A Soup for the Qan

Mongol consumption of a wide range of plant foods is also strongly confirmed by recent ethnographic surveys. The following are some Mongol gathered plant foods listed by B. Rinchen.⁶³ Botanical identifications are as provided by Rinchen, corrected in a few cases:

Mongolian foods are well represented in the following short quotations from observers of the Mongols during the first years of empire:

These simple Mongolian foodways soon changed along directions already suggested in the accounts above. Note, for example, evidence of the growing role of grain foods in the Mongolian diet in the first quotation, and the reference to wine in the last. Wine seems to have been totally unknown to most twelfth-century Mongols⁷⁵ but by the time of Simon de Saint-Quentin was part of an unfortunately growing range of alcoholic beverages available to the Mongols.

John of Piano Carpini, writing in the late 1240s confirms the increasingly important role of flour in Mongolian diet:

From this type of usage, involving only a little flour, the jump to a tsampa, to simple hearth breads,⁷⁸ or even to the steamed or boiled buns of the type found widely throughout China, the Middle East, and Central Asia was not a great one and soon made. In any case, the prevalence of foods of this type in the recipes of the YSCY is no accident. They had already become Mongolian.

The other clearly defined post-empire change in Mongol dietary patterns, improved access to more, and to a greater variety of alcoholic beverages, was less fortunate for those Mongols who could afford to drink them. The new beers, wines, and distilled liquors were often far more potent than what the Mongols had hitherto been used to. Even kumiss, little dangerous to health when used in moderation, seems to have become a problem as it became more and more prevalent, too prevalent, as time passed.

Utterly different from the steppe was the world of China which the Mongols invaded, and ultimately (1279) conquered. China was a region of unparalleled economic, social and cultural achievement coupled with political division and military weakness, especially in the south. Just prior to the Mongolian invasions the combined populations of north and south had reached an early modern high of at least 120,000,000 to 130,000,000, and perhaps as many as 150,000,000, if marginal areas including Tangut domains are included.⁸¹ Of this total, some 53,500,000 are estimated to have lived in Chin domains, a region then nearly as developed as the south.82

Most of the world’s largest cities were located in China, its economy was the most sophisticated in the world with trade links as far away as East Africa since Chinese maritime expansion in the South Seas, Indian Ocean, and beyond anticipated the Age of Exploration by several centuries. China also led the world in technology. It already, to give but a few examples, had access to gunpowder weapons, including hand guns,⁸³ mechanical clocks,⁸⁴ the compass, the sternpost rudder, watertight compartments in ships,⁸⁵ printing, and sophisticated building techniques and even building codes. The latter provided imperial standards which guaranteed excellent and environmentally well-adapted buildings in a bureaucratic move far ahead of the rest of the world.⁸⁶ Coal was already widely used as a fuel in the treeless north, as Marco Polo noted, and in the eleventh-century Chinese production of steel reached a level not exceeded by Industrial-Revolution Britain until well into the nineteenth century. The north continued to produce large amounts of cast iron and steel, even in the thirteenth century.⁸⁷ No less an accomplishment were successful use of paper money and some very modern vehicles of long-distance commercial exchange. China’s agriculture 88 was also a world leader. South Chinese rice fields⁸⁹ probably produced a higher yield per acre than fields in any other part of the world, even intensively cultivated gardens of the Muslim west. It was not only from rice, since a sophisticated complex of food production was involved, using the same fields. The high yields and variety of Chinese food production, particularly in the south, were above all a reflection of experience garnered by the Chinese farmer over the millennia.⁹⁰ Borrowings from a variety of other cultures, including Siberian and Central Asian were also of key importance.

It is important to stress the almost complete isolation of early Chinese agriculture from developments in west Asia. The deserts of Hsin-chiang proved a formidable barrier. They kept the millets, rice, chicken, and pig complex found in East Asia separated from an early west Asian agriculture based upon wheat, barley, and the goat. Although this complex had already reached Afghanistan by 5000 BC, Hsin-chiang, by way of contrast, does not seem to have reached the Neolithic till 3000 BC or slightly before.95 There is some evidence of early contacts through the Siberian steppes, forests, and taiga, but the exchange was one way. Although the Tripolye Culture of the Ukraine (ca. 4500–4000 BC) introduced broom-corn millet and painted pottery much like that of earlier Neolithic China while pointed-bottom unpainted vessels may have spread through Siberia from the east, no equivalent “western-looking” traits reached China until the goat, an unmistakably west Asian animal, arrived sometime during the third millennium.⁹⁶

The ancestors of the later Altaic peoples would have been involved in mediating any exchanges that did occur. They were placed at the midpoint, and their radiation probably went along with the spread of Neolithic and later Bronze-age patterns of adaptation in high Asia. China’s earliest dynasties parallel the development of bronze cultures in Central Asia and Siberia.⁹⁷ Shang 商 tombs, for instance, look much like those of the steppes while early Lena valley bronzes appear to incorporate t’aot’ieh 饕餮 -like decorations. Wheat and barley had by this time reached China and begun their rapid rise to pre-eminence there. Very possibly they came via Siberia, although an oasis route across Hsin-chiang is also possible.⁹⁸

From the Chou 周 Dynasty on interactions between Chinese and the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia increased considerably but cultural lines were also drawn with increasing rigidity.⁹⁹ From the end of the Chou date the first detailed descriptions of steppe nomads and seminomads, peoples described as sharply different from Chinese. In fact groups like the Hsiung-nü 匈奴 practiced a great deal of agriculture and had large settlements.100 Many were “nomadic” only by contrast with the sedentary Chinese. But, as the latter realized the full potential of their fertile soils and relatively beneficent climate, they pulled ahead demographically and economically. Mongolia also suffers from severe wind erosion which renders most agricultural land unsuited for that purpose after only a few years’ use.

The steppe and northern peoples retained considerable strength, however, partly because of their superiority in horses. Horses were raised with difficulty in China, but were available in quantity and quality on the steppe. Their contact with west and south Asia also allowed them to benefit from any new military or economic developments there. The Mongols, for example, perfected the technique of using new Chinese weapons against the West, including gunpowder, and new Western ones, such as counterweighted trebuchets, against China.

China’s first green revolution took place under Ch’in 秦 and Han.¹⁰¹ Late Chou developments such as the moldboard plow and other efficient farm machines found their potential realized as the emperors invoked policies that benefited agriculture and food production. Flour milling, learned from the Western world, released the potential of wheat and oil-seeds. Grapes, alfalfa and possibly other Western crops arrived.¹⁰² More important were the first agricultural manuals and extension services, agricultural administration, the “ever-normal granary,” and government research and development involving such modern concepts as controlled case studies.103 An ideology of “agriculture (as) the basis of the state” led to imperial ceremonies and local rites to glorify it. North Chinese agriculture rose to high levels of intensification, primarily because of government policy and the existence of an enormous urban market.

During the following dynasties, Central Asian influence became strong in China. The (Toba) Wei 魏 Dynasty, the most powerful and dynamic of the many successor regimes to Han, was ruled by a Mongol-Turkic (Hsien-pei 鮮卑) ruling house. Central and south Asian foods, ideas and medicines flowed into China.¹⁰⁴ T’ang, also, was ruled by a family with some Altaic (Turkic) forebears. Overland contact with Altaic and Iranian peoples was the most important external communication. Indian and Central Asian monks, first appearing in the late Han, if not earlier, brought Buddhism and its food and medical traditions to China. Sea traffic was not neglected and Canton, among other Chinese cities, had a large Irano-Arabic colony, from whom came not only ordinary foods but even luxuries, including sugar.¹⁰⁵

But the main route was still overland. Everything from spinach to fenugreek was moving across the Silk Road.¹⁰⁶ North Chinese food was becoming strikingly Westernized. Wheat technology was almost entirely Near Eastern.¹⁰⁷ Foods now thoroughly Sinicized, like the shao-ping 燒餅, were then still very obviously intrusive; Persians sold ancestral shao-ping, small versions of their traditional nan, in the streets of Ch’ang-an 長安. Dairy products were abundant. Yogurt was a regional marker, indeed a stereotype, for north China 108 and a whole milk technology grew up, enormously complex and important through T’ang, Sung, and Yüan. This has been described in detail by Sabban¹⁰⁹ in one of the finest articles ever written on Chinese food production or consumption. The food of the T’ang elite of Ch’ang-an was simple and included much grilled meat and processed milk. Likewise, the food of high Central Asia included much grain. An observer would not have seen anything close to the differences so often emphasized in nineteenth and twentieth century accounts.

What we see, over time, is a pattern in which Central Asian influences waxed and waned in north China. During times of strong influence from westward, such as Yüan, Central and West Asian foodways became more widespread and elaborate. During periods of Chinese strength and Central Asian weakness, the opposite occurred. Thus, the contrast between northwest and southeast is still obvious and pronounced in China. Today as in Yüan, one finds more lamb, more elaborate breadstuffs, more fried dumplings and so on in the former, and more fish, pork, rice and vegetables in the latter. Today, also, the food of the Turkic peoples of Hsin-chiang is much closer to Afghan and other Central Asian foodways than to Chinese foodways.¹¹² The Mongols of Inner Mongolia preserve old ways self-consciously, often as a political statement. The court food described in the YSCY represents a peak of westward influence, but not a sudden intrusion of a totally new cuisine.

Going hand-in-hand with this green revolution of quantity was a great qualitative change in Chinese foodways due to an increasingly thorough exploration of the food and seasoning resources of the south itself, witnessed by an explosion of information about the plants of the south in the Chinese herbal literature of the time,¹¹⁶ and increasing availability and range of the exotics brought by Chinese merchants and others from the Southseas and beyond. This revolution is witnessed by a variety of botanical and other works including Chao Ju-kua’s 趙汝适 Chu-fan chih 諸番志,¹¹⁷ Chou Ch’ü-fei’s 周去裴 important Ling-wai tai-ta 嶺外代答,118 and later by the YSCY itself, produced by a court with its own overseas connections.

