Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq

() was an Iraqi author from Baghdad. He was the compiler of a tenth-century cookbook, the (, The Book of Dishes). This is the earliest known Arabic cookbook. It contains over 600 recipes, divided into 132 chapters.

The is the oldest surviving Arabic cookbook, written by al-Warraq in the 10th century. It is compiled from the recipes of the 8th and 9th century courts of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. Some scholars speculate that al-Warraq may have prepared the manuscript on behalf of a patron, the Hamdanid prince Sayf al-Dawla, who sought to improve the cultural prestige of his own court in Aleppo as the court in Baghdad had started to decline.

Some recipes in the book, like (date-sweetened porridge), come from the relatively simple cuisine of the Arabian Peninsula, but the book also contains recipes for fancy stews with Persian names. There is also an entire chapter about , hearty stews of 'Nabataean' (Iraqi) origin.

One of the book's manuscripts, now preserved in Istanbul, was owned by the Ayyubid ruler of Egypt al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub (1205–1249) and his wife Shajar al-Durr ().

Several partial or full translations in European languages are available: Nawal Nasrallah, annotated translationNawal Nasrallah, translator, Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchens: Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's Tenth-century Baghdadi Cookbook, Brill, Leiden 2007. , selection of two dozen recipes Sabrina Favaro's Italian translationSabrina Favaro, Il simposio dei sultani: Dal più antico Trattato di cucina arabo-musulmano, 2015 David Waines, selection of recipesDavid Waines, In a Caliph's Kitchen, 1995

Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq

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