Fish, Sheep and Goats as Food in Pre-modern Muslim Societies

            Two main articles by the late F. Viré, the first deals with Fish and the second with Small Livestock, and is principally devoted to sheep and goats. That branch of zoology specializing in the study of fishes, ichthyology, has enumerated more than 100,000 species worldwide. Over 3,000 names of fish species have been recorded for various regions of the Middle East ranging from the western Mediterranean basin to the Indian Ocean. Some names are curiously linked in Arabic to Biblical personages such as the sultan Ibrahim (Sultan Abraham) which is the red mullet. Others, like the grey mullet, bore the less distinguished name buri, well known from the Black Sea and throughout the Mediterranean. The famous 14th-century Moroccan globetrotter, Ibn Battuta, mentions in his travel account that the fish was something of a delicacy caught at Damietta in the Egyptian Delta and sold abroad. Recipes for the preparation of buri are found in cookbooks of Egyptian and North African provenance. On the other hand, Viré recounts the medieval Middle Eastern view that buri could cause gastric disorders resulting at times in major complications. According to yet other views, however, the flesh of buri together with honey might serve as a treatment for cataracts or again, when eaten with fresh onions, could act as an aphrodisiac. This is a graphic example of the way that in the medieval period an edible substance was believed to perform the multiple role of providing bodily nourishment while acting as a possible cure for a bodily disorder and, as with many other edible substances such as the coconut also acted as a sexual stimulant. Viré also touches upon the subject of the religious legal status of fish owing to its prominence in the daily diet.            

            The article on Small livestock covers a major source of the livelihood of both the pastoral nomad and sedentary agricultural populations. A polemic between the partisans of sheep and those of goats had its origins in pre-Islamic times, and continued thereafter, despite the Qur’an’s equal treatment of both and the Prophet Muhammad himself declaring that ‘prophets and just men were pastors of small livestock.’ These animals provided food in several forms from their flesh to fresh milk and its several by-products such as buttermilk, cheese, whey (both to feed lambs and children and used in culinary dishes), fresh and preserved butter. Milk and its by-products were also produced, of course, from larger animals such as the cow and buffalo. Interesting, too, is that among the breeders of small livestock, the wool bearers when sheered, provided exchange currency for foodstuffs such as dates, sugar or flour. In the urban milieu of the leisure class reflected by the culinary manuals, meat dishes were common place. Most often, a recipe does not specify the meat to be used, but the expression ‘take meat and proceed as follows . . .’ is assumed to mean the most popular meat; mutton. Moreover, the fat of the sheep’s tail was used in cooking although olive oil seemed the preferred medium. Nonetheless, according to Viré’s judgement, sheep flesh in the Islamic domains did not achieve the importance it attained in ‘feeding Western Christendom’.