Egyptian Molokheya Soup

This is the national soup of Egypt. The elite version is prepared with rabbit, but chicken is common and acceptable. Khalid M. Baheyeldin, a computer engineer from Alexandria now based in Canada, maintains a Web site (Baheyeldin.com) containing, among much else, lore about molokheya. It transpires that a millennium ago the “mad Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi Amrillah” forbade his subjects to eat molokheya. Why? Because “Mu’awya ibn Abi Sufyan