Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes: Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean (Islamic History and Civilization, 88)

Book info: Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes: Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean (Islamic History and Civilization, 88) (Hardcover, 648 pages) – Brill, 2011. Language: English.

This monograph is a pioneering study and reconstruction of the food cultures and menu of medieval Cairenes and their daily practices, customs and habits in relation to food and eating, through the analysis of a large corpus of historical texts in Arabic. Paulina B. Lewicka explains what, why and how the inhabitants of medieval Cairo ate, and how food shaped their everyday lives, against the background of several relevant social, political and economic factors and circumstances. Editorial Reviews Review "Lewicka undertook a difficult project in this book, but the result is an excellent book on medieval foodways; her synthesis of previous research and her own original research create a convincing portrait of the foodways of medieval Cairo. Indeed, Lewicka's book is a model of how the historical foodways of a culture can be reconstructed, and this makes her book of interest to anyone who works with foodways, historical foodways, or historical folklife studies more generally." – David Elton Gay, in: About the Author Paulina B. Lewicka, PhD (2000) in Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Warsaw, is a professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on various aspects of the cultural and social history of the medieval Middle East and, more particularly, the Mamluk and the early Ottoman period, such as interfaith and gender relations, foodways and the medical cultures of Egypt and Syria, including self-treatment manuals in the Arabic language as sources for the study of the social and cultural contexts of the art of medicine in premodern Egypt.