, might have been relatively easy to bear in Cairo due to low humidity and the soothing northern breeze. It seems that the area was, as it is today, vulnerable to hot southerly winds which in the spring and summer brought clouds of sand and dust. Be that as it may, no medieval author complained about the heat. The attacks of cold, however, made the unaccustomed people suffer and complain.’ Short and rare, such attacks could be violent and severe—in 396/1005—6 storm winds brought thunder and hail (barad) “shaped like plates” which broke upon falling on the ground. Some of the pieces reached over two uqiyas of weight (i.e. ca. 75 grams); others were as big as eggs. The hail covered the ground completely and stayed for a few days.? In 753/1352-3 snow/hail (thal) fell in the vicinity of Birkat al-Habash, or the Ethiopian Pond, while in 918/1512-13 it was so cold in Cairo that water froze and frost damaged a number of trees.” While such extreme occurrences were not frequent, winters, however short and mild (by European standards), brought much discomfort.
Naturally enough, the climate affected the lifestyle, including the menu. Apart from determining the flora and fauna of the country, the predominantly hot temperatures stimulated decomposition of food and thus required that most of fresh foodstuffs be transformed fast—either into ready-to-eat products and dishes or into preserves destined for storage over a longer period. Consumption of items such as raw meat—in the form of similar to that of a tartar steak—was out of the question.
Meat had to be processed with the use of fire, preferably the same day the animal was butchered. The same, of course, was true with regard to raw fish—in Cairo nobody would consider preparing something like sushi or sashimi." Similar considerations applied to fresh milk which, exposed to high temperature of the air, would not stay uncurdled for long. Bread had to be eaten fresh, preferably when still warm from the oven. If not consumed immediately, in the hot air it quickly became as hard as stone and could be used only when soaked in broth or like liquids.
Egypt is a predominantly dry, desert land which, except along the Mediterranean shore, enjoys virtually no regular rainfall to moisten the soil. The scarcity of rains made the whole country depend entirely on the Nile floodwaters which seasonally fertilized the cultivable lands lying along the narrow stripe of the river valley and in the Delta. Inundation seasons were perfectly regular: the Abyssinian rains made the river level start rising in Egypt about the summer solstice and intensified during July. In Cairo, the Nile reached its plentitude in August.
During the inundation, most of the country’s arable lands were under water for six to eight weeks.” Having impregnated the valley’s soil, the river gradually fell until the period when it again began to rise. As the nature was not uniformly benevolent, the quantity of the Nile flood varied from year to year. On the Nilometer installed on the Rawda island, sixteen cubits, indicating a flood of normal size, made the magic mark. When the level of the rising water failed to reach the desired height, it meant the water would be insufficient to fill the irrigation canals. This, in turn, meant a bad harvest, shortage of food, social unrest, often famine, and, in extreme cases, cannibalism." Whatever drawbacks the Nile valley had, its fertility was indisputable—compared to other countries of the region, Egypt could be perceived as an agricultural paradise on earth.
During over three millennia of its ancient history, there was little fundamental change in Egypt. Its basic population’* proved remarkably resilient, assimilating its resident conquerors. Hyksos, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, however isolated some of them planned to remain, were all captivated by the Egyptian way of life. So were, later on, the Byzantines and, still later, the Arabs who in the early 20s/640s took Egypt over from the latter. The same applied to other Muslim migrants who kept arriving at Egypt throughout the Middle Ages and who all proved susceptible to the Egyptian genius loci.°
When the Muslim Arabs appeared in Egypt, its population, mostly Christian by that time,” was as little vulnerable to change as it had been so far. But the Arab-Muslim conquerors did not mean to change the Egyptians and preferred to live in symbiosis with the local culture."* The Islamization of the country was hardly consid-ered by them, if only because of the income derived from taxes for which non-Muslims were specifically liable.’? The symbiotic attitude of the Arabs notwithstanding, they generated, albeit somewhat unintentionally, two major modifications of their new habitat. First, they set in motion a process of urbanization of the area where the al-Fustat camp was established. Second, they started the process of constant influx of multiethnic settlers and residents into the place.
In fact, the Arab newcomers themselves were far from being an ethnic or cultural monolith. The warriors who came to Egypt with the expeditionary force of ‘Amr belonged to many different tribes and originated from different regions of the Arabian Peninsula.” Most of the tribes had separate khitat, or quarters, allotted in the camp.” The settlement of the troops participating in the invasion was followed by a long-lasting influx of population from the Arabian Peninsula and Syria.” The diverse tribal origin of the Arab settlers in al-Fustat implied that they brought with them to their new home considerably different cultural traditions.”
The differences were sometimes radical, as those between sedentary and nomad tribes, or between cultivators and pastoralists, to mention the most obvious oppositions. Cultural dissimilarities, that is those pertaining to the ways of life and behavior as inherited from previous generations, went hand in hand with antagonisms stemming from the tribes’ different genealogies. Moreover, each tribe had, naturally enough, its own interests and thus its own political inclinations and antipathies. Although Islam was to unite the Arabs over tribal divisions, each individual continued to identify, traditionally, with his own tribe.” In the initial period of the history of al-Fustat, it was those tribesmen’s manners, customs, usages, practices, values, and tastes that, endorsed by, or combined with, the rules of the new religion, formed a significant part of the culture of the newly born urban community.
Of the non-Arab settlers in al-Fustat, there were two contingents, possibly ca. 500 men, of the Byzantine converts to Islam,” and the Banu Rubil contingent of converted Jews who could have numbered as many as 1,000 men. Other non-Arab groups included the Persians who once formed a Sasanian garrison in San’a, and al-Habash, the Ethiopians or Nubians who settled on the Giza bank of the Nile. It is not clear whether the latter had converted to Islam or not. But the history of the Egyptian capital is not a history of Muslims alone—as in many parts of the newly invaded territories, in Egypt, too, Christians and Jews constituted overwhelming majorities long after the Islamic conquest.” In fact, early al-Fustat was, to use Yaacov Lev's words, “an Arab-Muslim town planted in the midst of aChristian environment.” Indeed, at the time of the Muslim conquest, the great majority of Egyptians were “Christians of some sort.””’ There was not a single, unitary Christianity in Egypt.
The basic, somewhat oversimplified division was between an urban, Hellenized, Greek-speaking Melkite elite supported by Byzantine governors, and a predominantly rural, Egyptian speaking Monophysite majority persecuted by Byzantine authorities. Relations between these two groups were often bitter. After the conquest, the Muslims, who treated the Christians of Egypt collectively as dhimmis, generally made no distinctions between the denominations. In practical terms this implied that the Monophysites, or Copts, were no longer disadvantaged the way they had been under the Byzantine rule.”” No wonder, then, that the number of Copts inhabiting al-Fustat grew particularly fast, so much so that they soon could transform into a numerous and influential community. Copts proved invaluable for the Arab settlers who, having little idea about the local circumstances and equally little interest in business or administrative know-how, needed all possible help.
The Copts not only supplied the markets of al-Fustat, but, having learned Arabic and soon becoming bilingual, also kept the new administration running.” Jews lived in the area since Hellenistic and Roman times, but until the fourth/tenth century their community in al-Fustat did not seem to exceed a few thousand families.” The local Jews, the majority of whom were the so-called Rabbanites, or those who followed the teachings of rabbis,”
formed two groups, the Palestinians and the Babylonians. The former were the descendants of migrants who had come to Egypt from Syria and Palestine. Their liturgy was the one accepted in Palestine and their authorities were approved by the religious authorities who had their seat in Jerusalem. Their synagogue, called the Synagogue of the Palestinians, existed in the area from pre-Islamic times. The Babylonian Jews, whose ancestors had come from Iraq, had similar ties with their former homeland and with the religious authorities residing there.
