The Kitab al-Tabikh

Appears in

#20A New Book of Middle Eastern Food
A New Book of Middle Eastern Food

By Claudia Roden

Published 1986

  • About

In 1934 the Iraqi scholar, Dr Daoud Chelebi, discovered two manuscripts written in Baghdad in the year 1226 by a certain Muhammad ibn al-Hassan ibn Muhammad ibn al-Karim al Katib al-Baghdadi, who died in 1239 A. D. Dr Chelebi published it in Mosul with the same title Kitab al-Tabikh (Cookery Book). The late Professor A. J. Arberry translated it into English and included it in his article entitled ‘A Baghdad Cookery Book’ published in the periodical Islamic Culture 13 (1939).

In the preface, after the obligatory praises to God and some remarks on the importance of good wholesome eating, the author says he wrote the book for his own use and for those interested in ‘the Art of Cooking’. He divides pleasure into six classes: food, drink, clothes, sex, scent and sound. Of these, he says, the noblest and most consequential is food and he subscribes to the doctrine of the pre-excellence of the pleasure of eating above all other pleasures. For that reason he composed the book. Al-Baghdadi chose to include from among the recipes popular at the time only those which he personally liked, and discarded what he describes as ‘strange and unfamiliar dishes, in the composition of which unwholesome and unsatisfying ingredients are used’. There is general advice about the necessity of keeping nails trimmed and pots clean, or rubbing copper pans bright with brick dust, potash, saffron and citron leaves, and on such things as the value of using fresh and strongly scented spices ground very fine.