Abū Muḥammad al-Muẓaffar ibn Naṣr ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq (Arabic: أبو محمد المظفر بن نصر ابن سيار الوراق) was an Arab author from Baghdad. He was the compiler of a tenth-century cookbook, the Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh (Arabic: كتاب الطبيخ, The Book of Dishes). This is the earliest known Arabic cookbook. It contains over 600 recipes,[1] divided into 132 chapters.[2]
Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh
The Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh is the oldest surviving Arabic cookbook, written by al-Warraq in the 10th century. It is compiled from the recipes of the 8th and 9th century courts of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. Some scholars speculate that al-Warraq may have prepared the manuscript on behalf of a patron, the Hamdanid prince Sayf al-Dawla, who sought to improve the cultural prestige of his own court in Aleppo as the court in Baghdad had started to decline.[3]
Some recipes in the book, like ʿaṣīda (date-sweetened porridge), come from the relatively simple cuisine of the Arabian Peninsula, but the book also contains recipes for fancy stews with Persian names. There is also an entire chapter about nabaṭiyyāt, hearty stews of 'Nabataean' (Iraqi) origin.[3]
Several partial or full translations in European languages are available:
