[MR] Some more info on Roman and medieval Egypt

[Stefan li Rous]

I copied the message from Molly saying how much she liked Urtatim's  
site to the SCA-Cooks list, since Urtatim is a frequent contributor  
there, and I thought she'd appreciate knowing that someone found her  
site of interest. I got several replies on the list which might be of  
interest to the original poster or others here. I have put much of the  
original thread and will be adding these messages from the SCA-Cooks  
list to an Egypt-msg file in the CULTURES section of the Florilegium,  
so folks will have this information for future reference.

Stefan

<<< Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 23:46:52 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT: Rome and medieval Egypt

In 332 BCE, Egypt fell to Alexander.  With Alexander's death in 323 BCE,
Egypt passed to his general, Ptolemy, who founded the Ptolemaic dynasty
which lasted for roughly 300 years until the death of Cleopatra in 30  
BCE.
> From 30 BCE until 642 CE (Arab conquest), Egypt was a Roman province,
becoming part of the Byzantine Empire about 395 CE.  Under the  
Ptolemies,
the culture of the court was primarily Greek giving way to Roman  
culture.
Culinarily, The Deipnosophists (Atheneus) and the various Roman cookery
texts would likely cover the noble European Egyptians.  The general
Egyptians likely made do with a diet of onions, beans and bread.  We  
know
less about the Byzantine period.  During the Medieval period, the food  
was
probably similar to that found in al-Baghdadi, although that is open to
argument.

A key point to remember is that during the Greek and Roman period,  
Egypt's
primary export crops were wheat, millet, and sorghum.

Bear

> I assume we don't know any more about Egyptian food of the Roman and
> Medieval era than we do of Byzantium. Which doesn't seem to be much,
> certainly no menus, right?
>
> Stefan >>>

<<<Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 23:12:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Daniel And elizabeth phelps  <dephelps at embarqmail.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT: Rome and medieval Egypt

Don't know if it would help but she could check the back issues of  
Saudi Aramco World on line and see if anything useful pops up.

Daniel >>>

<<< Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2011 08:14:28 -0500
From: Sayyeda al-Kaslaania <samia at idlelion.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT: Rome and medieval Egypt

Agreed. Aramco World is an awesome magazine. It's offered as a free
publication.

On Middle Ages Egyptian culture, the gal/guy could look up Abbasid,
Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk cultures. They all took turns controlling
Egypt. Research into the Cairo Geniza yields spectacular results on
these. (The Fatimids created Cairo next to Fustat).

As far as Egyptian food, there are at least two cookbooks from Egypt in
the period. AFAIK, neither has been translated in it's entirety into
English. Lilia Zaouli has a few of those recipes translated in /Medieval
Cuisine of the Islamic World,/ but it's good to know that these were
translated from Arabic to Italian (?) to English. Charles Perry did the
Forward for the English version, so it has some good kudos.

It's also important to know that in the Middle Ages there was a cultural
blanket on the Middle East/Islamic Mediterranean. Yedida Stillman calls
it the Pan-Islamic Culture. With minor territorial variations, the
culture is largely the same in the Middle Ages (specifically excluding
Persian) because of the strong trade. Knowing this, people can borrow
pretty confidently from al-Andalus, Baghdad, and Damascus to fill in
gaps of knowledge of Cairo/Fustat.

You could also direct the person to my blog:
http://idlelion.blogspot.com/
I'm slowly putting up recipes and redactions from my first feast this
past weekend.

Hope that helps,
Sayyeda al-Kaslaania >>>

--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****