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Spread of bounties: culinary manuals and knowledge in Mughal South Asia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2023
Abstract
This article identifies and examines Persian-language culinary manuals that were produced in South Asia between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. In doing so, it centres three empirical loci: the definition of food as it was conceptualised during the period under study; the impetus for the textualisation and standardisation of culinary knowledge; and core principles that undergird the cuisine of the Mughal elite. Engaging with these themes, the article privileges the intersection between the discourses on body, food, and ethical self-fashioning as the key site of analysis.
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References
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10 The basics of yūnānī tibb mentioned here are noted in major works on Islamic medicine. See Syed Zillur Rahman, ‘Unani medicine in India’, in Medicine and Life Sciences in India, (ed.) B. V. Subbarayappa (New Delhi, 2001), pp. 306–310; Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Cairo, 2007), pp. 41–44. Also see Ibn Sina, Al-Qānūn fi'l-tibb. Book 1, (ed.) Hakim Abdul Hameed (New Delhi, 1982), p. 194.
11 Fida'i ‛Ain al-Mulk Shirazi, Fawā’id al-insān (Cambridge, University Library), MS. Or.683, f.2a.
12 Ibid., ff. 1b–2a.
13 Ibid., ff. 8a, 36b, 55b, 61a, 90a.
14 Shirazi, Fawā’id al-Insān, ff. 3b–5b. Also see Ibn Sina, Al-Qānūn. Book 1, pp. 161–164; Rahman, ‘Unani medicine in India’, p. 314; Narayanan, ‘Cultures of food’, pp. 141–142.
15 For a detailed discussion of the text, see Fabrizio Speziale, ‘The encounter of medical traditions in Nūr al-Dīn Šīrazī's ‘Ilājāt-i Dārā Šikohī’, eJournal of Indian Medicine 3 (2010), pp. 53–67.
16 Nur al-Din al-Shirazi, ‛Ilājāt-i Dārā Shikūhī, vol. 2 (London, Royal Asiatic Society), MS. Codrington/Reade no. 196, f. 106b.
17 Ibid., f. 149b, ff.153b–156b.
18 Other examples of yūnānī texts that sought to educate the Mughal elite include Risāla-i ma'kūl wa mashrūb (Treatise on Food and Beverages) and Hifz-i sihhat (Preservation of Health). These short poems, of 46 and 42 verses, respectively, were rendered in a simple rhyming meter by their author Muhammad Yusufi Haravi, a physician-courtier active during the reigns of Babur and Humayun. During Akbar's reign, court physician Hakim Gilani wrote a commentary on Ibn Sina's Qānūn. Nur al-Din Shirazi produced a dedicated Materia-medica titled Alfāz-ul adwiya. This text was completed in 1628–1629 and ‛Ilājāt was composed between 1642–1647. During Alamgir's reign, physician Muhammad Akbar Shah Arzani wrote Tibb-i Akbarī and Mīzān-i Tibb (Scale of Medicine). The former work imitates ‛Ilājāt in its style and content. See Muhammad Yusufi Haravi, Risāla-i ma'kūl wa mashrūb (Hyderabad, Salarjung Museum and Library), MS. Maj 30/4174, and Hifz-i sihhat (London, Wellcome Library), MS. WMS. Per. 199 (D); Anooshahr, ‘Letter-writing’, pp. 6–8; Walter Hakala, ‘On equal terms: the equivocal origins of an early Mughal Indo-Persian vocabulary’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25 (2015), pp. 209–213; O. P. Jaggi, Medicine in Medieval India (Delhi, 1977), p. 154; Alavi, Loss and Healing, pp. 38–40.
19 This was an elite-male centric discourse that excluded women and non-elites from the bounds of self-refinement. For a feminist critique of akhlāqī discourse, see Zahra Ayubi, Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society (New York, 2019).
20 Nasir al-Din Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāsirī, (eds) Mujtaba Minuvi and ‘Ali Riza Haidari (Iran, 1976), pp. 70–71, 109.
21 Ibid., p. 56.
22 Ibid., pp. 152–153.
23 Ibid., pp. 57–58, 108–110, 152–153.
24 Ibid., p. 98.
25 Ibid., pp. 71, 75–76, 95–98.
26 Nur al-Din al-Shirazi, ‛Ilājāt-i Dārā Shikūhī, vol. 1 (London, Royal Asiatic Society), MS. Codrington/Reade no. 195, ff. 94a–b.
27 See Nur al-Din Muhammad Jahangir, Jahāngīrnāma: Tūzuk-i Jahāngīrī, (ed.) Muhammad Hashim (Iran, 1980), pp. 67, 119, 215, 220, 239, 422, 428, 434; Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince, and Emperor, (trans.) W. H. Thackston (Washington DC, 1996), pp. 337–347.
28 Anon., Mirzānāma (London, British Library), M.S. Add. 16,819, ff. 91b, 92b–93a.
29 Francis J. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (London, 1892), p. 534.
30 Nawab Samsam ud Daula Shah Nawaz Ḵẖan, Ma'āsir -al Umarā, vol. 1, (ed.) Maulvi Abdur Rahim (Calcutta, 1888), pp. 534–535.
31 Ibid., pp. 180, 412.
32 Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāsirī, pp. 205–206.
33 Neha Vermani, ‘From the cauldrons of history: labour services at Mughal dining and kitchen spaces’,
South Asian History and Culture 13 (2022), p. 452.
34 Abū’l Faẓl ‛Allāmī, The Ā’īn-i Akbari, vol. 1, (trans) H. Blochmann and D. C. Phillott (Calcutta, 1927), pp. 52–58.
35 Shaykh Farid Bhakkari, Dhakhirat al-Khawanin, vol. 2, (ed.) Syed Moinul Haq (Karachi, 1970), p. 222. Mīr sadr was the office of the chief of religious matters, charities, and endowments.
36 Ibid., pp. 169–170.
37 Syed Hasan Askari, ‘Mirza Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Thani’, in Arshi Presentation Volume Presented to M. Imtiyaz ‘Ali Khan ‘Arshi, (eds) Malik Ram and M. D. Ahmad (New Delhi, 1965), p. 115.
38 Anon., Nuskha-e Shāh Jahānī, (ed.) Syed Muhammed Fazlulla (Madras, 1956), pp. 2–3, 41–42, 45–46, 102, 148; Anon., Risāla-i anwā‛-i taʻām (London, Special Collection SOAS Library), MS. 46463, ff. 3–4, 56–57, 60–61, 133–134, 157–158; Anon., Khwān-i alwān-i ni‘mat (London, British Library), MS. Add.17959, ff. 74a–b, 87a, 106a–107b; Anon., Khwān-i niʻmat (Hyderabad, Salarjung Museum and Library), MS. Tab.1/1427, ff. 62, 79, 104; Anon., Khwān-i ni‘mat (London, British Library), MS. IO Islamic 2326, ff. 102b–103b, 133a–b.
39 Bert Fragner, ‘Social reality and culinary fiction: the perspective of cookbooks from Iran and Central Asia’, in Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, (eds) Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper (London, 1994), p. 63.
40 Anon., Nuskha-e Shāh Jahānī (Chennai, Government Oriental Manuscripts Library), Ms. Farsi Makhtūtāt, p. 526; Anon., Dastūr-i pukhtan-i at'ima kih dar sarkār-i Bādshāh Shāh Jahān (Hyderabad, Salarjung Museum and Library), MS. Tab.4/1430; Anon., Nān-wa namak (London, British Library), MS. IO Islamic 3171. The Chennai and London copies were compared and rendered into an edited volume: Syed Muhammed Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha-e Shāh Jahānī (Madras, 1956).
41 1 man Akbarī = 40 ser, 1 ser = 30 dām; 1 dām = 1 tola 8 māsha 7 surkh; 1 tola = 12 māsha; 1 misqāl = 1 3/7 dramcha or 4 māsha, 3 ½ rattī; 1 māsha = 8 rattī/surkh. One rattī was the weight of a grain of Gunja seed (Abrus Precatorius). During Shah Jahan's reign the scale of 1 mān = 40 ser remained constant but it was based on the weight of 1 ser = 40 dām, which resulted in a proportionate increase in the weights of all the other units of measurement as well. See Faẓl, Ā’īn-i Akbari, vol. 1, pp. 16, 37; Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707 (Aligarh, 1963), pp. 367–370.
42 The original manuscript, prepared for Nawab Islam Khan's household, was copied in the late eighteenth century by scribe Basant Ram Rai for Mir Nasir Ali Khan of Mughal Punjab. The present transcript is a reproduction of this copy by the scribe Abdul Bari for Colonel D. C. Phillot who served in the Punjab infantry during the nineteenth century. Anon, Risāla-i anwā‛-i taʻām, MS. 46463, ff. 1, 160.
43 Ibid., ff. 158–159.
44 ‘Alamgir Aurangzeb, Ruqʻāt-i ʻAlamgiri (Lahore, 1878), p. 24.
45 Ḵẖan, Ma'āsir, vol. 1, pp. 217–220.
46 There also exist other Khwān-i niʻmat and Alwān-i ni‘mat texts which were compiled from the late eighteenth to nineteenth century. These were produced in the regional kingdoms that rose to prominence post the disintegration of the Mughal empire. While reproducing recipes from Mughal cookbooks discussed in this article, these texts also contain newer recipes, including those that incorporated red chillies—a transatlantic crop introduced by the Portuguese in Deccan during the sixteenth century. However, red chillies did not enter the North Indian culinary realm until the mid-eighteenth century. I discuss these texts and the reception of red chillies in my doctoral thesis: see Vermani, ‘From the Court to the Kitchens’, pp. 205–208. Also see Walter Hakala, ‘On equal terms: the equivocal origins of an early Mughal Indo-Persian vocabulary’, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society 25 (2015), p. 221; Narayanan, ‘Cultures of food’, pp. 122–132.
47 Muhammad Beg, Khwān-i niʻmat (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek), MS. Orient 8 0. 98, f. 1b.
48 Anon., Khwān-i ni‘mat, MS. IO Islamic 2326. Narayanan dismisses these attributions as speculations based on the confusing similarity between the name of the text and the person. See Narayanan, ‘Cultures of food’, p. 85. However, there is no reason to assume that the text was named after Niʻmat Khān ‘Ālī. Owing to the multiple meanings associated with niʻmat—blessing, delicacy, pleasure, and bounty—it was a common practice across the Islamicate ecumene to use the term in various food-related contexts.
49 Vermani, ‘From the cauldrons of history’, p. 453..
50 Nimat Khan Ali, Ruqʻāt -i Ni‘mat Khan (Hyderabad, Salarjung Museum and Library), MS. Maj. 30/ 4132, f. 140.
51 Anon., Khwān-i ni‘mat, MS. IO Islamic 2326, ff.133b–134a.
52 Muhammad Saqi Mustaidd Khan, Ma’āsir-i ‘Ālamgīrī, (ed.) Maulavi Agha Ahmad ‘Ali (Calcutta, 1871), pp. 141, 153, 181, 470.
53 Anon., Khwān-i alwān-i ni‘mat, MS. Add.17959, f. 12a–b; Anon., Alwān-i ni‘mat (New Delhi, National Museum), MS. 96.479, f. 1b. For discussion of the practice of compiling anthologies, see Kathryn Babayan, The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan (California, 2021).
54 Anon., Alwān, MS. 96.479, ff. 1b–5a; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add.17959, ff. 12b–20b.
55 Anon., Khwān, MS. Add.17959, ff. 2a–9b.
56 Anon., Alwān, MS. 96.479, f. 76a.
57 Ibid., f. 1b; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add.17959, f. 12b. Narayanan does not distinguish between these sections and treats the text as a unified original composition by the author. Narayanan, ‘Cultures of food’, p. 83.
58 Anon., Khwān-i niʻmat, MS. Tab.1/1427. Another cookbook of an uncertain provenance and time period runs across the marginalia of this manuscript.
59 Anon., Khwān, MS. Add.17959, ff. 23a–b, 101a, 104b, 107a–b, 137b, 120b; Anon., Khwān, MS. Tab.1/1427, ff. 2, 97, 101–102, 104–105, 182; Anon., Alwān, MS. 96.479, ff. 6a, f.44b, 45b, f.68a–b.
