Tracing the historiography of Arab cuisine Nawal Nasrallah wrote in 2012: “It is unfortunate that most of the medieval Arabic culinary sources, both books and manuscripts, remain an asset only to food historians with Arabic language skills” (in Kyri W. Claflin and Peter Scholliers (eds), Writing Food History: A Global Perspective, London and New York, 2012, p. 145). To remedy this disadvantage she had already in 2007 published her award-winning translation of Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq's tenth-century Kitāb al-ṭabīkh as Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens (Brill 2007/2010) and now, ten years later, continued with the anonymous fourteenth-century book Kanz al-fawā’id fī tanwī ʿ al-mawā’id, (edited in 1993 by Manuela Marín and David Waines) and translated as Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table, a Fourteenth-Century Egyptian Cookbook, also already an award-winning translation.
Nawal Nasrallah's translation is in fact much more than a mere translation of the edited text from 1993. She has had access to all of the five manuscripts known to exist, including the one housed at Gotha Research Library in Erfurt which was unavailable to the editors in the late 1980s. It proved to be valuable in amending and clarifying the edited text, and in filling a folio missing from the other manuscripts. Unfortunately it contains only the first ten chapters. The translator really left no stone unturned trying to find further medieval source material to amend, corroborate and clarify the text. Furthermore, her expertise in matters of the culinary art has saved her from plain dictionary renderings which are frequently not exact enough or do not correspond with the intentions of the chef/compiler.
The structure of Treasure Trove follows the example of the Annals, beginning with an exemplary Introduction containing a thorough discussion of the available manuscripts of the text; an overview and material history of daily life in pre-modern Egypt; and its food culture. This is followed by the translation in 23 chapters with 830 recipes (pp. 59–454); encyclopaedic glossaries covering everything from classes of food to weights and measures; and, in conclusion, an Appendix of modern adaptations by the translator of 22 recipes with delicious illustrations.
Why fourteenth century? Why Egyptian? An anonymous text such as Treasure Trove, without dates of writing or copying, demands close internal reading for evidence. Among the personal names mentioned is, in recipe 507, Aḥmad al-Tīfāshī (1184–1253) from Tunisia, but who died in Cairo. The book could not have been written before his lifetime. Nawal Nasrallah has further shown that Ibn Mubārak Shāh's (1403–58) short booklet Zahr al-ḥadīqa fī al-aṭʿima al-anīqa (38 folios) is in fact a case of abridged borrowing. His lifetime gives us the limit after which the Treasure Trove could not have been written. That leaves us with the fourteenth century, grosso modo.
Manuela Marín and David Waines, in their edition, believe there was good reason for holding that the Treasure Trove was compiled in Egypt, probably at some time during Mamluk rule. Nawal Nasrallah agrees, and considers that it presents comprehensive coverage of the Egyptian cuisine of the time. According to Nasrallah, the text is replete with Egyptian colloquialism, quite natural for a text pertaining to daily life. Further denominators involving ingredients and particular dishes abound. Taking all this into consideration puts Egyptian provenance beyond reasonable doubt. But culinary art is syncretism per se and the Treasure Trove is the sum of the cuisines documented in Annals plus the “flotsam” found on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Nile on the way from Baghdad to Cairo.
Nawal Nasrallah's culinary itinerary is now taking her further West, to North Africa and al-Andalus – the Near West in Allen James Fromherz's apposite phrase. Her translation of Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī’s (c. 625–692/1227–1293) Fuḍālat al-khiwān fī ṭayyibāt al-ṭaʿām wal-alwān is ongoing (personal communication, 22 May 2019). Ibn Razīn was born in Murcia but Christian progress in the peninsula forced him into exile in 645/1247–48 to North Africa, first to Ceuta and later to Tunis, where he died. It was in exile that he wrote his Fuḍāla (see Peter Heine, “Kochen im Exil – Zur Geschichte der arabischen Küche”, ZDMG 139, 1989, 318–27), combining North African influences with those of his beloved al-Andalus and, what is somewhat surprising, also keeping a constant dialogue with the Middle Eastern (mashriqī) tradition as known to him. In fact, according to Manuela Marín we can define Andalusian cuisine as a regional variant of the imported Oriental (“Cuisine d'Orient, Cuisine d'Occident”, Médiévales 33, 1997, 9–21; see also María Martínez, La Murcia andalusí (711–1243). Vida cotidiana, Helsinki, 2015, pp. 95–107). Once the translation of Fuḍāla is complete, Nasrallah will, arguably, have translated the three socio-historically most rewarding cookbooks of the Arabic-speaking world.
While Nasrallah's trail from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the Atlantic might end with Fuḍāla, the culinary tradition she has followed continued, seaborne, further to the West – (the Far West?) – from the Canary Islands to the New World. The syncretization continued but that is another story. Anyway, after her two superb finished translations we can say that lacking Arabic-language skills is no longer a valid excuse for not knowing about the culinary art of the Arab–Islamic culture.