Chinese food as we know it today owes much of its complexity to Sung, and even Chin. An economic boom, the rise of the Middle Class, the growth of national and international trade, and an ideology of refinement and subtlety combined to take Chinese food to new heights of gourmet pleasure. The variety of foods, for example, freely available on the Chinese market, in all but the most poverty stricken parts of China, was far beyond anything hitherto achieved, anywhere in the world. This food was produced not only by agriculture and livestock-raising, but also by a highly developed fisheries, by hunting of wild animals, and even overseas trade. Thanks to a most sophisticated and efficient internal exchange system Chinese food markets, such as those in the former Sung capital of Hang-chou, described here, utterly amazed foreign observers such as the Venetian Marco Polo who speaks (in this the version of the text) of no less than ten major markets, along with innumerable others, large and well served by streets, thoroughfares, and bridges, thronged by an abundant populace (he speaks of 40,000–50,000 on market days) and frequented by merchants from all the countries near and far to China and offering every possible variety of raw and processed foodstuff. He mentions in particular a great deal of wild game meats (principally deer and fowl), a full range of meats from domestic animals, a profusion of delicate fresh fish, every kind of vegetable and of fresh and dried fruits, and liquors. Such an abundance there was, he goes on, that local people could eat meat and fish at the same meal, something unheard of in the Europe of the time where fresh (as opposed to preserved) fish was a rare delicacy.¹¹⁹

Distinctive regional traditions of cooking had also already become well established by Sung.¹²⁰ The first true restaurants also appeared. They too were quite unlike anything found in the Western World, as this reaction of Marco Polo makes clear:

In another version of the text, Marco Polo goes on to speak of a hundred different celebrations going on at once, all accommodated and fed in different parts of the same facility without any interfering with the other.¹²² The West Lake is still famous for its restaurants and cuisines.¹²³

The following are some examples of the types of recipes served in them in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as recorded by the Yüan and early Ming literatus Ni Tsan:¹²⁴

This cultural diversity, accepted as a fact of life in the Middle East, and in the Muslim World generally, meant an easier acceptance of outsiders such as the Mongols, and the Turks before them. Religious assimilation was expected, but not total acculturation. There was, in any case, no single pattern of acculturation applicable to all.

The existence of fermented beverages is very old in the Middle East. The same process of yeast fermentation, so vital to good bread, was early put to work to create alcohol. As a result, beer and wine, including date wine, were consumed in large quantities in all the ancient civilizations of the area. A quite different fermentation, less often stressed but far more important nutritionally, was lactic acid fermentation. This allowed preservation of milk in the forms of yogurt, kefir, kishk (dried yogurt and/or similar dried products, the qimaq of the YSCY), strained yogurt (labni, etc.), and cheese. Lactic acid fermentation was also used to preserve chopped meat in the form of salami and similar sausages.

No difference between West Asia and China has been of greater importance than the prevalence of processed grain foods in the former. Gluten, particularly that of gluten-rich “hard wheat,” Triticum durum,136 not only permits leavening of bread; it also makes easy the production of thin, tough sheets, suitable for wrapping food as dumplings or for cutting and cooking as phyllo dough, noodles, and pastas of all kinds. Most of these seem to date back at least to Greek Classical times and may be older. Only phyllo is a relatively recent Turkic innovation, although one based upon much older precedents. It is hard to imagine Arab cooking without sanbusak, the filled dough-wrapped dumpling that probably inspired the piräk (boreks), chiao-tzu 餃子, and possibly the manta that we find in the YSCY. Surely, in the Near East, land of flatbreads often filled like sandwiches, cooks must have realized early that one could create many things from dough sheets.

The food of the early Middle Eastern civilizations, then, was wheat bread, also barley bread, dairy products, beans, oil crops, fruit, vegetables, beer, meat, and wine, in about that order of importance. The diet of the ordinary person varied considerably from place to place. Bulghur was probably still used as much as bread in the areas to which wheats are native. Beans were much more important in Egypt than in Mesopotamia. Dates and milk seem to have comprised virtually the sole food in some desert oases. India had its own crops, as well as Middle Eastern and southeast Asian staples, and very early plant-immigrants from Africa, such as sorghum, millets, and watermelon.

To improve on a sometimes bland diet, herbs and some spices in the Near East, and spices in India, became exceedingly important. Most, if not all, of them appear to have been used first for medicinal or nutritional reasons, and only later become integral to culinary art. Thus fenugreek, for example, was an important food in some areas around Mesopotamia, declining to spice status.137 Apiaceous fruits like caraway, cumin, fennel, and dill “seeds” were used for their carminative and digestive effects, desirable indeed to control flatulence in a diet with a high percentage of beans. Herbs like oregano and tarragon were used for medicinal values. Even lettuce may have been cultivated first as a medicinal herb. The wild form is too bitter for a staple vegetable; the Romans believed that wild lettuce induced sleep, probably because of its milky, opium-like sap.

In the late Persian Empire and early Islamic period, a considerable growth in agriculture took place. Irrigation greatly expanded and its sophistication improved. At least in the Diyala plain and neighboring areas of Mesopotamia, irrigation seems to have reached its apogee in the terminal Sassanian period, reviving to almost or quite as high a point during the ’Abbasid Period, and declining thereafter due to wars that wiped out the works and allowed waterlogging and salt buildup.¹³⁸ In the early Islamic period, many crops from southeast Asia and India came via the connection from Western India to the Gulf and Arabian Sea states. Rice and sugar became widespread, while eggplants, coconuts, mangoes, lemons, limes, taro, cotton, and the like flourished. Watermelons and sorghum from Africa, expanded their range and even entered China.¹³⁹ Thus although the Mongol conquerors of the mid-thirteenth century found a system already in decline from its great days,¹⁴⁰ the Middle East was still a major agricultural power and a brilliantly innovative source of foods and food technologies. These they naturally adopted and disseminated.

Seljuq¹⁴⁵ and Mamluk Turks, like the Umayyads and, ’Abbasids before them, although remaining true to older indigenous traditions, encouraged the development of cosmopolitan court cultures. They included uniform traditions of cuisine which the Turks spread throughout the Middle East. This development culminated in the generalized Middle Eastern food-ways of the late Middle Ages as described from the cookbooks of the era by Peter Heine and others.¹⁴⁶ Their principal characteristics are as follows:

Another aspect of Medieval Arabic cuisine, breads and breadmaking is described in detail by M. M. Ahsan. He records an incredible variety of breads made from millet, rice, barley, or wheat, although wheat bread was preferred and recommended by Muslim physicians. The two main varieties of bread were al-khubz al-huwwara and al-khubz al-khashkar, the former made from a fine white flour and the latter from coarse, whole grains. Then as now, people preferred the quality and texture of the white bread. Milling was done at home by women in rural areas but by commercial mills in the cities. Most baking was also done commercially, even of dough kneaded at home. Bread came in all shapes and sizes, sometimes in a bulbous loaf, more often as a kind of waffle or a flat-bread. Extremely thin, wide breads baked in a tannur were known as awraq al-riqaq, “flat bread leaves,” or simply riqaq. Breads could be prepared plain or stuffed with honey, sugar, ground or whole almonds, mastic or other flavors and sweets. Khushknanaj, for example, a bread of Persian origin, was made from white flour into which sesame oil was worked, and was stuffed with ground almonds and a scented sugar, combined using rose water. Akras Mukallala was a loaf bread made from dough combining flour and a scented paste of ground pistachios and a syrup. After baking loaves were glazed with scented sugar dissolved in water. Khubz al-Abazir was made from dried dates, shelled sesame seeds, roasted poppies, rose water, and either almonds or pistachios. Another special kind of bread was glazed with borax (bawraq) specially imported from Lake Van in Armenia for the purpose. Some popular breads were named after their inventors or the baker who first baked them.¹⁶⁴

In these books recipes, not food lore, are the direct focus, with sufficient information provided so that foods described can be prepared more or less from the descriptions given alone, provided that one has a basic knowledge of the cooking traditions which the recipes represent. Arabic cookbooks also provide considerable information about cooking techniques, kitchens and kitchen implements, about individual foodstuffs, and in many cases, about the medicinal properties of foods. Some, like the YSCY, even provide specific recipes for medicinal foods designed to cure this or that condition.¹⁶⁷

Chronologically therefore, the cookbook as we know it today was clearly an Arab invention and while the Chinese equivalents may have been independently derived, and the cookbook thus independently invented in China, it is highly suspicious that cookbooks begin to appear there just after the establishment of the Mongol empire, suggesting a West-East diffusion of at least the idea of the cookbook. That more than the idea may have been involved is, however, clear from detailed comparison of the content of slightly earlier or contemporary Arab cookbooks with the YSCY.

¹These are located in Japanese libraries and were not available for examination. See Ishida Mikinosuke, “Inzenseiyō ni tsuite,” Shisen 15 (1959): 40–58.

²These fragments, which became available too late to be used extensively in this study, have been published in the series Chung-kuo ku-tai pan-hua ts’ung-k’an by the Shang-hai ku-chi ch’u-pan she (erh-pien, Shang-hai, 1994), along with a new reproduction of the 1456 edition which is used as one basis for the text of the YSCY provided below. That little or nothing was changed in making the 1456 edition is clear not only from a comparison of the surviving Yüan pages with their equivalents in the Ming edition (contents are identical other than more detailed Yüan illustrations) but also, according to Herbert Franke (unpublished letter of 29 April, 1986 to PDB), from the Yüan printing practices evident in a number of places in the text, for example, in both the author’s and Yü Chi’s prefaces to the Ming edition, e.g., the beginning of a new line “whenever the emperor or an imperial ancestor or a term relating to the emperor occurs…” This practice, he goes on, “… is compatible with a Yüan print, and not with a Ming one. It would be unusual to respect the imperial rules of typography of a former dynasty unless the later edition is a retraced newly cut block print of an earlier—in this case, Yüan edition.” I would like to offer thanks to Prof. Franke for sharing the results of his research on the history of the YSCY with us.

³We are grateful to Teresa Wang for bringing the Li edition to our attention as we were completing our translation. By and large Li’s interpretations of the text agree with our own. But there are two areas of significant disagreement: Botanical and zoological identification of some YSCY materia dietica et medica and interpretation of the text’s non-Chinese terminology. Most of the differences in botanical and zoological identification are due to obsolete terminology and classification systems in use in the People’s Republic of China when Li wrote his book and his many typographical errors and misspellings. None of these differences is serious. Li also differs in a few species and sub-species identifications. Identification of plants and animals mentioned in early Chinese sources is always difficult since traditional Chinese botanical and zoological terminology is often ambiguous, and precise equation of Chinese and Western nomenclature is not always possible. A huang-kua 黃瓜, “yellow melon,” for example, is a cucumber in much of China but a zucchini on Taiwan. Li generally chooses to follow the standard reference works, which by and large reflect modern, all-China usage, and to make broad, generic identifications within a greater context of Chinese cultural tradition. We usually do so as well but opt for species and sub-species most common in the north, or in Mongolia, when a choice must be made between similar plants or between closely related species, carefully following the valuable evidence provided by YSCY illustrations. In most cases our differences with Li are trivial. In others the present authors and Li take radically different points of view reflecting radically different assumptions regarding the YSCY and the foods and food sources described in it. Li, for example, seeing the YSCY as a more Chinese document than we do, translates the rather vague Chinese term we translate as “acorn” as “kumquat.” The term does mean that in the south but not in the north whose usage the YSCY overwhelmingly reflects. Kumquats would in any case be quite out of place in this section of the text. There are other serious misidentifications in Li’s edition. Li, for example, calls the unidentified “Muslim green” azurite. “Muslim green” is a term for azurite, but the YSCY’s “Muslim green” is clearly a plant, possibly mint. It is unfortunately not illustrated. In a few cases, identifications are highly uncertain and Li’s guess is as good as ours. We can do no more than justify our choices. Caution is always necessary in any case since Hu Szu-hui and his collaborators were never as precise in their terminology as their modern interpreters would like. Thus we have identified many YSCY names to the genus or even the family (only), where Li gives a particular species.

Otherwise, our main difference with Li come in regard to Mongol, Turkic, Iranian, and other names, words, titles, and phrases. Here we have the benefit of better available reference works, and have taken the liberty to differ (usually silently) with Li on these matters. This should in no way be taken as a criticism. Li’s edition is excellent, important and valuable, and we welcome it. It adds to the growing body of research on an important text. The last word on these matters has yet to be said, and Li and others will no doubt find much to add to our own efforts.

⁴We are indebted to Françoise Sabban for bringing this new translation to our attention. It appeared too late to be used in writing this book. See the review by Ohase Ariki in Vesta, No. 16 (July, 1993): 49.

⁵Most of this material is translated in full in Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics (Berkeley, 1986): 213ff.

⁶Partially translated in Unschuld, 1986: 217.

⁷Donald Harper in a letter of 13 January, 1997 (to PDB), suggests the translation “dietetics” for our “doses and foods.” This is also possible but we prefer “doses and foods” to avoid any possibility of overtranslation. It is not entirely certain that the Medieval Chinese possessed a concept of dietetics similar to our own.

⁸In Chinese the term translated beneficent here, shen 神, is properly a kind of god but which, in contrast to kuei 鬼, is a good spirit, thus the translation here. “Godly immortals” would be an alternative but would not confer the idea that the spiritual power in question is for the good, not evil.

⁹Partially translated in Unschuld, 1986: 218.

¹⁰Compare the listing of the YSCY’s contents in Unschuld, 1986: 216–18.

¹¹On this concept as it relates to Arabic medical and dietary texts, see Manfred Ullmann, Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh, 1978), 24. By “erratic blocks” Ullmann means extraneous, heterogeneous textual elements that are plugged into another text often without regard to context or the fact that such materials may even contradict information included elsewhere. In the Arabic world such elements were often apt quotations and selections from classics of Greek medicine, on occasion from bad translations. In addition to obvious examples such as the “Doses of the Immortals,” a patchwork of quotations from various Taoist macrobiotic classics, much of chüan 3 also appears to be comprised of such “erratic blocks.” The materia dietica discussed often has very little to do with the rest of the book. We would suspect that the various sections on “prohibitions” include a sub-stantial amount of such materials as well. Some of the sources for these and other sections have been identified by Li in Li, 1988.

¹²See the complete translation of this preface in the text below. Compare Unschuld, 1986: 215–6. On Yü Chi, see Magnus Michael Kriegeskorte, “Yu Ji (1272–1348), Ein Literaten-Beamter unter der Mongolenherrschaft” (Inaugural-Dissertation, zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde, vorgelegt der Philosophischen Fakultät der Rheinischen Friederich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn, 1984).

¹³Ch’ang Buralgi was the son of Ch’ang Ch’iao-chu 常咬住, a chief officer of the Mongol emperor’s table, and came from an old North Chinese aristocratic family long associated with the Mongols. Buralgi most likely inherited his post from his father. (We are grateful to Herbert Franke for his help in identifying Ch’ang Buralgi and his family.)

¹⁴On this important figure, see now: Paul Ratchnevsky, Cinggis-khan, sein Leben und Wirken, Münchener oastasiatische Studien 32 (Wiesbaden, 1983). See also Paul D. Buell, “The role of the Sino-Mongolian frontier zone in the rise of Cinggis-qan,” in Studies on Mongolia, Proceedings of the First North American Conference on Mongolian Studies, ed. Henry Schwarz (Bellingham, 1979), 63–76.

¹⁵On the history of Chin see M. V. Vorob’yev, Chzhurchzheni i gosudarstvo tszin’ (Moskva, 1975).

¹⁶On these events and the dating of the collision with the xwarazm-shah, see Paul D. Buell, “Early Mongol expansion in Western Siberia and Turkestan (1207–1219): a re-construction,” Central Asiatic Journal XXXVI (1992): 1–2: 1–32.

¹⁷On early Mongol relations with the Muslim world see the monograph by Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, Hsi-yü-jen yü yüan-ch’u cheng-chih (Taipei, 1966).

¹⁸See Paul D. Buell, “Tribe, qan and ulus in early Mongol China: some prolegomena to Yüan history,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1977), 60ff.

¹⁹The best account is W. Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion, translated by Mrs. T. Minorsky, 4th. edn. London, 1977, 393–427. On the Xwarezmian empire see Z. M. Buniyatov, Gosudarstvo khorezmshakhov-anushteginidov (Moskva, 1986).

²⁰An ulus was a nomadic patrimony comprised of traditional rights of control largely over people and sometimes, but less frequently, over territories (the institution became “territorialized” over time). Each of the Mongol princes, sons of Cinggis-qan, was given his own personal holdings with which to form an ulus, and out of these patrimonies the later successor qanates grew. The Mongolian empire as a whole was also an ulus, a “great” or “original” ulus (Middle Mongolian: yeke Mongqol ulus). On the institution of the ulus see Buell, 1977.

²¹On the development of bureaucratic institutions under Ögödei see Buell, 1977: 82ff. On the tribal side of the Mongolian regime see also Paul D. Buell, “Kalmyk tanggaci people: thoughts on the mechanics and impact of Mongol expansion,” Mongolian Studies VI (1980): 41–59. The later development of Mongolian empire under the last qan, Möngke, is reviewed in Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism (Berkeley, 1987).

²²It should be made clear in this context that the culture of Islam, by this period, was no longer just the culture of Arabia, although this was still the basis of traditional Islamic religion, but represented the entire assimilated legacy of the classical worlds and pre-Islamic Middle East as well. The Muslim World, although more disparate geographically, and strongly multi-cultural, represented, no less than China, and in no ways inferior, a “great tradition” of world cultural development of the profoundest implications. As an introduction to achievement and intermediating role of the Islamic world see John R. Hayes, ed., The Genius of Arab Civilization, Source of Renaissance, 2nd. edn. (Cambridge, 1983).

²³See the discussion in Buell, 1977: loc. cit., and in Buell, 1980.

²⁴See J. R. S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford, 1988).

²⁵See E. A. Wallis Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan Emperor of China (London, 1928).

²⁶The great fountain of beverages that was a centerpiece of qan Möngke’s court was designed by the Parisian goldsmith William Buchier. See William of Rubruck in Anastasius van den Wyngaert, ed., Sinica Franciscana, vol. I: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum saec. XIII et XIV (Quaracchi-Firenze, 1929), 276–7. See also Leonardo Olschki, Guillaume Boucher, a French Artist at the Court of the Khans (New York, 1969).

²⁷On the interaction between Mongolian, Chinese and other institutions in the emergence of Mongol China see Buell, 1977.

²⁸On the size of Mongolia’s population in the early 13th. century see N. Ts. Munkuyev, “Zametki o drevnikh Mongolakh,” In Tataro-Mongoly v Azii i Evrope: Sbornik Statey, ed. S. L. Tikhvinskiy (Moskva, 1970), 352–81.

²⁹See Paul D. Buell, “Sino-Khitan administration in Mongol Bukhara,” Journal of Asian History XIII (1979): 2: 121–51.

³⁰On the role of Mahmud Yalawanci, a Xwarezmian long in effective charge of the Mongol administration in China, see Buell, 1977: 82ff.

³¹See Wladyslaw Kotwicz, “Les Mongols promoteurs de l’idée de paix universelle au début du XIII^e siècle,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny 16 (1950): 428–34.

³²The elite status of Qubilai’s guard (Kesikten) emerges clearly from Marco Polo’s descriptions:

But know that the Great Kaan, to maintain his grand state, has himself guarded by 12,000 horsemen; and they are called Quesitau and they are called Quesitau, which means in French, “knight loyal to the grand overlord.” And he does not do so out of any uncertainty he feels before anyone, but for his great exaltation. And the 12,000 men have four captains; for each is captain of 3,000 men, and these 3,000 take up position in the palace of the overlord for three days and three nights. And they eat and drink at the same place. And later they leave and the others appear so that there are guarding the great Kaan 3,000 horsemen at all times. And they are called Questiaus, as has been said, up to 12,000. And subsequently the shift begins again and it goes thus for the entire year. (M. G. Pauthier, ed., Le Livre de Marco Polo (Genève, 1978), 277–9).
But know truly that the Great Kaan has appointed 12,000 of his men who have the name Quesitan, as I have said to you before. And on each of these 12,000 has been bestowed thirteen robes all different the one from the other. That is to say, that all 12,000 are of one color, and then another 12,000 of another so that the robes are different from the one from the other in thirteen manner of colors. And the robes are adorned with stones and pearls and with other noble things very richly and of very great value. Simultaneously the Great Kaan bestows with each robe on each of the 12,000, which is thirteen times during a year, a very beautiful chain belt of gold and of great value. And also [he bestows] a pair of boots of camut, which is bourgal [camel leather], very skillfully worked with silver thread, so that, when they are wearing this clothing, they appear like a king, each of them. And it is established which robe they should wear during each of thirteen festivals. And the grand overlord too has thirteen robes similar to those of his barons; that is, in color, but these are more noble and more rich and of much greater value. Thus all this requires such treasure that they may scarcely count or number it; so that he can always dress in the same color as his barons which are [as if his] companions. (Pauthier, 1978: 297–8. Brackets mark textual additions by Pauthier).

On the imperial bodyguard establishment of the Mongol emperors of China see also Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty (Cambridge, 1978), 33–50 and passim.

³³For a description of the Yüan government as conceived in Chinese terms see D. M. Farquhar, The Government of China under Mongolian Rule, A Reference Guide, Münchener ostastasiatische Studien 53 (Stuttgart, 1990). See also his “Structure and function in the Yüan imperial government,” in J. D. Langlois, Jr., ed., China under Mongol Rule (Princeton, 1981), 25–55.

³⁴By Hu’s time much of the personal service establishment of the Mongol emperor of China, while remaining, at the level of the court, institutionally part of the bodyguard establishment, had been reorganized as part of a Chinese-style Hsüan-hui yüan 宣徽院, “Bureau for Imperial Household Provisions.” Its Yüan shih description clearly shows its origin in the bodyguard of the Mongol emperors:

The Hsüan-hui Yüan, rank 3A, has charge of supplying the emperor’s food. All things connected with various substances such as grains, meat, liquors, and vegetables, all business connected with banquets for imperial relatives and guests and provisions of the various princes and bodyguard and of the ger-ün ke’ü [hereditary household slaves] and the ch’ai-fa 差法 [allotments] to be received by Mongolian myriarchs and chiliarchs are all under the control of the Hsüan-hui Yüan. The herding of [imperial] herds, yearly provision of fodder and feed, establishment of prices for sheep and cattle, recovery and return of various buralgi matters, and the three administrators: Shang-shih Chü 尚食局, “Administrator Presenting Food to the Emperor,” the Shang-yao Chü 尚藥局, “Administration Presenting Drugs to the Emperor,” and the Shang-yün Chü 尚醞局, “Administration Presenting Fermented Beverages to the Emperor,” are under its control. As for all the internal and external offices under its control, they choose the people they wish to use (Yüan shih, Chung-hua shu-chü edition, 87, 2200).

Noteworthy among other offices under the Hsüan-hui Yüan was a Chinese-style Office of the Chief Physician (T’ai-i Yüan 太醫院, rank 2A, charged with preparing and presenting “the emperor’s medicinal substances” and all “subordinate medical functions” (Yüan shih 88, 2220). Under its control was a Kuang-hui szu 廣惠司, charged with “preparing and presenting Muslim (Hui-hui 回回) drugs and preparations to the emperor in order to treat members of the bodyguard and poor people in the capital” (Yüan shih 88, 2221). The association of the two offices was certainly no accident, as can be seen from substantial Islamic and Western influence upon the YSCY itself. For a late Yüan unofficial listing of the various subordinate agencies of the Hsüan-hui yüan see also T’ao Tsung-i, Cho-keng lu (Taipei, 1970), 21, 307–8. The Cho-keng lu version of Hsüan-hui yüan organization includes a “Sugar Office” (Sha-t’ang chü 砂糖局), not mentioned above.

The word buralgi (buralki) is discussed by Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo (Paris, 1959–73), I, 112–4, and by G. Doerfer, Türkische und Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (Wiesbaden, 1963–75), I, 213–5. Its original meaning of the word was lost property left behind when the ordo (tent palace) of the qan and associated elements moved to a new site. The word is probably a Mongolian pronunciation of Turkic bulargi, “pertaining to what is, what exists, is found,” although there is dispute about the etymology. Buralgi was placed in the charge of a bularquchi, who by the early fourteenth century did a great deal more than clean up the imperial campsite and had become the primary administrator of the ordo-court as a whole. On the bularquci in the Yüan period see Buell, 1977: 192–3. See also Pelliot, loc. cit., Doerfer, loc. cit. Other officers in the emperor’s household establishment with old Mongolian titles included the bawurci, “table manager” (see Doerfer, 1963–75: I, 202–5), the ide’eci, “imperial waiter” (Doerfer, 1963–75: I, 188–9), and the dara[sun]ci, “dispenser of liquor” (Doerfer, 1963–75: I, 326–7). On the similar bodyguard officers, often there with Turkic titles, of the Il-qans see the excellent and detailed discussion in Ismail Hakki Uzunçarsili, Osmanli devleti teskiâtina medhal (Ankara, 1970), 188ff.

³⁵An edition of this important work has now been published privately in Hong Kong by Chiang Jun-hsiang 江潤祥 (Y. C. Kong), along with the results of initial research on the text by an international team of scholars. A copy, kindly provided by Igor de Rachewiltz, unfortunately arrived too late to be used in this study and a few remarks only are used, some terminology, and even linguistic forms (with an evident palatalization possibly indicating Central Asian intermediation of some words) but what impress one most at first glance is how Arabic the work is and how unassimilated the content of the recipes are. This fact makes the Hui-hui-yao-fang quite different in character from the YSCY where a conscious effort towards accommodation with Chinese tradition has been made.

³⁶See Joseph Needham, Ho Ping-yü, Lu Gwei-djen, and Wang Ling, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part VII: Military Technology; The Gunpowder Epic (Cambridge, 1986), 41ff and passim.

³⁷See J. Rall, “Zur persischen Übersetzung eines Mo-chüeh, eines chinesischen medizinischen Textes,” Oriens Extremus 7 (1960): 2: 152–7.

³⁸On Chinese influence on Renaissance painting see Bernard Berenson, Essays in the Study of Sienese Painting (New York, 1918); Gustave Soulier, Les influences orientales dans le peinture toscane (Paris, 1924); I. V. Pouzyna, La Chine, l’Italie et les débuts de la Renaissance, Paris: les Editions d’Art et d’Histoire, 1935; Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Le Moyen Age fantastique, Antiquités et exotismes dans l’art gothique (Paris, 1955). On Chinese influence (and actual Chinese paintings) in Iran see O. Grabar, “The Visual Arts, 1050–1350,” in J. A. Boyle, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968), 626–58 (see 652–7); J. M. Rogers, ed., The Topkapi Saray Museum: The Albums and Illustrated Manuscripts (Boston, 1986), 114–56; Jill Sanchia Cowen, Kalila wa Dimna: An Animal Allegory of the Mongol Court (New York and Oxford, 1989); and E. J. Grube and Eleanor Sims, eds., Between China and Iran (London, 1985). There is now a large literature on the topic.

³⁹See Berthold Spuler, Die Mongolen in Iran, 3rd. edn. (Berlin, 1968), 88ff and passim; J. A. Boyle, “Dynastic and political history of the Il-Khans,” in J. A. Boyle, 1968: 303–421 (see 374ff).

⁴⁰See B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica, Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran, Field Museum of Natural History Publication 201, Anthropological Series Vol. XV, 3 (Chicago, 1919).

⁴¹On this see Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange, Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Contributions in American Studies 2 (Westport, 1972).

⁴²This section is largely based upon the forthcoming Paul D. Buell and Angelo Anastasio volume “Mongols and the outside world.” See also B. Vladimirtsov, Le Regime Social des Mongols, translated from the Russian by Michel Carsow (Paris, 1948); D. Gongor, Khalkh Tovchoon, vols. 1–2 (Ulaanbaatar, 1970–1978); A. M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 44 (London, 1984), 15–84; and Tim Ingold in his Hunters, Pastoralists and Ranchers, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 28 (Cambridge, 1980).

⁴³In a few very arid areas the horse was replaced by the camel. Reindeer were also herded on the fringes of the steppe, by ancestors of the modern Tsaatan.

⁴⁴Pastoralism remains very important for the Mongols today but the coming of the railways and world markets, and even Mongolian industry, has now made an urban way of life possible for many.

⁴⁵The “Forest Peoples” (including the ancestors of the steppe Oyrat and Kirghiz), mentioned in the Secret History, seem to have included such groups, to cite but one example.

⁴⁶The situation, of course, was altogether different in a contact situation. See Buell, 1977, 1980.

⁴⁷Chapters 12–3. All Secret History translations are from the text published by Louis Ligeti as Histoire Secrète des Mongols, Monumenta Linguae Mongolicae Collecta I (Budapest, 1971).

⁴⁸Compare Rubruck’s description (in Wyngaert, 1929: 276–7) of qan Möngke’s fountain of beverages:

Mangu himself has a great court at Caracarum near the walls of the town. It is closed off by a brick wall, just as priories of monks [are closed off] among us. There is a large palace there in which Mangu holds his drinking parties twice a year, once around Easter when he passes by there, and once in the summer when he returns. And the second drinking party is the greater since on that occasion there convene at his court all the nobles from anywhere as far away as two months’ journey. And on that occasion he bestows attire and favors and shows his great glory. There are there many other houses, long as barns, in which are stored his food provisions and treasures.

