Abbasid Sandwiches

Some claim that John Montague, fourth Earl of Sandwich, invented the sandwich about two hundred years ago, so that he could eat a meal without having to leave the gambling table. However, judging from frequent references and descriptions of sandwiches in medieval Arabic literature, as well as recipes given in medieval cookbooks, the origin of the sandwich can be pushed back to the eighth or ninth century, the beginning of the golden age of Baghdadi cuisine. To my knowledge, the earliest sandwich recipes occur in al-Warraq’s cookbook, where we have five recipes and a sandwich poem. This chapter describes three types of sandwich: