Islam—A Thousand and One Nights of Cooking ..............................

Lecture 12

W

hile Europe was languishing in the so-called Dark Ages, there
arose a new religion—Islam—in what is now Saudi Arabia that
would spread faster than any religion before it and that would
bring a whole new way of thinking about food, and a whole new culinary
style, to a huge expanse of land that would eventually stretch from Spain to
India and even beyond to southeastern Asia. In this lecture, you will learn
how the culture of Islam became so dazzling despite its humble origins.

The Expansion of Islam
 Islam arose among nomadic peoples, the Bedouin, of the deserts
of Arabia. These desert regions—which are essentially endless
drifts of sand with practically no water or vegetation and, of course,
intense heat—are completely different than any of the agriculturally
fertile regions. There’s also no state, per se; there are only tribal
leaders, or sheikhs.

 These nomadic peoples had such a rugged way of life that they

really didn’t even have private property; the herds that they

migrated with were owned communally by the tribe. Because there

is so little pasture, they have to continually move from oasis to

oasis, where there were usually small towns that they could trade

with or steal from. This was also a warrior society, and power and

prestige depended on how much you could steal from passing

caravan routes.

 Between these vast deserts there were, however, a few cities on the

periphery. They usually existed only because there was water, and

many grew into sizeable settlements, often containing a holy shrine.

They were also incidentally good places to do trade because they

served as sanctuaries, where rival tribes weren’t allowed to fi ght. It

was in one of these—Mecca—that Islam arose.