Recipes of Arab Spain, from a 13th century manuscript

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Coincidentally, a cookbook of Arabic Spain, written around 1260, was compiled in its entirety and is now translated into English for lovers of cuisine and flavors: food and dishes from Al Andalus and the Maghreb ”written in Tunis by Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī.

In 1247, al-Tujībī realized that for a Muslim life was lifeless in Christian Spain – the Arab kingdoms fell one after the other as the Christian crusade in Iberia prevailed. At the age of 20, he took his family and fled Murcia with many Andalusian refugees to Muslim North Africa, the Maghreb. He arrived in the port city of Bijāya, in present-day Algeria, in poverty, and got a job as a seasonal scribe for the Hafsid dynasty. In 1259, he settled in Tunis, where at the age of 33 he began writing Fiḍālat, the recipe book. He remained in Tunis until his death in 1293.

After the end of the 16th century, many of the recipes were lost. Most of Fiḍālat’s 475 recipes survived in copies, but entire chapters on vegetables, sauces, and pickles left a huge gap in the book. Coincidentally, three years ago, librarian Dr. Bink Hallum, cataloging a manuscript of Arabic pharmacology at the British Library, discovered that it contained a large section, just over 200 pages, of a cookbook. He came in contact with nutritionist Nawal Nasrallah, who at the time was translating one of Fiḍāla’s incomplete copies from Arabic into English. “It was a gift from God,” says the Iraqi-born historian. “It simply came to our notice then. I read the manuscript on the screen and saw that it was there, the missing recipes “. With this new material, including the 55 missing recipes, he was now able to compose the first English translation of al-Tujībī’s entire recipe book. Is this the author’s gastronomic nostalgia? “His goal was to maintain the beautiful kitchen with which he grew up. “He saw everyone fleeing Andalusia and he was afraid that sooner or later people would forget this cuisine he knew and was happy about,” Nawal Nasrallah said.

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