Description
Book SynopsisInsatiable Appetite: Food as Cultural Signifier in the Middle East and Beyond explores the cultural ramifications of food and foodways in the Mediterranean, and Arab-Muslim countries in particular. The volume addresses the cultural meanings of food from a wider chronological scope, from antiquity to present, adopting approaches from various disciplines, including classical Greek philology, Arabic literature, Islamic studies, anthropology, and history. The contributions to the book are structured around six thematic parts, ranging in focus from social status to religious prohibitions, gender issues, intoxicants, vegetarianism, and management of scarcity. Contributors are: Tarek Abu Hussein, Yasmin Amin, Kevin Blankinship, Tylor Brand, Kirill Dmitriev, Eric Dursteler, Anny Gaul, Julia Hauser, Christian Junge, Danilo Marino, Pedro Martins, Karen Moukheiber, Christian Saßmannshausen, Shaheed Tayob, and Lola Wilhelm.
Trade Review“This text ultimately excels in approaching an often misunderstood region from a novel perspective, providing fresh insights into old questions, and is recommended for scholars and graduate students working on the history or anthropology of food, or interested in alternative histories of the Mediterranean, Ottoman, Arab, and Islamic worlds.” J. Alkorani, University of Toronto in: CHOICE connect, Volume 57, No.9 (2020). “Sollte das Genre der kulturwissenschaftlichen kulinarischen Erforschung in nächster Zeit noch weiter blühen – ich sehe keine gegenteiligen Tendenzen – werden sich zukünftig dafür Interessierte aus dem Band Insatiable Appetite viele fruchtbare Anregungen holen können.“ Bert G. Fragner, The Institute of Iranian studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in: Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Volume 111 (2021).
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors Introduction Part 1 Food and Social Status Social Dining, Banqueting, and the Cultivation of a Coherent Social Identity The Case of Damascene ʿUlamaʾ in the Late Mamluk and Early Ottoman Period Tarek Abu Hussein Eating Up Food Consumption and Social Status in Late Ottoman Greater Syria Christian Saßmannshause Part 2 Prohibitions and Prescriptions from Classical Islam to the Present Peeling Onions, Layer by Layer A Journey with Two Bulbs through the Islamicate World and Its Literature Yasmin Amin Beyond Ḥalāl The Dos and Don’ts of Syrian Medieval Cookery in a Twelfth-Century Market Inspector Manual Karen Moukheiber Molecular Halal Producing, Debating, and Evading Halal Certification in South Africa Shaheed Tayob Part 3 Food, Gender, and the Body in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Food, Happiness, and the Egyptian Kitchen (1900–1952) Anny Gaul Food, Body, Society al-Shidyāq’s Somatic Experience of Nineteenth-Century Communities Christian Junge Part 4 Intoxication: Wine and Hashish in Literary Sources and Beyond The Symbolism of Wine in Early Arabic Love Poetry Observations on the Poetry of Abū Ṣakhr al-Hudhalī Kirill Dmitriev Hashish and Food Arabic and European Medieval Dreams of Edible Paradises Danilo Marino The “Abominable Pig” and the “Mother of All Vices” Pork, Wine, and the Culinary Clash of Civilizations in the Early Modern Mediterranean Eric Dursteler Part 5 Abstention: Vegetarianism in the Mediterranean and Europe from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century An Ontological Dispute in the Writings of Porphyry of Tyre The Discussion of Meat Eating as a Battlefield for Competing Worldviews in Antiquity Pedro Ribeiro Martins The Missionary and the Heretic Debating Veganism in the Medieval Islamic World Kevin Blankinship A Frugal Crescent Perceptions of Foodways in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Vegetarian Discourse Julia Hauser Part 6 Managing Scarcity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Some Eat to Remember, Some to Forget Starving, Eating, and Coping in the Syrian Famine of World War I Tylor Brand Local Histories of International Food-Aid Policies from the Interwar Period to the 1960s The World Food Programme in the Middle East Lola Wilhelm Index
