Tafsheel

Of all the porridge soups mentioned here, tafsheel seems to be the one with the most ingredients, and medieval Arabic sources have some ancient historical (?) bits to tell about it. They connect tafsheela with one of the ancestors of Yehuda bin Ya’qoub: his name was Barkhiya bin Akhtiya bin zir Babil bin Shaltheel and he lived during the time of the Assyrian King Bakht Nasr (Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon, c. 630–562 bc). It was after Barkhiya that tafsheel was named, because it was his favorite dish (alSam’ani, Al-Ansab). In another anecdote, we learn that after the Exodus and while the Israelites were still wandering in the desert, one of the leaders named Sheela asked for a dish of mixed grains and pulses to be cooked for him. He was offered tafsheela (al-Marzubani, Nour alQabas). Another source tells us that when Moses went to his mother and brother Harun (Aaron) before heading to the Pharaoh, they were eating tafsheel, and he shared it with them (Ibn Katheer, Al-Bidaya wal-Nihaya).