At the entrance of this great palace, because it would be unseemly to introduce skins with milk and other drinks, master William of Paris made for him a great silver tree, at the roots of which are four silver lions each having a channel spurting out white mare’s milk. And four pipes are led into the tree leading up to the summit of the tree and the tops of the pipes are bent back downwards and over each of them is a gilded serpent, the tails of which envelop the trunk of the tree. And from one of these pipes pours forth wine, from another caracosmos, that is, clarified mare’s milk, from another boal, that is, a honey drink, and from another rice beer, called terracina. And for each drink there has been prepared at the foot of the tree its own silver vessel for receiving the drink, between the four pipes. At the very top master William has made an angel holding a trumpet and below in the tree he made a crypt in which a person can hide. And a channel ascends through the middle of the heart of that tree as far as the angel. At first master William made a bellows but it did not provide enough wind. Outside the palace there is a room in which the drinks are stored and there stand there officers ready to pour them whenever they hear the angel trumpeting. And the tree has silver branches and leaves and fruits.

Therefore, whenever there is need of drink, the master of the waiters calls to the angel to sound the trumpet. Whereupon, the one who is hidden in the crypt, hearing this, blows strongly into the channel leading to the angel, and the angel puts the trumpet to its mouth and the trumpet sounds extremely loudly. Where-upon, the officers in the room, hearing this, each of them pours out his drink in the appropriate channel and the pipes pour them from above and below into the vessels prepared for that purpose, and thereupon the waiters draw them and bear them through the palace to the men and women.

⁴⁹On Mongol drinking ritual see Rubruck in Wyngaert, 1929: 175–6; the Cho-keng lu, 21, 314; and F. W. Mote, “Yüan and Ming,” in K. C. Chang, ed., Food in Chinese Culture (New Haven and London, 1977), 195–257 (206–7).

⁵⁰Pauthier, 1978: 279–82.

⁵¹Also playing a role in such feasts was, no doubt, a magical reaffirmation of ownership and control on the part of the ruler, since to eat his food meant to accept his special position. Here Mongolian and Chinese customs were remarkably the same. On the Altaic side, see the discussion in S. Ye. Tolybekov, Kochevoye obshchestvo Kazakhov, v XVII-nachale XX veka, politiko-ekonomicheskiy analiz (Alma-ata, 1971), 120–25.

⁵²For a description of similar Turkic food rituals see Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia (Boston and New York, 1907), 117–21.

⁵³Part of the material here is also summarized in Paul D. Buell, “Pleasing the palate of the qan: changing foodways of the imperial Mongols,” Mongolian Studies XIII (1990): 57–81. We are indebted to Angelo Anastasio for sharing materials on Mongolian foods and foodways collected by him over the years with us.

⁵⁴The various products of the sheep and how they are used by the Mongols are discussed in detail in Damrinbazar, et. al., Mongolyn ideen tovchoo (Ulaanbaatar, 1991), 10ff, 38–63. See also Adalsteinsson, 1991. Adalsteinsson points out in his article that sheep’s milk is an excellent source of Vitamin C. Icelanders have been known to subsist entirely on sheep’s milk, other sheep dairy products, and dried fish, with little ill effect. Scurvy was known in Medieval and recent Iceland only in coastal areas where sheep’s milk was not commonly available and where fish was almost the entire means of subsistence.

⁵⁵On these and other Mongolian horse foods see John Masson Smith Jr., “Mongol campaign rations: milk, marmots and blood?,” in Turks, Hungarians and Kipchaps: A Festschrift in Honor of Tibor Halasi-Kun, ed. Pierre Oberling (Washington, DC, 1984), 223–228; and Damrinbazar, 1991: 12–3, 71–2, and passim.

⁵⁶See Damrinbazar 1991: 11–2, 72–3, and passim.

⁵⁷See Damrinbazar 1991: 8–10, 64–70, and passim. William of Rubruck (Wyngaert, 1929: 179) contains the following description of Mongol processing of cow’s milk:

They first extract the butter from cow’s milk and boil it until it is perfectly decocted and subsequently they store it in rams’ paunches which they keep for that purpose. And they do not put salt into the butter which nevertheless does not putrefy on account of the great degree to which it has been decocted. And they keep it for the winter. The buttermilk which remains after the butter [has been removed] they allow to sour, as sharp as it can be. And they boil that and it is coagulated by the boiling. And that coagulated buttermilk they dry in the sun, and it is thereby made hard, just like the slag of iron and they store the dried buttermilk in sacks for the winter. During the winter when they lack for milk, they place this bitter coagulated milk, which they call grut, in a hide bag and pour on top hot water and they shake the bag strongly until the coagulated milk is dissolved in water which is made totally acid by this. And this water they drink in place of milk. They take the greatest care lest they drink pure water.

⁵⁸On their use as sources of milk see Damrinbazar, 1991: 8 and passim.

⁵⁹Damrinbazar (Damrinbazar, 1991: 120ff) lists the following wild animals as common sources of wild meats: Deer, reindeer, elk, antelopes, wild sheep, wild and mountain goats, wild camels, kulan and other wild asses, the wolf, the lynx, the snow leopard, the leopard, the bear, wild swine, hares, tarbaqan, badgers, bustards, geese, snipe, the lam-mergeyer, pheasants, quail, partridge, cranes, duck, and swans. See also below in the text.

⁶⁰On agriculture, hunting and fishing in twelfth and thirteenth century Mongolia see Iwamura Shinobu, Mongoru shakai keizai shi no kenkyū (Kyōto, 1968), 29–93.

⁶¹The term cicigina may refer to both P. anserina and to the Mongolian jujube, Zizyphus vulgaris var. spinosus (in the YSCY, for example). The latter, however, has an inedible root and cicigina here must be P. anserina.

⁶²Secret History, chapters 74–5. We are indebted to Igor de Rachewiltz for help in identifying these plants and animals (unpublished letter of 19 October, 1990 to PDB). See also BNMAU shinzhlekh ukhaany akademi, Ulsyn ner tom’yoony komissyn medee, no 89–90 (Ulaanbaatar, 1973); and no 96–7 (Ulaanbaatar, 1974); and B. Rinchen, Mongol ard ulsyn ugsaatny sudlal’ khelniy shinzhleliyn atlas, vols. 1–2 (Ulaanbaatar, 1979). See now also U. Ligaa, Mongol orny ashigt urgamal, vol. 1 (Ulaanbaatar, 1978).

⁶³Rinchen, 1979.

⁶⁴Most of these plants are described and illustrated in Üretii urgamal-un jirugtu toli (Kököqota, 1976).

⁶⁵See Rinchen, 1979: 93–141. This list may be compared with (Inner Mongolian) gathered vegetable, fruits and berries listed and discussed in Damrinbazar, 1991: 149ff. They include: wild leeks, a variety of onions, nettles, Cynanchum, Chinese yams, lily bulbs and seeds, Chenopodium, Sonchus brachyotus, the persimmon, Pteridium, Hemerocallis minor, Senecio campestris, mushrooms, Suaeda spp, dock, Imperata cylindrica, wild Chinese flower pepper, ephedra, wild cabbage, wild celery, Cistanche deserticola, Rheum Franzenbachii, Pugionium cornutum, Ulmus pumilla, Agriophyllum arenarium, apples, mulberry fruits, red currants, hawthorn fruits, gooseberries, pears, bird cherries, acorns, chestnuts, apricots, pinenuts, wild grapes, wild jujubes, elm fruits, wild rose hips, walnuts, fruit of Hippophae rhamnoides, nitraria fruits, Securinega suffruticosa fruits, and oleaster fruits.

⁶⁶On kumiss (and camel kumiss, Turkic shubat, plus those made from many other milks) see Kumys Shubat (Almaty, 1979). See also [Ya.] Tsevel, Mongolyn tsagaan idee, Studia Ethnographica I, 6 (Ulaanbaatar, 1959). William of Rubruck (in Wyngaert, 1929: 177–8) provides the following account of Mongol kumiss-making:

Cosmos, that is, mares’ milk, is made in this manner: they extend a long rope over the ground attached to two posts and to that cord they tie the foals of the mares they want to milk around the tenth hour. Thereby the mothers stand near their foals and allow themselves to be milked peacefully. And if any is somewhat ungovernable, a man then takes the foal, puts it to the mare, and allows it to suck a little. The foal is then withdrawn and the milker takes its place.

And when a great quantity of milk has thus been collected, milk which is as sweet as cow’s milk, while it is fresh, they pour it into a great hide bag or sack and they begin to shake it with a piece of wood made for that purpose. It is as large as a man’s head farther in and hollow below. And as they shake it very quickly, it begins to boil just like new wine and to sour like things fermenting. And they shake that until they remove the butter.

They then taste it and when it is moderately bitter, they drink it. It bites the tongue like a harsh wine while it is being drunk. And after a person ceases to drink, there remains a flavor on the tongue of almond milk. And it provides a great deal of internal human joys and it even intoxicates weak heads. It provokes urine a great deal.

⁶⁷On traditional Turkic and Mongolian religion see Jean-Paul Roux, La religion des Turcs et des Mongols (Paris, 1984), and specifically on the Mongols of the imperial period N. Pallisen, Die alte Religion des mongolischen Volkes während der Herrschaft der Tschingisiden, Micro Bibliotheca Anthropos 7 (Posieux, Freiburg, 1953). On Mongol concepts of the soul resident in the bone and marrow of an animal see the discussion in Roux, 1984: 160ff.

⁶⁸Šülen is carefully distinguished in the Secret History from a simple “drink” [umdan] as in the following passage from chapter 124 dealing with the functions of the qan’s bodyguard, members of which also prepared his food:

When [Temüjin] had become Cinggis-qahan, Ögölei-cerbi, the younger brother of Bo’orcu, put on a quiver [i.e., became a member of the qan’s bodyguard]. Qaci’un-toqura’un put on a quiver. Jetei and Doqolqu-cerbi, the two brothers, put on a quiver. When Önggür, Söyiketü-cerbi and Qada’andaldurqan, the three of them, spoke, saying:

Let us not allow [your] morning drink

[umdan] to be too little,

let us not allow [your] evening drink

to be neglected,

they became stewards [bawurcin]. When Degei spoke, saying:

Making a wether of two years into šülen,

let me not allow it to be too little in the morning.

Let me not be late with it at night.

Having [your] spotted sheep herded,

let me fill a cart [with them].

Having [your] yellow sheep herded,

let me fill up a pen [with them].

I have been gluttonous and bad.

Having [your] sheep herded,

let me eat their rectums,

Degei caused the sheep to be herded.

Šülen is also mentioned in chapters 192, 214, 229, 279, and 280, nearly always in connection with duties of members of the bodyguard.

⁶⁹C. Raymond Beazley, ed., The Texts and Versions of John de Plano Carpini and William de Rubruquis (Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1967), 57.

⁷⁰Beazley, 1967: 52.

⁷¹This should in theory be a “black” variety of Panicum miliaceum.

⁷²Chao Hung, Meng-ta pei-lu, in Wang Kuo-wei, ed., Meng-ku shih-liao szu chung (Taipei, 1962), 447.

⁷³P’eng Ta-ya 彭大雅, Hei-ta shih-lüeh 黑韃事略, in Wang, 1962: 475–6. The textual notes are by Hsü T’ing 徐霆, who also visited the steppe, and has comments to P’eng’s basic text.

⁷⁴Simon de Saint-Quentin, Histoire des Tatares, ed. Jean Richard (Paris, 1965), 40–1. Note that a number of lines of the passage given above are excerpts from the travelogue of John of Plano Carpini. Simon and his brothers have added additional detail from the hearsay of other eyewitnesses to Mongol daily life, including some dubious claims of cannibalism of enemies.

⁷⁵See the Yüan shih, 118, 2924 (biography of Alaquš-digit-quri). The chiu 酒 in question must have been grape wine, known to have been produced in those days in Inner Mongolia probably by the Önggüt or some other Turkic people resident in the area. See Buell, 1977: 253.

⁷⁶Beazley, 1967: 52.

⁷⁷Beazley, 1967: 52.

⁷⁸This transition from flour flavored broth to tsampa seems already to have been made by the time of William of Rubruck, who was in Mongolia only a few years after John of Plano Carpini:

…And we found him [Möngke] with a few members of his household drinking liquid tam, that is a food made from dough, for the comfort of his head. (Wyngaert, 1929: 267).

Elsewhere he also notes:

…And thus our food was millet with butter, or dough cooked in water with butter, or sour milk and unleavened bread cooked in the dung of oxen or of horses. (Wyngaert: 271–2).

⁷⁹The making of qara-kumiss is described by William of Rubruck as follows:

They likewise make caracosmos, that is, black cosmos, for the use of the great lords, as follows: The milk of mares does not coagulate. The rule is that the milk of no animal in the stomach of whose young rennet is not found coagulates. Rennet is not found in the stomachs of foals so mares’ milk does not coagulate. They thus shake the milk so that everything which is dense in it properly moves to the bottom, just like lees of wine, and that which is pure remains on top and is as if a milk whey or just as white must. The lees are very white and are given to the servants and they greatly promote sleep. The lords drink the clear liquid, and it is certainly a very agreeable drink and of good efficaciousness. (Wyngaert, 1929: 178).

⁸⁰On the history of distilling in East Asia see Joseph Needham, Ho Ping-yü and Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part IV: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Apparatus, Theories and Gifts (Cambridge, 1980), 55–162.

⁸¹See Ho Ping-ti, “An estimate of the total population of Sung-Chin China,” in Études Song in memoriam Étienne Balázc, ed. Françoise Aubin (Paris, 1970), 3–53. Ho’s figures understate the total population of the era since they rely upon official figures of numbers of tax-paying households, less than the total number of households. They also do not include Tangut Hsi-hsia, which may have been densely populated during the period to which Ho’s figures refer.

⁸²Vorob’yev, 1975: 147ff.

⁸³On the history of gunpowder weapons see now Joseph Needham et al., 1986.

⁸⁴See Joseph Needham, and Wang Ling, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 4: Physics and Physical Technology, part II: Mechanical Engineering (Cambridge, 1965), 435–532. For a divergent view see also David S. Landes, Revolution in Time, Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, 1983).

⁸⁵On China’s early achievements in maritime technology and exploration see, as an introduction, Joseph Needham, Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 4, Physics and Physical Technology, part III: Civil Engineering and Nautics (Cambridge, 1971). See also J. V. G. Mills, trans., Ma Huan Ying-yai sheng-lan: “The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores,” Hakluyt Society Extra Series No. XLII (Cambridge, 1970).

⁸⁶Else Glahn, “Chinese building standards in the 12th century,” Scientific American 244 (1988): 5: 162–73.

⁸⁷See the groundbreaking article by Robert Hartwell, “A cycle of economic change in imperial China: coal and iron in Northeast China, 750–1350,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient X (1967): 1: 102–59.

⁸⁸As an introduction, see Francesca Bray, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 6: Biology and Biological Technology, part II: Agriculture (Cambridge, 1984) and the highly useful volume by Hsu Cho-yun, Han Agriculture, Han dynasty China II, ed. Jack L. Dull (Seattle, 1980).

⁸⁹See Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies, Technology and Development in Asian Societies (Oxford, 1986).

⁹⁰The discussion here summarizes E. N. Anderson, The Food of China (New Haven, 1988).

⁹¹The world’s oldest cultivated panicled millet or proso (Panicum miliaceum) is from Greece, 6000–5000 BC (Ho Ping-ti, The Cradle of the East (Hong Kong and Chicago, 1975), 240. It first appeared in China in the late Neolithic or early civilized period and assumed particular importance under the Chou whose legendary ancestor was Hou-chi 后稷, “Emperor Proso,” or even “Emperor Foxtail Millet,” since the use of the term is a little uncertain. Coming from a drier, cooler area than the Shang heartland they conquered, the Chou may have regarded millet as “their” crop. Both glutinous and non-glutinous millets are mentioned in their songs, and later Chou texts also notice the glutinous as an important brewing grain. It has continued to be. Proso grows farther north and under drier conditions than other “millets,” i.e., small-grained grass crops. It is most popular on the fringes of Inner Asia and remains predominately a crop of the Chinese north. On the early history of millet in China see Chang Te-tzu, “The origins and early cultures of cereal grains and food legumes,” in David N. Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese Civilization (Berkeley, 1983), 65–94.

⁹²Ho Ping-ti’s, “The origins of Chinese agriculture,” unpublished paper prepared for the Fifth International Conference on the History of Science in China held in 1988, has the most up-to-date discussion as of this writing. On the different zones of botanical development in ancient China see also Li Hui-lin, “The domestication of plants in China: ecogeographical considerations,” in Keightley, 1983: 21–63.

⁹³An Zhimin, “Archaeological research on Neolithic China,” Current Anthropology 29 (1988): 5: 753–59. At Hung-shan 紅山 in Manchuria, a large town with impressive sculpture has been found, and may date as early as the fourth millennium BC. The site reveals a culture as impressive as any in East Asia at the time. The people of Hung-shan were almost certainly not Chinese. They may have been related to the ancestors of modern Koreans in view of early agricultural developments now found elsewhere in the Korean peninsula and the likelihood, based upon present evidence, that the Koreans are indigenous to Korea and not intrusive invaders. See Sarah Milledge Nelson, The Archaeology of Korea (Cambridge, 1993). It now appears that the non-Chinese north must be taken very seriously as a homeland for East Asian agricultural development, but see also Gina L. Barnes, China, Korea, and Japan: The Rise of Civilization in East Asia (London, 1993), 108ff, and passim.

⁹⁴See Ho: 1975, and Ho: 1988. see also Chang, 1983: 65–94 (see pages 80–1 in particular). Nothing is more characteristic of China than soybeans, yet the soybean was clearly a latecomer to Chinese civilization. It was not known until well into the Chou Dynasty, when it first appears as an item received from the “Jung 戎 Barbarians” in the northwest (Ho, 1975). Wild soybeans (Glycine max. var. ussuriensis) are native to this area and points southwest, along the hills behind Peiching. They are also widely scattered throughout northeast and north China, but usually in weedy situations where they are likely to be weeds or hybrids with the cultivated crop.

⁹⁵An, 1988.

⁹⁶An, 1988.

⁹⁷The only general study is William Watson, Cultural Frontiers in Ancient East Asia (Edinburgh, 1971). See also A. P. Okladnikov, Yakutia before Its Incorporation into the Russian State, Anthropology of the North, Translations from Russian Sources 8, ed. Henry N. Michael (Montreal and London, 1970).

⁹⁸See Chang, 1983: 77–9.

⁹⁹See in particular Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston, 1962), 255ff. Early relations of China with the north are the subject of a monograph by Jaroslav Prusek, Chinese Statelets and the Northern Barbarians, 1400–300 BC (Dordrecht, 1971).

¹⁰⁰For a survey of early permanent settlements in what is now the Mongolian People’s Republic see D. Majdar, Mongolyn khot tosgony gurvan zurag (ert, dundad üye, XX zuuny ekh) (Ulaanbaatar, 1970).

¹⁰¹See Anderson, 1988: 36ff.

¹⁰²The following west Asian contributions to Chinese agriculture are listed in Laufer (1919): Alfalfa, grapes, the pistachio, the walnut, the pomegranate, sesame and flax, coriander, the cucumber, the (western) chive, bulb onion and shallot, safflower, jasmine, henna, the balsam-poplar, manna, asafoetida, galbanum, oak-galls, indigo, black pepper, sugar, myrobalans, “golden peaches,” mustard, the date palm, spinach, sugar beets, lettuce, ricinus, the almond, the fig, the olive, cassia pods, carob, the narcissus, the balm of gilead, the watermelon, fenugreek, nux-vomica, the carrot and various aromatics including spikenard, storax, myrrh, putchuck and styrax benjoin. Most of these had long been in China by the time the YSCY was written, others, e.g., watermelon, were recent introductions.

¹⁰³On all this, see as an introduction Bray, 1984, and Hsu, 1980.

¹⁰⁴See as an introduction Laufer, 1919, and Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (Berkeley, 1963). It is anticipated that F. Sabban will also deal with this subject in her forthcoming translation of the Ch’i-min yao-shu, a text which has some early descriptions of wheat flour foods from the West. See also below in chapter 2.