Their Fustati synagogue was established, it seems, in the late third/ninth century by newcomers from Iraq.* The Palestinian Jewish community maintained very close ties with the Maghrebians, particularly Tunisian and Sicilian merchants, many of whom settled in al-Fustat in the fifth/eleventh century, soon to become the community’s most prominent members. Actually, similarly close relations maintained by the Babylonian Jewish community with Spanish, Persian, and Iraqi Jews might have implicated the process of their settlement in the al-Fustat area, too.** The local Jews, like the Copts, learned Arabic and took advantage of the Arabs’ disabilities and dislikes.**
Despite their dhimmi status, the Jews and the Christians of al-Fustat did not constitute isolated communities. On the contrary, their houses, built according to the same architectural style, often bordered on those owned by the Muslims. Their clothing seemed not to have differed much from that of the Muslims, either. Partnerships, both industrial and commercial, between the members of the three communities were not exceptional. They all used the same money, the same means of locomotion and they bought the same goods. Apart from certain religiously ordained specialties, their menu was, most probably, often brought home from the same street cooks and prepared from the same ingredients. Despite their own different community life and inter-communal tensions, the members of the three groups “mingled freely,” to use Goitein’s words, with each other.*”
The coexistence and cooperation resulted in a good deal of acculturation in areas which did not pertain to religion or political authority. The Arabs, who soon appreciated the attractions of urban life, ruled and lived using Copts’ and Jews’ services and skills. Apart from those determined by their religions, the differences in various communities’ daily practices started to fade. Step by step, one imitated the other's style, paving the way for the prevalence of common standards. As the indigenous Egyptians were not eager to leave their country® and, at the same time, they had nothing against foreigners living and working among them, in the short period of three or four generations that passed from the establishment of al-Fustat, the original population of the town reached several hundred thousand inhabitants.*° When in the end of the fourth/tenth century the town of al-Qahira was founded north of al-Fustat, the latter already was a cosmopolitan, multiethnic and multireligious flourishing commercial and financial capital of Egypt and one of the most prosperous emporia of the Mediterranean.
The original khitat, or lots which in the days of the conquest were granted to tribal military groups, gradually turned into neighborhoods. As the population increased, the inhabited quarters were settled more and more densely, and the unused spaces between the cantonments were filled with buildings. In consequence, the almost purely tribal character of the original divisions was dissipated, and the quarters lost their cohesion.” Al-Fustat became a complex of tortuous, irregular, unpaved, and narrow streets, the width of which did not exceed 5-6 meters, while many measured 2 or 15 m,” widening at crossroads. Buildings followed the street alignment so as to use every inch of land.
The houses of al-Fustat were as varied as the society that resided there.” While, however, one can relatively safely define the dwellings of the truly poor as shacks made of mud, reeds, and baked or unbaked brick,* the houses of the middle-class are more difficult to classify. A considerable discrepancy between archeological evidence and the written source material contributed to the appearance of two opinions regarding the domestic architecture of al-Fustat. Generally, most of the material excavated in the site of al-Fustat shows middle- or upper middle-class houses built around an inner court (sometimes two or more courts) with the layout of the ground floor suggesting a rather low structure. Antoni Ostrasz, who analyzed the archeological evidence collected by scholars working in al-Fustat between 1912 and 1970s, cautiously estimated that the excavated houses had been, most probably, two-storied, with “the ground floor and one upper storey, perhaps with some small rooms on the roof.” And the same time, the accounts of the Arab and Persian travelers who visited al-Fustat between the tenth and thirteenth centuries seem to point to something to the contrary. Their reports about tall, multistoried buildings (from 4 to 14 storeys, depending on the account)* each inhabited by a very high number of persons (from 100 to 350, depending on the account)” inspired Alexandre Lézine to form a hypothesis about multistoried immeuble-tour, or tower house, prevailing among the domestic buildings of al-Fustat.*”
Interestingly, these two points of view, discrepant as they are, correspond, in a way, with what Goitein found in the Geniza records regarding the domestic architecture—provided we reduce somewhat the height of “insulae de Fustat” of Lézine’s vision. Goitein was rather skeptical regarding the idea of tower houses. What he pointed to was the contrast between two types of houses: one was “the family house, often a compound of several buildings, connected or not;” the other was “the apartment house, usually of three stories built of stone and bricks, on the top of which one or two structures of lighter materials could be added.”* In other words, the Geniza records, matching the archeological evidence for the houses built around one or more inner courts and the travelers’ reports on multistoried houses (even though some of them exaggerate the number of storeys), allow us to believe that the “family house” and the higher “apartment house” were two main types of domestic buildings in which the broadly understood Fustati middle-class lived.
