Street Food in Medieval Baghdad

Ready-made food was a booming business in medieval Baghdad. It was very convenient for travelers and visitors, as well as residents themselves. It was relatively affordable and even poor people sometimes preferred to eat out rather than spend money on fuel to cook their food at home. Therefore, people who frequented the ready-made food markets were mostly ‘awam ‘commoners,’ and it was not appropriate for refined upper-class people ‘to patronize the shop of a “mincer of meats and pies”’ (Guthrie). The tenth-century writer Abu Hayyan al-Tawheedi gives us a glimpse of the eating-out situation through his protagonist, who vilifies supposedly respectable people who went after the shawaya and qalaya ‘grilled and fried foods,’ and bazmaward ‘sandwiches’.