Medieval Arabs ate sandwiches too? (2021)

[dr_dshiv]

From the article:

…in al-Masʿūdī’s tenth-century Murūj al-Dhahab, a poem by the famous Abbasid poet of Baghdad Ibn al-Rūmī (d. 896) describes how to construct a sandwich, which he calls wasṭ (وسط), in which the stuffing is put between two layers of bread. Here is how he describes it:

    You, seeker of delicious food, take a couple of fine breads, round and thick,
    The likes of which no one has seen, Slice off the top crusts, 
    so that you make them thin.
    Spread on one, finely minced grilled chicken, delectable and delicate, 
    which a mere puff would melt.
    On this arrange lines of almond intersected with lines of walnut.
    Let its dots be cheese and olive, and its vowels mint and tarragon,
    Now take boiled eggs, and with their dirhams [egg white] 
    and dinars [egg yolk] the wasṭ adorn.
    Give it a dusting of salt, but not much; just what it needs.
    And inspect it with your eyes for a second or two, 
    for the eyes have a share in it, too.
    Look at it appreciatively until your eyes have their fill, 
    then cover it with the other bread, and eat it with joy.

[n4r9]

> ... its dots be cheese ... its vowels mint ...

If like me you're wondering about "dots" and "vowels", my best guess is that it's an allusion to arabic script. Some letters have dots above or below them, and short vowels are sometimes represented by a slash or loop above or below the preceding consonant.

So the recipe is using a metaphor to effectively say "sprinkle with cheese".

See e.g. https://arabic.fi/lessons/vowels

The dinar/dirham for egg yolk/white is interesting as well. I think it's another metaphor rather than a direct translation. Those word are both used in the currencies of various countries around the Mediterranean - dinar (yolk) was originally a gold coin whereas dirham (white) was silver.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirham

[have_faith]

In poem form and yet still more informative that your average recipe website.

[ManuelKiessling]

Say what you want about medieval times — folks knew how to sell a recipe.

[ROTMetro]

Interesting that al-Rūmī like so much 'Arab Golden Age' or 'Islamic Golden Age' contributors was of Greek descent. I really wish the balkanizing narrative wasn't forced around this era of history I think humans would have found better understanding of each other and our connections/sameness rather than defining one specific and non-representative group running an empire of conquest as having 'uniqueness' 'specialness' and 'otherness' during this period of time. A lot of conquered people just get erased from history as if the people conquered in the name if Islam just one day became their conquerors. Why? How can we understand and learn from such strangely defined history? It would be like classifying the Sioux as European thinkers. We push that Arabs kept Greek knowledge alive when in a lot of cases it was greek knowledge that was already established in the region because the people that lived there were... Greek and the people keeping it were Greek. Then we call lands ran by Christian Germanic peoples and their religion ignorant/savage/anti knowledge because they lost this 'European' knowledge. So many traits being assigned by geography and losing all context of culture, understanding, or insight to fit a narrative.

[throwawayadvsec]

" and with their dirhams [egg white] and dinars [egg yolk] "

wait so some arab currencies are actually translated as egg white and egg yolks? :o

[eesmith]

"Sandwich" is not a well-defined word. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Yes, according to some. No, according to others.

For example, New York's definition includes a buttered bagel, hot dogs, gyros, and wraps. https://www.tax.ny.gov/pubs_and_bulls/tg_bulletins/st/sandwi...

By that definition, this medieval recipe, which uses thin flatbread, is a sandwich.

The Earl-of-Sandwich style sandwich requires sliced bread. The quote from the 1773 English cookbook even says "thin slices of bread."

[samrus]

Given the whole misconceptions a about "the earl of sandwich INVENTED the sandwich" and "Columbus DISCOVERED the new world" when other people already knew about those things, I think we should add "... For Europe" to the end of this stuff.

[Affric]

It’s interesting the great man version of history and its hold on our consciousness.

The “sandwich” was “invented” by the Earl of Sandwich’s servants.

Erik the Red discovered Greenland (which is in North America) and Leif Erickson “discovered” Vinland and (I think) the American mainland.

You can only discover things which already exist. Otherwise it’s invention. It’s more right to state he accidentally discovered that you could sail west from Europe and hit landfall after crossing the open ocean. He defied almost all expectations.

I think most of the rest of the debate looks to diminish him due to his evils (and the evils that sprung from European colonisation in the modern period) rather than attempting to more accurately describe what he did.

Regardless, a group of intrepid people migrating across the Bering land bridge is a little different in terms of the risks faced by a man blindly sailing west when everyone rightly said he was mad.

He’s the first non-Pacific Islander to belong to the exclusive club of finding a route to land where he went through open ocean.

[dalbasal]

Idk. I think these are useful disillusionment mines to leave in place.

The intuitive idea of inventors and originators is often wrong, and caused by narrow mindedness. Most inventuons are originated many times. I'm sure plenty of people raised a wolf puppy, just like lots of people find and raise wild pets today. Very few of these become a "domestication event."

For cuisine, the implication of "the earl of sandwich invented the sandwich" should be intuitively be a story about culinary fashions. The origin of the term "sandwich." How it became part of upper class cuisine. Why watercress sandwiches at high tea.

If you hear about prior art and react with "I thought England invented sandwiches! Lies!"... If that's the reaction, then your intuition needs refinement.

