WI: Middle Eastern cuisine in timeline without Islam
- Thread starter NibiruMul
- Start date
Wine would certainly remain much more prominent, as would other alcoholic beverages. Iran and the Levantine coast have longstanding winemaking traditions which declined after the arrival of Islam, but certainly didn’t disappear. Persian wine had a prominent place in the culture of Iran both before and after Islam.
Pork, I think, is less likely. My understanding is that consumption of pork was already fairly uncommon in the pre-Islamic Middle East. The notion of pigs as unclean animals not fit to be eaten had already become widespread in the region, so without Islam pork wouldn’t be prohibited but still not commonly consumed.
Pork, I think, is less likely. My understanding is that consumption of pork was already fairly uncommon in the pre-Islamic Middle East. The notion of pigs as unclean animals not fit to be eaten had already become widespread in the region, so without Islam pork wouldn’t be prohibited but still not commonly consumed.
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Alcohol (word is of Arabic origin btw) is the interesting factor to speculate. It never really went away, even in today's salafist-puritanical fueled Islamic world. In a world without Islam, we may see the Middle East develop their own more unique alcoholic brews, instead of consuming stuff from outside. Note that in the Middle Ages, some Muslims consider only alcohol like wine (from grapes) to be forbidden, that things like mead and/or ale are permissable, if frowned upon. Heh, nowadays, that's not an orthodox view. But a POD where beers (perhaps low alcohol content) is the norm among Muslims, we may see Middle East be more prominent beer makers.
Also note that in the past coffee was once considered forbidden by mainstream Islam, called "black wine" and deemed to be "intoxicating" (amusingly the sufis have the opposite view, that coffee helps with prayers particularly late night prayers during Ramadan! I can confirm this is true). Christendom also forbid coffee due to it being a "Mohameddan brew". That both Muslims and Christians later changed their minds is proof that caffeine is the strongest drug in the world!
Pork, as someone mentioned, is out of the question. You'd need a significant POD for that one. More successful long lasting conquest by Alexander the Great in Arabia and the surrounding regions? Did the Greeks really like pork?
Also note that in the past coffee was once considered forbidden by mainstream Islam, called "black wine" and deemed to be "intoxicating" (amusingly the sufis have the opposite view, that coffee helps with prayers particularly late night prayers during Ramadan! I can confirm this is true). Christendom also forbid coffee due to it being a "Mohameddan brew". That both Muslims and Christians later changed their minds is proof that caffeine is the strongest drug in the world!
Pork, as someone mentioned, is out of the question. You'd need a significant POD for that one. More successful long lasting conquest by Alexander the Great in Arabia and the surrounding regions? Did the Greeks really like pork?
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Really outside option: Due to changes in socio-military structure, the Levant and Middle East aren't able to withstand the Mongol Invasions of the 13th century nearly as well, with the OTL Muslim regions largely falling completely under the political control of the Khanates, and ultimately the cultural sway of Central/East Asia in general, and the Yuan Diaspora in particular...
Meaning? Among other things, by the 1680s...Syria has become famous for it's haute dogmeat cuisine.
Meaning? Among other things, by the 1680s...Syria has become famous for it's haute dogmeat cuisine.
Middle East, speacility Syria and Levantine, would are pretty notable wine production areas. Perhaps even on same level as Italy or Spain.
Pork wasn't common food even before arrival of Islam so probably it is not very widespread altough not prohibited. So probably Mid-Eastern cuisine would be quite similar as in OTL, but only just lack of Islamic food restrictions which might had been already at presence on that time.
Why wouldn't? Byzantine probably would be much stronger so it could still stop Mongols assuming that Mongol invasion is not butterflied away.
Pork wasn't common food even before arrival of Islam so probably it is not very widespread altough not prohibited. So probably Mid-Eastern cuisine would be quite similar as in OTL, but only just lack of Islamic food restrictions which might had been already at presence on that time.
Why wouldn't? Byzantine probably would be much stronger so it could still stop Mongols assuming that Mongol invasion is not butterflied away.
Could be, sure! But with enough dice rolls and butterflies, you might get an exotic situation where the Ilkhanate seizes Baghdad intact and peacefully, the Khan marries in to the Byzantine Empire (or, as some scholars later put it, "Abaqa bought Constantinople with Constantinople's money"), resulting ultimately in the major, world-shaking change of...Cyrenian Boodog.