From the times of the Islamic conquest Egypt constituted a province of the Islamic caliphate, and as such it was administered by the governors and troops sent there by the caliphs. Apart from many vital historical consequences, the system had its implications for the ethnic composition of the caliphs’ armies garrisoning in Egypt. For example, the shift of power from the Umayyad Damascus to the Abbasid Baghdad in the mid-second/ eighth century implied that the Arab troops prevailing until that moment in the al-Fustat area were replaced with Turkish, Khorasani, and other non-Arab units brought to Egypt by successive Abbasid governors.*? An even more significant alteration in the ethnic composition of the army came in 358/969, following the conquest of Egypt by the Fatimids.
The Fatimids themselves were, it seems, of Persian origin, but to Egypt they came from North Africa, the original seat of their Isma‘ili caliphate. It was also North Africa from where a significant part of their troops originated. The place chosen by the commander of the Fatimid army, Jawhar as-Siqilli, for a permanent encampment to garrison the soldiers was located some two miles north of al-Fustat. Urbanized and named al-Qahira, the place soon turned into a city which became also the seat of the Fatimid caliph and the capital of the Fatimid state. The new rulers occupied two complex buildings surrounding the square later known as Bayn al-Qasrayn, or “Between the Two Palaces.” The rest of the intra muros area, divided into quarters populated according to ethnic and racial criteria of the troops, was to serve as army barracks.
Unlike the Arab troops of ‘Amr who settled in al-Fustat, the army of Jawhar was not multitribal only—it was also multiethnic and multiracial. The core of it and, at the same time, its elite made up the Kutama Berbers, or the tribe which had sheltered the Fatimids in North Africa. Apart from Kutama, the North Africans who joined the army of Jawhar included also the Barqiyya and Batiliyya tribes, both of whom established quarters (fdrat) of their own in Cairo,® as well as the Zuwayla tribe* who were also allotted a quarter of their own, Harat Zuwayla, and whose name was given to one of the city’s most splendid gates.
Apart from the Berbers, there were also the Rum, either European or Anatolian Greeks for whom a quarter, Harat ar-Rum, was also established in al-Qahira.” And there were the Saqaliba, probably eunuchs of mostly Spanish origin, who were quartered in Harat Zuwayla, where a street (darb) was named after them. Between the 360s/970s and 380s/gg0s, the Fatimid army stationed in Cairo received new multiethnic reinforcements. Of these, the Turks established their quarter in al-Fustat, where they intermarried with the local women.» The Daylamites had their own quarter, Harat ad-Daylam, in Cairo. Furthermore, there were the Hamdaniyya who deserted from the Hamdanids* and whose corps was stationed in Cairo. There were the Ghilman, units of Turkish military slaves, and the ‘Abid, black slave troops whose massive inclusion in the Fatimid army by the caliph al-Hakim proved destabilizing both for relations with the civilian population and with the remaining army units.* In addition, in the fifth/eleventh century the Fatimid army stationing in Cairo was joined by Armenian troops of the vizier Badr al-Jamali.°