Every culture with bread will inevitably invent sandwiches. It might happen differently though. Maybe there is no name for it, and it's just what you do with bread and cheese. Maybe specific sandwiches (eg burger) have names... but there is no generic name. In that case, starting a sandwich shop and naming the nameless is "invention."

Most invention is conceptual. The sandwich will usually predate the idea of a sandwich.

[shakow]

Even for Europe. America had already been found by Vikings sailors a few centuries before Colombus, probably by Brittons sailors a few decades before.

And I hardly believe that no one in Europe (let alone the world) ever put a slice of meat in a bread before the 18th.

Those people were the first one to put it in the records that were not lost to the ages, so that's why we remember them.

[ROTMetro]

Why? If something is named after someone, if someone popularized something, why do we need to make is some larger deeper anything? It's funny that this comes in an article about the Islamic Golden age period where people's identity just gets erase to fit some narrative. Where Christian Greeks keeping Greek history become Arab Muslim's keeping the West's knowledge for the ignorant Christian West. Why is it misconception about the origination of the sandwich that is being discussed, not erasure of entire populations of subjugated people who get attributed as being their conquers creation and their accomplishments attributed to some 'Islamic Golden Age'. Maybe the Islamic Golden Age is in greater need of being deconstructed. Maybe Europeans and Middle-easterners would see each other as 'others' so much if history didn't so artificially try to create otherizing constructs.

[mock-possum]

I wanna see Max feature this on Tasting History.

Also I love how effusive the prose is describing these sandwiches - really reminds me of TV chefs nowadays. “First we’re going to start with the most beautiful fresh nice moist bread, then just - cut the crust off - there, leaving us with just the best parts for our sandwich. Next, smear it with the most delicious just - beautiful - egg yolks - and egg whites - just paint it - gorgeous - “

[beebeepka]

"cut the crust off - there, leaving us with just the best parts for our sandwich"

But the crust is the best part. No wonder I stopped watching TV almost 30 years ago. Nothing but clowns telling you what to think

[stretchwithme]

Hard to believe people could figure out how to put things between two pieces of bread. Seems so complicated.

[quickthrower2]

And calling food rolled in khobz a sandwich is a stretch. At what point is any bread-like plus non-bread-like a sandwich? E.g. a pizza or a beef pie or peshwari naan is a sandwich (yes I’ve seen the cube rule!)

[INTPenis]

Yeah I recently moved out to a rural village in the balkans and it's amazing how they eat greasy food with bread, so it makes sense to use the bread to pick up the greasy food with. It's a no brainer really.

Bread is and has always been a non-sticky, non-greasy, and dry way of picking up food.

[arketyp]

I remember hearing some story about the pizza originally being just an edible vehicle for food into the mouth because there wasn't any notion of eating from a personal plate with fork and knife. Bread is served to be used as a scoop even in fine dining today. The sandwich is the default!

[crooked-v]

For a long time, the standard "plate" in Europe, for anyone fancy enough to need one, was just a large slab of very stale bread left over from a previous meal [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trencher_(tableware)

[reillyse]

Yes. It is literally all nonsense. As soon as people invented bread they started eating it with things. All of those things were sandwiches.

[curiousgal]

> Medieval Arabs

Talk about an oxymoron since the Middle Ages were actually the Islamic Golden Age.

[eesmith]

The medieval period of Arab history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Arabs#Medieval_...

See also the results of a Google Scholar search at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Medieval+Arabs

"Religious influences on medieval Arabic philology"

"Mediterranean in the Works of the Early Medieval Arabic Geographers and Historians"

"Glaucoma in the Medieval Arabic World"

"Stars and Numbers: Astronomy and Mathematics in the Medieval Arab and Western Worlds"

EDIT: also Medieval Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Africa#Medieval_and... including Medieval Somalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medieval_Somalia

[flextheruler]

Isn’t medieval just a time period for after the fall of Roman Empire and before the renaissance

[ROTMetro]

And the Islamic Golden Age itself is an oxymoron as much of the historical knowledge was Greek (large parts of these conquered lands had sizable Greek populations) and the many contemporary contributors were either non-muslim or raised in conquered cultures that had not been fully assimilated by Islam but instead maintained many of their pre-conquered traits.

[beezlewax]

I find it hard to believe that any culture who ate bread didnt have some form of sandwich the minute they ate their first piece of bread and had something else on hand to eat with it.

[amelius]

Yes, but they didn't have Nutella.

[dang]

Please don't post religious or ideological flamebait to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[the-printer]

This grossly oversimplifies centuries of history between the conquest of Baghdad and whatever your interpretation of “radical Islam” is.

At scale and in detail, the parallel that you’re trying to draw is null.

[moonchrome]

I think the US could deal with Mongolia.

[ROTMetro]

To be fair many of these Arab lands were forcibly conquered and much of the institutions were vestiges left over from pre-conquest and/or contributed by conquered people/cultures. 'International' banking has a different meaning when you run an empire of conquered countries.

[mrwnmonm]

Stop spreading this nonsense.

Or maybe blame it on Al-Ghazali, another classical story.

[ReptileMan]

That is a good argument against immigration - don't import cultures in quantities you can't assimilate when they are incompatible with the current culture. Also don't lose wars. Bad habit.