Timman versus Ruzz

Contrary to the rest of the Arab world, the majority of people in Iraq call rice timman. The more familiar word ruzz is mostly used in the northern city of Mosul. Evidently, the two words were used interchangeably many centuries ago. The ninth-century Abbasid prince of epicures, Ibrahim bin al-Mahdi, half-brother of Caliph Harun al-Rasheed, uses the word tumman rather than ruzz in his poem on a dish called maghmouma ‘covered’ (see al-Warraq’s cookbook). Another medieval use of tumman occurs in Kitab al-Saydana by al-Biruni (d.1048), where he mentions it as an Arabic name for aruzz.