¹⁰⁵On the many western contributions to life in Medieval China see, as an introduction, Schafer 1963; and Laufer, 1919.

¹⁰⁶See Laufer, 1919.

¹⁰⁷Wheat seems to have come to China in the late Neolithic Period or at the beginning of civilized times, around 2000 BC. China lacks more primitive forms and the only wheat known there (except for rare curiosities) is bread wheat, a complex hybrid that is the hexaploid result of millennia of interbreeding species of Triticum and Aegilops. It first appeared only after farming had become highly developed and sophisticated in the Neolithic Near East. Like the Near East, a great variety of both primitive and modern forms occurs in the western Turkistan and Afghanistan, where cultivation may go back at least 7000 years. Since these areas transmitted wheat to China, the coming of wheat to China must have been much delayed if we are to account for the paucity of Chinese varieties. The primary reason was probably the deserts of Turkistan and Chinese resistance to wheat cultivation due to its established culture of millets. Predynastic finds are rare, if indeed they are not contaminated samples. Shang Dynasty texts mention wheat/barley (confused in Chinese terminology), and by Chou it was a major crop. But its great importance in China, where it is now the second most important crop, dates from the Han Dynasty, when superior milling technology was introduced from Central Asia. The wheat grain, “berry” in agricultural jargon, though it is not a berry, is very hard. North China’s varieties in particular are typically relatively hard wheats. Thus, unlike millet, it cannot be cooked into a gruel or mush, and cooking it into any state of edibility requires much water and fuel, both scarce in north China. Milling into flour was necessary if wheat were to be at all important, and the coming of efficient, economical milling allowed its spread. Even so, wheat did not displace millet from first place in the north until long after Han. Early T’ang still was a millet culture; late T’ang writings speak of millet and wheat as both important, but wheat somewhat a luxury. The Sung “green revolution” seems to have led wheat to its final victory, but millet remained important. By the time of the YSCY, wheat may have been dominant over millet, but this is by no means clear. Note that the YSCY gives far more importance to millet in the listings of chüan 3, although not in the recipe sections. Wheat was being grown in rotation with millet (wheat in winter, millet in summer) in the southern parts of north China, where the climate was favorable. Sorghum and the minor grains were, then as now, grown on land too poor for wheat, or, in some cases, as summer rotation crops. After this time, its cultivation continued to expand. On wheat in China see, as an introduction, the relevant discussions in Ho, 1975; Bray, 1984; and Sterling Wortman, ed., Plant Studies in the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC, 1975).

¹⁰⁸Anderson, 1988: 50ff.

¹⁰⁹See Françoise Sabban, “Un savoir-faire oblié: le travail du lait en Chine ancienne,” Zibun: Memoirs of the Research Institute for Humanistic Studies No. 21 (1986): 31–65 (henceforth Sabban, 1986a).

¹¹⁰See Schafer, 1963.

¹¹¹These recipes are translated in Paul D. Buell, “Mongol Empire and Turkicization: the evidence of food and foodways,” in Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David Morgan, eds., The Mongol Empire and its Legacy (Amsterdam, 1999): 200–23. On the Chü-chia pi-yung shih-lei see the discussion in Nakamura and Satō, 1978: 26ff.

¹¹²We are indebted to personal communications (to ENA) from Dru Gladney, William Jankowiak, and Nancy Peterson Walter on modern West Chinese foods. For a sampling of recent recipes see: Ch’en Jui, Hsi-pei ts’ai-hsi ch’ü-t’an (Lan-chou, 1985).

¹¹³See Stephen P. West, “Cilia, scale and bristle: the consumption of fish and shellfish in the eastern capital of the Northern Sung,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47 (1987): 2: 595–634.

¹¹⁴See Peter J. Golas, “Rural China in the Song,” Journal of Asian Studies 39 (1980): 2: 291–325; Ho Ping-ti, “Early ripening rice in China history, Economic History Review 9 (1956–7): 2: 200–18; and Philip C. C. Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988 (Stanford, 1990).

¹¹⁵Golas, 1980; Huang, 1990.

¹¹⁶The foundation for this was laid in the first regional pen-ts’ao 本草, Chi Han’s 嵇含, Nan-fang ts’ao-mu chuang 南方草木狀. See Li Hui-lin, Nan-fang ts’ao-mu chuang, A Fourth Century Flora of Southeast Asia (Hong Kong, 1979).

¹¹⁷The edition used is the Chu-fan chih chiao-chu, ed. Feng Ch’eng-chün (Taipei, 1967). See also Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, trans., Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chï (Chicago, 1966).

¹¹⁸See Almut Netolitzky, Das Ling-wai tai-ta von Chou Ch’ü-fei, eine Landeskunde Südchinas aus dem 12. Jahrhundert, Münchener ostasiatische Studien 21 (Wiesbaden, 1977).

¹¹⁹Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, vols. 1–2 (Amsterdam, 1975), II: 201–2.

¹²⁰Anderson, 1988: 57ff.

¹²¹Pauthier, 1978: 495–6. For more information about the many Hang-chou restaurants and specialty foods of the era see also Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250–1276, Trans, from the French by H. M. Wright (London, 1962), 133ff. See also Michael Freeman, “Sung” in K. C. Chang, 1977: 141–76 and Anderson, 1988.

¹²²Yule and Cordier, 1975: II: 187.

¹²³For a Ming dynasty celebration of the West Lake and its rich cultural tradition see T’ien Ju-ch’eng, Hsi-hu yu-lan chih-yü (Shanghai, 1958).

¹²⁴These samples (from pages 34, 27, 28) are from Teresa Wang and Eugene N. Anderson, “Ni Tsan and His ‘Cloud Forest Hall Collection of Rules for Drinking and Eating’.” Petits Propos Culinaire, 60 (1998): 24–41.

¹²⁵The “riced bamboo” is “bamboo shoots (cut up like) grains.” Another typically Chinese cookbook of the era is Chia Ming’s Yin-shih Hsü-chih (Peiching, 1988), from 1368. Chia Ming was a minor official of Yüan and moderately educated. Living to a purported 106, he was asked by the first emperor of Ming to write down his secrets of longevity. This he did, and they consist mostly of recommendations about food, water and cooking fires (see Mote, 1977: 227–34). Like the YSCY, his book is full of recommendations for moderation and of specific taboos on particular climate or weather, etc. These were loosely grounded in the yin-yang 隂陽 and Five Phases system, but, like the YSCY’s, seem to be a mass of empirical and magical lore somewhat extended and loosely held together by the logic of Chinese medicine. The framework is the same, but the specific content is different: The recommendations and counter indications are not the same as the YSCY’s. Also, Chia Ming is much more concerned with water quality (he lived in Che-chiang, where the water was more polluted). His fascination with fires is unique as far as we know. Many pages are devoted to recommending particular fires or firewoods for particular purposes, a bizarre lore not found in the YSCY. The recommendations are magical rather than related to actual heat or flavor properties of the fires. His long tables of food-stuffs cover most common Chinese Foods, including a vast number not in the YSCY. Not surprisingly, he does not mention specifically Near Eastern items like almond, pistachio and most of the spices. No rosewater, saffron, mastic or asafoetida in his Che-chiang!

¹²⁶The interpretations given here are strongly influenced by Thomas F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, 1979), and the essays in Hayes, 1983. See also Ernest Gellner, Muslim society, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology Number 32 (Cambridge, 1981).

¹²⁷See, as an introduction to the growing field of the history of Islamic science and technology, Seyyid Hossein Nasr, Islamic science, an Illustrated History (Westerham, 1976).

¹²⁸See, as an introduction, A. M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100 (Cambridge, 1983). See also the same author’s earlier article “The Arab agricultural revolution and its diffusion, 711–1100,” Journal of Economic History 34 (1974): 8–35 and more recently his “A Medieval green revolution: new crops and farming techniques in the early Islamic World,” in The Islamic Middle East, 700–900, ed. A. L. Udovitch (Princeton, 1981), 29–58.

¹²⁹On this community and its culture, as seen from Cairo, see S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vols. 1–5 (Berkeley, 1967–1988).

¹³⁰See the article “Ahl al-kitab”in H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers, eds., Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden and London, 1961), 16–7.

¹³¹See Jack Harlan, Crops & Man (Madison, 1975) and Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World (Cambridge, 1988).

¹³²Zohary and Hopf, 1988.

¹³³Gluten, a special protein molecule, has the property of forming long strings when wet. Relatively abundant in wheat, it forms the tight mesh of strands that traps carbon dioxide gas, allowing bread to rise. It also permits the dough to be made into long thin strings, networks, twists, and sheets thin enough to read through. (This was the test of good strudel dough, and some Chinese wrapping doughs are almost as thin.) Other grains do not have it in significant amounts. (“Glutinous” rice, better called “sticky rice,” has a form of the starch amylose that becomes sticky when cooking.) To develop gluten, flour is made into dough. The gluten develops after about twenty minutes in the wet dough. During this time, the dough can be kneaded, mixed and stretched. Gluten, like other proteins, makes up a higher percentage of hard red wheats than of soft white wheats. Therefore the former are preferred for bread, which needs to have a good deal of gluten to hold the bases that lets it rise, while the latter are preferred for delicate products like cakes. Pasta requires the most gluten-rich flour of all, durum. Gluten is an “incomplete” protein, not containing all the amino acids necessary in the human diet. However, other proteins in the wheat grain do contain them all.

¹³⁴Zohary and Hopf, 1988: 126.

¹³⁵It should be noted that Chinese sesame oil is quite different from Middle Eastern since the Chinese toasted the seeds, giving a richer, dark colored oil, strongly tasting of sesame.

¹³⁶See the discussion of this important Islamic crop in Watson, 1983: 20–3.

¹³⁷Zohary and Hopf, 1988: 110.

¹³⁸Robert McCormick Adams, Land Behind Baghdad (Chicago, 1965).

¹³⁹Watson, 1981, 1983. One suspects that, as with irrigation, Watson’s “green revolution” began in pre-Islamic times. He gives little credit to pre-Islamic cultures, and gives suspiciously late dates for several introductions from south Asia.

