ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Playing with Your Food? Marvel, Entertainment, and Deception in Mediaeval Arabic Technical Sources

• In Event: Tried and (Con)tested: Sensory Knowledge and Food Production, 900-1800

English Abstract

Mediaeval Arabic technical literature is rich in information on the manipulation of natural substances used as food and transformed into tools of wonder, entertainment, and illusion to be displayed in social gatherings. The ninth-century scientist and philosopher al-Kindī, in his Alchemy of Food, collects recipes for producing artificial substitutes for various kinds of food prepared without their basic ingredients (e.g., honey without honey). Collections of natural properties (manāfiʿ and ḫawāṣṣ) include instructions for reviving foods that have lost their freshness or for correcting substances that have partially deteriorated (e.g., excessively sour vinegar).
From the 12th century onward, handbooks on entertainment and deception made extensive use of food to evoke astonishment and marvel. These include creative and unexpected grafting techniques, long-term preservation methods that allowed fruit and flowers to be available out of season, and preparations such as perfumed grapes. Their counterparts, the Books of the Inspector of the Market, applied the same technical knowledge to expose commercial frauds committed by vendors of alimentary goods and street food.
These procedures and instructions provide insight into the understanding of the natural world and the technical means for manipulating it. At the same time, they implicitly reveal the theoretical principles underpinning such knowledge—principles that are often left unarticulated in the textual sources themselves. This approach offers a unique perspective for observing the social and material history embedded in the continuum of scientific and technical knowledge, situated between its erudite expressions and forms of ‘street science’.

The research is part of the ERC Consolidator project UseFool: Knowledge and manipulation of nature between usefulness and deception in the Arabo-Islamic tradition (9th–15th century).

Author

• Lucia Raggetti, University of Bologna