Pork goes bad fast in warm climates where there are more bacteria etc and it is more common the further north you (Odin served it as the finest of meats in Valhalla, which is give me a great mental image of a Muslim warrior in the wrong afterlife). I know the Minoans ate it so presumably the Greeks did too.
Any meat preserve pretty badly on warm climate. One major reason why it didn't become common food in Middle East is that on pig meat is lot of parasites and they couldn't figure how to deal with them.
That said, here in the tropical Philippines, pork is a staple especially for feasts, so I can imagine pork in some regions of the Middle East could remain a dish for kings.
this city will probably not exist or have the same importance as the otl.
now something along these lines is possible with the Mongols demanding a princess in the peace accord.
...which will only make it's seizure that much easier, or that much less catastrophic. Or might get built into a metropolis by someone else:
Above: The Great Statue of Kuan Yu on the Tigris, Baegdaed. The campus of the famed Tsenkher Tuuz Hospitality Academy visible in the background appears over-prominent due to use of telephoto lens.
for all we know the new persian empire kicks the mongols or any empire caused by the climatic change of the time and they never conquer persia
Pork was among the most common preserved meats in the late roman and early byzantine empire especially in anatolia even during the middle empire book of the prefect Pork butchers are mentioned so the byzantine control lasting for potentially longer Pork and sausages would be a thing in anatolia and likely also in the levant.
Pork started out perfectly fine to eat in most of the ancient Near East - the Ancient Egyptians and the Akkadians were fond of the animal's meat. The reasons for why pork became prohibited, which afaik started in the Levante, may have just been that it competed with human food sources at a time when the region was rapidly desertifying (it still is btw). This means that pigs are a big liability for communities, and encourages the keeping of animals we don't compete with for food, like goats.
I was actually under the impression that the idea of pork as an unclean meat originated in Egypt and spread to the rest of the region from there. In any event, it seems pork consumption declined significantly after about 1000 BC despite being widespread up until that point.
I’ve also seen the theory that pigs were displaced by domestic chickens. Pigs were kept in small numbers and fed from a single household’s resources to supply protein for that particular household. Chickens filled the same niche as a source of household protein and could be fed from the same pool of resources but required less water and were much more efficient as a way of converting a household’s labor into usable protein. Since both animals were fundamentally tools for small-scale household level production the increased efficiency of chickens was of primary importance. It certainly seems like a plausible explanation, particularly with your point about increasing aridifcation of the region. However, the timeline doesn’t totally match up since chickens were introduced several centuries before the regional decline in pork consumption, maybe as much as a millennia.
Egypt has historically been very resistant to anti-pork ideology. In fact, the Egyptian domestic pig (still descended from an African breed around since the Pharaonic period) is still widely held and consumed there in the modern day, especially by Christians. Sure, it may be seen as impious by the Muslims there, but the same applies for alcohol and coffee, both of which have a huge market.
This may be related to the fact that the Nile valley remains verdant year-round, being immune to the widespread aridification affecting the region.
Well, I think a suitable replacement for pigs would have to be widespread and well-known before it could replace pork altogether. So it makes sense that the spread of chicken would precede the decline of pork consumption by quite some time. Something similar happened with horses, which only replaced asses as the prime mode of transportation in Mesopotamia after having coexisted for over a millennium.
I find this theory unconvincing as many peoples in arid and semi-arid environments ate pork. I find it more likely that the pork taboo arose because of the perception of pigs as dirty and the fear of diseases.
Such as? Keep in mind that many areas that have now become desertified looked quite different 3,000 years ago. Syria was once fertile enough to support elephants and other megafauna; in the 3rd millennium BCE it was famous for its verdant plains and forests.
Your theory also doesn't explain how pigs came to be thought of as dirty, when chicken, which are just as prone to carrying disease, were not. You also assume that hygiene was ever understood to be related to sickness at all, but there is little evidence for that.
I find it more likely that the perception of pigs as dirty is a cultural mechanism of disgust to permanently seal off an ecologically disadvantageous animal. Similar to how western culture regards insects as dirty food, even though arthropod protein is just fine to eat.
At least according to Herodotus, pigs were kept, but only eaten occasionally: