Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq

( ar, أبو محمد المظفر بن نصر ابن سيار الوراق) was an Arab author from

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

. He was the compiler of a tenth-century cookbook, the ( ar, links=no, كتاب الطبيخ, ''The Book of Dishes''). This is the earliest known Arabic cookbook. It contains over 600 recipes, divided into 132 chapters.

The is the oldest surviving Arabic cookbook, written by al-Warraq in the 10th century. It is compiled from the recipes of the 8th and 9th century courts of the
Abbasid Caliphate The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib ...
in Baghdad. Some scholars speculate that al-Warraq may have prepared the manuscript on behalf of a patron, the
Hamdanid The Hamdanid dynasty ( ar, الحمدانيون, al-Ḥamdāniyyūn) was a Twelver Shia Arab dynasty of Northern Mesopotamia and Syria (890–1004). They descended from the ancient Banu Taghlib Christian tribe of Mesopotamia and Eastern ...
prince
Sayf al-Dawla ʿAlī ibn ʾAbū l-Hayjāʾ ʿAbdallāh ibn Ḥamdān ibn al-Ḥārith al-Taghlibī ( ar, علي بن أبو الهيجاء عبد الله بن حمدان بن الحارث التغلبي, 22 June 916 – 9 February 967), more commonly known ...
, who sought to improve the cultural prestige of his own court in Aleppo as the court in Baghdad had started to decline. Some recipes in the book, like (date-sweetened porridge), come from the relatively simple cuisine of the
Arabian peninsula The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate ...
, but the book also contains recipes for fancy stews with
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
names. There is also an entire chapter about , hearty stews of 'Nabataean' (Iraqi) origin. Several partial or full translations in European languages are available: *
Nawal Nasrallah Nawal Nasrallah is a U.S.-based Iraqi food writer, food historian, English literature scholar, and translator from Arabic into English. She is best known for her cookbook featuring Iraqi cuisine, entitled ''Delights from the Garden of Eden'', and ...
, annotated translation * Lilia Zaouali, selection of two dozen recipes * Sabrina Favaro's Italian translationSabrina Favaro, ''Il simposio dei sultani: Dal più antico Trattato di cucina arabo-musulmano'', 2015 * David Waines, selection of recipesDavid Waines, ''In a Caliph's Kitchen'', 1995

See also
*
Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi Muḥammad bin al-Ḥasan bin Muḥammad bin al-Karīm al-Baghdadi, usually called al-Baghdadi (d. 1239 AD), was the compiler of an early Arabic cookbook of the Abbasid period, كتاب الطبيخ ''Kitab al-Ṭabīḫ'' (''The Book of Dishes'') ...
, author of a 13th-century Arabic cookbook by the same name

References

Further reading
* Kaj Öhrnberg and Sahban Mroueh, eds., ''Kitab al-tabikh'' Studia orientalia 60, Finnish Oriental Society, 1987. * Charles Perry, "Cooking with the Caliphs", ''Saudi Aramco World'' 57:4 (July/August 2006
full text
10th-century writers Iraqi writers Arab cuisine Writers from Baghdad Cookbook writers of the medieval Islamic world {{iraq-writer-stub