Part three

After the Mongol attack in 1258, Baghdad lost its glory. All the attention was turned to Istanbul when it became the capital of the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453. Iraq with the rest of the Middle East came under the political control of the Turks until after World War I. During this long stretch of time, Topkapi Palace was uninterruptedly the residence of the Ottoman sultans. According to Marianna Yerasimos, author of 500 Years of Ottoman Cuisine, the ‘Ottoman cuisine was a culinary culture which grew from the 15th century onwards and was shaped by an elite group, who lived in and around Istanbul’s Palace, an elite who took pleasure in good food’. This is reminiscent of what happened in Baghdad during the Abbasid era.