Al-Qahira and al-Fustat, the two most important urban centers of Fatimid Egypt, were very much unlike each other and, although their fates interwove, lived relatively separate lives. Cosmopolitan al-Fustat, dominated by an easygoing middle-class,*” worked, made money, supplied Cairo and, apart from occasional tensions and a few periods of natural disasters, generally enjoyed its daily routine and prosperous way of life. Its population increased from 100,000 at the time of Fatimid conquest to 300,000 at the end of the fifth/eleventh century. Al-Qahira, on the other hand, purely non-Egyptian in the midst of Egypt, and generally closed to civilians, was not really a city, and its inhabitants did not really form an urban community. With major part of its intra muros area occupied by foreign regiments, antagonized according to ethnic and factional divisions, with its focal point located in the two palaces of the divinely inspired Isma‘ili caliphs, the Fatimid Cairo was partly a garrison-town and partly a palace-city.°
This state of affairs changed dramatically in 564/1168, when one of the Fatimid viziers set al-Fustat on fire so that it could not be used as a base by the Frankish troops who, under Amalric I king of Jerusalem, prepared their attack on al-Qahira. During fifty four disastrous days the city burned to ashes and reportedly lost two third of its population. Some of the inhabitants, however, managed to evacuate to al-Qahira, where they camped in the mosques, bathhouses, and streets.® The event, followed by the fall of the Fatimids and the takeover by the Ayyubid dynasty, terminated the prosperity of al-Fustat and, in the final analysis, contributed to transforming al-Qahira into a thriving metropolis. However, the transformation would not have been possible without Saladin, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and its first ruler in Egypt, who decided to change the status of al-Qahira and open the city up “for the housing of the common people and the throng.’™ Saladin’s decision, and the destruction of al-Fustat that anticipated it, made the habitation center move from al-Fustat to the ex-Fatimid capital, and paved the way for one more shift in the demographic landscape of the area. For the sake of accuracy and convenience, the name “al-Qahira’” as used in the present study refers only to Cairo of the Fatimids. The name “Cairo” is applied to designate postFatimid city or the city in a more general context.
The Fustati fire victims who had evacuated to Cairo were soon followed by migrants from the Delta and the Nile valley. Besides, the rule of the Ayyubids brought to Egypt a new ethnic element, Kurds, whose horsemen now prevailed in the army. Moreover, a Hijazi contingent arrived at Cairo and was settled outside the gate of Bab an-Nasr, in the area named al-Husayniyya. The Hijazis built their tanneries there and manufactured leather products similar to those they had made at home in at-Ta’if.’ The true evolution in the composition of military and civilian population was, however, yet to come. In 640s/1240s, al-Malik as-Salih, the last Ayyubid ruler of Egypt, bought a few hundred of Kipchak Turkish slaves in order to reinforce his own, unreliable contingents. When al-Malik as-Salih died in 646/1248, those military slaves of his or, more properly, his mamluks, took over the power in Egypt and gave rise to the Mamluk Sultanate, the state which prevailed in Egypt and Syria for the next 250 years. From a demographic, ethnic, and social point of view, the most important of the rules governing the Mamluk system was the one assuming that being a mamluk could not be inherited.
In practical terms, this implied that to reinforce the Mamluk army, a constant influx of foreign military slaves had to be assured, preferably originating from the Euro-Asiatic steppe.
Consequently, for over a hundred years slave merchants supplied Cairo with tens of thousands of enslaved Kipchak Turks. When at some point this trade contributed to depopulation of the Black Sea steppes, the Kipchaks were gradually replaced with slaves of Circassian origin. Although the two groups generally prevailed among the mamluks of Egypt, they were not the only ethnic elements making up the Mamluk army. There were also Mongols, “Rum” (Greeks?), Slavs, Armenians, and Franks.
Although it is often stressed that the Mamluks deliberately separated themselves from the local population, this was not universally the case. True, the Mamluks, as a foreign military elite ruling Cairo from the mighty Citadel on the Hill, might have generally despised the civilian and nonTurkish speaking urbanites. At the same time, however, most of the Mamluk officers lived, with their mamluk retinues, in town, sharing the urban socio-cultural space with the ordinary Cairenes. At the same time, many of the mamluks’ children who were denied the right to become mamluks themselves, lived in the city and functioned as an inter-communal link. The isolation of the military elite from the civilians was gradually reduced from the late eighth/fourteenth century on, when the mamluks, now allowed to leave the barracks and settle in the city, often intermarried with the local women and turned into businessmen.®
The ethnic composition of the civilian population of Cairo of that time was even more complex than that of the military elite who ruled it. Cairo, which from the 640s/1250s constituted the abode of the mighty Mamluk army, was also a flourishing metropolis of the Mediterranean and an intellectual and financial capital of the Islamic world. Relatively safe from foreign invasions, it attracted Muslims of all possible ethnicities and professions. A detailed study of the geographical origins of migrants forming the civilian elites of Mamluk Cairo was produced by Carl F. Petry.” It is enough to mention that, beside the native settlers from the Delta and the Nile valley, there were migrants from Syria-Palestine, Iran, Anatolia, Iraq, Arabian Peninsula, al-Andalus, North Africa, and the Maghreb, as well as from East Africa and the Upper Nile valley, from where the black Habashis originated.
In the context of food culture, a person’s origins matter not less than the conditions of his actual habitat, if only because everybody generally misses the tastes and smells of his/her home cuisine. Many people and migrants in particular, try to reproduce these tastes throughout the rest of their life. In medieval Cairo, too, this longing for food one remembered from home made the foreign settlers tend to cultivate their particular eating habits. Generally, the foreigners who in the Middle Ages settled in al-Fustat-Cairo area tried to find local substitutes for their much missed ingredients. Since, however, Egyptian agriculture could not always satisfy their needs, what they imported to Egypt included not only their foreign culinary know-how and food products but also species of their favorite edible plants which had been unknown in the Nile valley. As the share of the non-local elements was particularly significant within al-Fustat-Cairo population, its food culture could hardly avoid being influenced by the ways of foreigners. True, in their continual attempt to reassert their identities which were being eroded in the conduct of daily life, various ethnic groups preferred to stick together, alienating themselves from the rest of city population.
Maybe that was why the couscous of the Maghrebians, the burghul of the Syrians, and the koumiss and horse meat of the Mamluks, never appealed to Cairenes. Generally, however, the migrants’ own traditions were successfully inserted—through food stores, kitchen stands, and cookery books—into the urban space they inhabited. The process was so effective that it finally resulted in the emergence of a foodstyle in which elements incorporated from other cultures prevailed distinctly over those originating from the local culinary tradition.
The diet of an individual usually reflects his social status, and one’s social status generally determines his diet. Therefore, in the discussion of foodways of a city’s population, one should not neglect the question of social order. In the case of medieval Cairo, however, the medieval European “gross division into an affluent bourgeoisie and the common people mostly doing manual work”” cannot be applied, if only because, as S.D. Goitein put it, it “does not do justice to many grades and shades in the texture of the society.”” As a matter of fact, this is also one of the reasons why the problem of the Cairene population’s diet, unlike that on many other culinary cultures, cannot be solved by using a classic contrast between the rich man’s food and poor man’s food.
Contemporary authors, who try to systematize the issue of the population of medieval Muslim towns on the basis of historical sources, encounter across various difficulties. They result, above all, from the fact that the old Arabic terms which refer to social levels are not always explicit and have no exact counterparts in the Western systems.” For example, the Cairene chronicler Taqi ad-Din al-Maqrizi (the eighth-ninth/fourteenthfifteenth centuries) divided the population of Egypt into seven categories. According to his systematization, the first category embraced those who held the reins of power. The second was formed by rich merchants and the wealthy who led a life of affluence. The third were retailers, or merchants of average means, such as the cloth merchants or small shopkeepers. The fourth category embraced peasants who lived in the villages and in the countryside.” The fifth was made up of those who received a stipend and included most legists, students of theology, and most of ajnad al-halqa” and the like. The sixth category corresponded to the artisans and the salaried persons who possessed a skill. The seventh category consisted of the needy and the paupers, or the beggars who lived off the charity of others.”
Generally, the socioeconomic systematization was not related to religious and ethnic divisions which split the society vertically.
Converting the old Middle Eastern categories of the social order into Western ones may raise various objections. Nevertheless, terms such as “middle-class,” “bourgeoisie,” or “working-class” are often used in scholarly literature dealing with the medieval Middle East, if only for the sake of convenience or clarity of argument. This is also why the term “middleclass’—unfortunate as it may sound—is used extensively in the present study. In the context of European history, middle-class could designate free town-dwellers who belonged neither to the ruling class nor to the class of common laboring people. If this meaning of the term is to be applied to the medieval Cairene society, one should remember that this society was very diverse.
Therefore, the Cairene middle-class, similarly to the contemporary connotation of the term, has to encompass the subclasses of lower middle, middle middle, and upper middle, so as to incorporate a broad socioeconomic group ranging from well-off businessmen, merchants, and master craftsmen, to various state and religious functionaries, to educated professionals such as doctors, teachers and scribes, and to retailers and petty shopkeepers. In the scheme of the Cairene social order, they fell between the working-class of manual laborers and craftsmen on the one hand and, on the other, the financial elite made by the court circles, big merchants, and the highest officials of the military, religious and administrative establishment. It is the members of this broadly understood middle-class who were the core of Cairene society; it is, above all, their food and foodways that the present study deals with.
As our knowledge of the residence patterns of the medieval Cairenes is rather limited, it is difficult to define which were the middle-class’ neighborhoods of choice. The residential areas of Cairo were organized into quarters (harat), defined by al-Maqrizi as “places where the houses are close together,” and which, as such, corresponded to khitat of al-Fustat.”® Similarly to original Ahitat of al-Fustat, the genuine military harat of the Fatimid al-Qahira turned into neighborhoods in their time. Understandably, some harat were more fashionable than others, some were preferred because of their ethnic or religious character, or craft specialization.
In the area of the Fatimid al-Qahira the settlement was denser than outside it. Within al-Qahira, the central zone of commercial activity, located along both sides of the main thoroughfare and stretching all the way from the gate of Bab al-Futuh to the gate of Bab Zuwayla, constituted the busiest part of the city. As a Maghrebian traveler observed, most of the Cairene streets were narrow, dark, crowded, full of dust and rubbish. The buildings, made of reed and clay, were tall and the access of air and light to them was limited.” Indeed, the extremely high value of land in al-Qahira, and the lack of space related to it, forced the buildings upward and made them follow the street alignment.
As there was no division into exclusively rich or exclusively middleclass neighborhoods, the population of a Aara was not strictly homogenous as far as socioeconomic divisions were concerned. Within one quarter luxurious residences (dar) of the financial elite bordered on much more numerous dwellings of the middle-class. However, the dwellings of the middle-class were by no means uniform. Generally, the upper middle-class lived in family houses of various standards, either owned or rented by the tenant. Such houses usually included a reception hall on the ground floor and smaller rooms on the upper level.”
Those who could not afford to build or rent a house—which was probably the case of a significant part of the middle-class—rented an apartment in a multi-unit building commonly known as rab’ (pl. irba’).” Built as investment by rich people, a rab was an apartment complex with living units rented by the month. A rab‘ was usually built above a commercial construction such as a shop, khan, wikdla, or qaysariyya.
The commercial space was restricted to the ground floor, and occasionally the floor above was used for storage. There were no internal connections between the commercial space and the living units of the rab’. Rab’ itself was composed of a row of apartments reached from a gallery on the upper floor.* Each apartment was a duplex on two floors, with a separate, walled-off space on the roof. The lower floor had a latrine, a niche for water jugs, and a reception hall; the upper floor included the sleeping area. To save space, staircases were narrow and steep. These dwellings were extroverted, meaning that whenever possible windows opened onto the street, otherwise onto the courtyard. There was little furniture in Cairene apartments, mostly cupboards, sideboards, and sofas, fitted into walls or recesses.”
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