¹⁴⁰See Watson, 1983.

¹⁴¹See Ann Gunter, “The art of eating and drinking in Ancient Iran,” Asian Art 1 (1988): 2: 7–52.

¹⁴²From all of this, it is easy to separate out the specific source of the YSCY’s main Near Eastern component: Mesopotamia and the Persian region. This is the specific area where wheat, chickpeas, meat, and pastas form the basis of dishes; where light spicing with cinnamon, apiaceous “seeds,”vinegar and onions is the rule where minced lamb is basic to cuisine, and often used in stuffings; and where tree crops are relatively unimportant. See, e.g., Alice Bezjian, The Complete Armenian Cookbook (Fair Lawn, 1983); Arto der Haroutunian, Middle Eastern Cookery (London, 1982); Julia Najor, Babylonian Cuisine (New York, 1981); Claudia Roden, A Book of Middle Eastern Food (Harmond-sworth, 1970). Farther north into Turkey lie the lands of bulghur, fruits, and heavy consumption of vegetables; farther south into Arabia lie lands of heavier spicing, different grain mix, and dates. Westward, the Levant and Egypt used more legumes and tree crops. From sheer proximity and from the course of trade and conquest routes, as well as from historic connections (Laufer, 1919; Schafer, 1963), we would expect to find the Yüan court closest to the Persia-Baghdad axis and this is exactly what we do find. The most striking difference between YSCY and Irano-Mesopotamian cooking is the vastly greater importance of dairy products in the latter but this difference may be more apparent than real. The Mongol elite, and many of their courtiers, consumed vast amounts of dairy products (as William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, and Sung loyalist poet Wang Ylian-liang 汪元量, see below, all attest). Sabban reminds us that milk products were important even to north Chinese at the time. See Sabban 1986a. See also Anderson, 1988 and Paul Wheatley, “A note on the extension of milking practices into Southeast Asia during the First Millennium AD,” Anthropos 60 (1965): 577–90. The popularity of dairy products may in fact have been so obvious to Hu Szu-hui that he saw little need to say much about it. Hu may also have been unaware of the food value of dairy products or found difficulty in evaluating them in terms of Chinese food theory. Another more pronounced difference between the cuisine of the YSCY and that of Medieval Iraq is the absence in the former of the marvels of Medieval Arab-Persian cooking: the rich stews of fruit and meat, the huge pies, the dishes with ten or twelve spices, the complicated pasta dishes, the subtleties of all kinds. Hu and the Mongols seem to have found simplicity more healthy and appealing. The only really complex dishes are the Indian ones and the bizarre and unclassifiable Qurim [Feast] “Bonnets,” which has Arabo-Persian analogs and is as close as Hu comes to the high art of that cuisine.

¹⁴³While most general contributions of Turks to Middle Eastern foodways are the product of Ottoman times, except in those areas directly occupied by Turks, the fifteenth century cookbook Kitab al-Tabakhah includes at least two purely Turkic dishes, tutmaj (the Tutum ash of the YSCY) and salma, “a coin-shaped Turkish soup noodle.” See Charles Perry, “Kitab al-Tabakhah: A Fifteenth Century cookbook,”Petits Propos Culinaires 21 (November 1985): 17–22. For a recent Turkish view of Turkic contributions to Middle Eastern Foodways see Vural Yighit, “Türk-Islam kültürürün, gida bilim ve teknolojisinin gelismesine katkilari,” Proceedings of the II. International Congress on the History of Turkish and Islamic Science and Technology, vols. 1–3 (Istanbul, 1986), I, 183–95. See also Paul D. Buell, 1999.

¹⁴⁴See the discussion in Buell, op. cit.

¹⁴⁵On the history of the Seljuqs see Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey, Trans. from the French by J. Jones-Williams (London, 1968).

¹⁴⁶On Medieval Arabic and Turkic cooking see, as an introduction, the following:

Peter Heine, Kulinarische Studien, Untersuchungen zur Kochkunst im arabisch-islamischen Mittelalter, mit Rezepten (Wiesbaden, 1988).
-------, Weinstudien, Untersuchungen zu Anbau, Produktion und Konsum des Weins im arabisch-islamischen Mittelalter (Wiesbaden, 1982).
M. M. Ahsan, Social Life under the Abbasids, Arab Background Series, ed. N. A. Ziadeh (London and New York, 1979), 76–164 on food.
A. J. Arberry, “A Bagdad cookery book,” in Islamic Culture 13 (1939): 21–47, 184–214.
Bernard Rosenberger, “Les pâtes dans le monde musulman,” Medievales 16–7 (1989): 77–98.
M. Rodinson, “Recherches sur les documents arabes relatifs à la cusine,” Revue des Etudes Islamiques 17 (1949): 95–165.

On modern Middle Eastern cooking see also, in addition to cookbooks already cited above:

Tess Mallos, The Complete Middle East Cookbook (Sydney, 1979).
Ahmad-Chabir Ahmadov, Azarbajchan Kulinarijasy (Baku, 1986).
A. Bagdasarov, A. Vanukevich, and T. Khudaishukurov, Turkmenskaya Kulinariya (Ashkhabad, 1981).
Kazakhskaya Kukhnya (Almaty, 1981).
Arif Tursunov, and Karim Makhmudov, Uzbekskiye Blyuda (Tashkent, 1982).
Ayla Esen Algar, The Complete Book of Turkish Cooking (London, 1985).
------, Classical Turkish Cooking, Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen (New York, 1991).
Najmieh Batmanglij, Food of Life. A Book of Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies (Washington, DC, 1990).
Elisabeth Rozin, Ethnic Cuisine, the Flavor Principle Cookbook (Lexington, 1983).

See also the appendix “Grain Foods of the early Turks” by Charles Perry in this volume.

¹⁴⁷See Watson, 1983: 9–14. See appendix II by Charles Perry. Perry sees the popularity of many of these grain foods among cosmopolitan Arab cooks as a sign of an on-going Turkicization which later culminated in the new international Middle Eastern cuisine of Ottoman times. See C. Perry, “Three Medieval Arabic cook books” (manuscript).

¹⁴⁸See Watson, 1983: 62–5.

¹⁴⁹See Watson, 1983: 66–9.

¹⁵⁰See Watson, 1983: 51–4.

¹⁵¹See Watson, 1983: 55–7.

¹⁵²See Watson, 1983: 58–61.

¹⁵³See Watson, 1983: 42–50.

¹⁵⁴The association with the Turks may not be accidental. Charles Perry, for example, notes in a letter of 2 January, 1994, to PDB that pilafs appear late and then only in the eastern Arabic world in the thirteenth century cookbooks Kitab al-At’imah al-Mu’tada and Kitab al-Wulsa ila al-Habib. Since pilafs are not mentioned in the tenth century Kitab al-Takibh, and were unknown in Muslim West until much later (there are no pilafs in the two thirteenth century Spanish Arabic cookbooks) he postulates that the pilaf was an eastern Arabic, “post tenth century innovation.” Thus the era in which pilafs first became part of mainstream Middle Eastern cooking is conspicuously the very era when the Turks first appeared and became the dominant. Is the pilaf just one more example of the Central Asian love of boiled foods and the influence of this tradition beyond the steppe?

¹⁵⁵See Watson, 1983: 15–9.

¹⁵⁶As an excellent introduction to the history of sugar and sweets, and how they have changed the world, see Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985). On Arab diffusion of sugar cane growing and processing technology see also Watson, 1983: 24–30.

¹⁵⁷Charles Perry, “Medieval Near Eastern rotted condiments,” paper prepared for the Oxford Symposium 1987: Taste. Murri was also prepared by adding additional flour to budhaj. See Heine, 1988: 55.

¹⁵⁸See Perry, 1987.

¹⁵⁹Both of the above examples from A. J. Arberry, 1939: 189–91. Both are from the Arabic food category nashif, in which the end product is usually a pilaf or “dry soup.”

¹⁶⁰Heine, 1988: 116. The recipe is from the Kitab al-Tabikh wa-islah al-aghdhiyat al-ma’qulat of Muhammad al-Muzaffar b. Nasr b. Sayyar al-Warraq. This is possibly the earliest surviving Arabic cookbook. On the dating see Heine, 1988: 14–15.

¹⁶¹Recipes from Arberry, 1939: 191–2, 194–5.

¹⁶²Heine, 1988: 123. The recipe is also from al-Warraq.

¹⁶³Recipes from Arberry, 1939: 205–6, 210.

¹⁶⁴See M. M. Ahsan, 1979: 87–9.

¹⁶⁵This, of course, is not to deny the importance of Greek and Roman traditions represented by Athenaeus and Apicius respectively and other authors whose works have not survived. See as an introduction John Edwards, The Roman Cookery of Apicius, Trans. and Adapted for the Modern Kitchen, London: Rider, 1984. We also now know that the Medieval Iraqis built upon traditions stretching back to the Bronze Age. See the discussion in Peter James and Nick Thorpe, Ancient Inventions (New York, 1994).

¹⁶⁶See Charles Perry, “Three Medieval Arabic Cook Books.”

¹⁶⁷The most prominent early Arabic cookbook to include medicinal recipes is the Wusla ila l-habib fi wasfi l-tayyibati wa-l-tib, of Kamal ad-Din b. al-Adim, extensively studied by M. Rodinson in Rodinson, 1949: 117ff. See also the discussion in Perry, “Three Medieval Arab cook books.” Al-Warraq, includes a section on “the beneficial and harmful properties of various foods” See Ahsan, 1979: 77. A work devoted entirely to the theme of food and medicine is Mahmud ibn Ilyas al-Shirazi’s Tuhfat al-Hukama, See the discussion in Cyril Elgood, A Medical History of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate, revised edition (Amsterdam, 1979), 312–13. Ibn Ilyas was a confident of Rashid al-Din, the great minister of the Il-qans. On Arabic dietary medicine proper see the discussion in Ullmann, 1978: 97–106.

¹⁶⁸Gwinner, 1988.

¹⁶⁹See Heine, 1988: 14–6.