60 Khan, Ma'āsir, vol. 1, pp. 310–321.
61 Surendra Nath Sinha, Subah of Allahabad under the Great Mughals (New Delhi, 1974), p. 176.
62 Fatima Zehra Bilgrami, ‘The “Roshani” family in the Mughal nobility’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 60 (1999), p. 299.
63 Ibid., p. 295.
64 Khan, Ma’āsir, pp. 174, 219–220, 272–273, 365, 369–370.
65 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 509–510.
66 There exist three other manuscript copies with the title Khwān-i niʻmat at the National Museum in New Delhi, British Library in London, and Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. The National Museum and British Library copies, transcribed in 1801, are neither directly nor indirectly attributed to Ni‘mat Khān‘Ālī but their recipes do not use red chilies either. These copies do not contain any patron-attributed recipes. The Berlin copy, transcribed in 1839, does not bear any form of attribution to Ni‘mat Khān ‘Ālī nor recipes featuring red chillies. It seems like an incomplete copy that does not follow any proper organisation scheme. However, it does record the recipe for nān Asad Khānī. These copies, much like that of Wilkins’, could be condensed versions of the larger text. See Anon., Khwān-i niʻmat (New Delhi, National Museum), MS. 80.113; Anon., Khwān-i niʻmat (London, British Library), MS. Add. 16871; Anon., Khwān-i niʻmat (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek), MS. Petermann II, 514.
67 For details about Nimat Khan Ali's career, see Siraj al-Din Ali Khan Arzu, Majmà al-nafayis: bakhsh-i mùasiran, (ed.) Mir Hashim Muhaddis (Tehran, 2006), pp. 189–194.
68 Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbari, vol. 1, pp. 55–59; Anon., Bayāz-i khūshbū’ī (London, British Library), MS. IO Islamic 828, ff. 93a–103b; Shirazi, ‘Ilājāt, ff. 106b–263a.
69 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 12, 19–22, 25, 69–70, 95, 97; Anon., Risāla, ff. 10, 14–15, 19, 24–25, 28, 31–33, 84–86, 93–94; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 33b–34b, 35b, 38a–b, 39a, 40a–b, 44a–b, 59b, 95b–96a, 98b–99b, 101b–102a.
70 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 69–70; Anon., Risāla, ff. 85–86; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 98b–99a.
71 Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbari, vol. 1, p. 76; Jahangir, Jahāngīrnāma, p. 4.
72 Shirazi, ‛Ilājāt, vol. 2, f.11b–12b. Also see Ibn Sina, Al-Qānūn fi'l-tibb. Book 2, (ed.) Hakim Abdul Hameed (New Delhi, 1982), pp. 12–13.
73 Abul-Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, vol. 1, (ed.) H. Blochmann (Calcutta, 1872), p. 72.
74 Shirazi, ‛Ilājāt, f. 12a–b.
75 Ibid., f. 11b–12a. Also see Ibn Sina, Al-Qānūn. Book 1, p. 93; Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology: An English Translation of Kitāb Al-Najāt. Book II, Chapter VI, with Historico-Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition (Westport, 1981), p. 27.
76 Alamgir Aurangzeb, Ruqʻāt-i ʻAlamgiri (Lahore, 1878), p. 24.
77 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 4, 5; Anon., Risāla, ff. 5, 7–8; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 22a–23a, 27a, 29a–b, 30a, 31b.
78 Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology, pp. 27, 76.
79 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 4–5, 114; Anon., Risāla, f. 6; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 51a–b, 72a, 118b.
80 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 5–6, 97–98; Anon., Risāla, ff. 2–3, 6, 122–23; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff., 23b–24a, 26a–b, 29a, 129b.
81 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 54–56; Anon., Risāla, f. 29; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 35b, 36b–37a, 38a–b, 39a, 42a–b, 44a–b, 99b–100a, 116a–b.
82 Anon., Mirzānāma, f. 92a.
83 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, p. 24.
84 Anon., Risāla, f. 112.
85 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 9, 21–22; Anon., Risāla, f. 29; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 43b–45b, 57a.
86 For a detailed discussion, see Neha Vermani, ‘The perfumed palate: olfactory practices of food consumption at the Mughal court’, Global Food History 9 (First view, 2023).
87 Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 90b–91a. For details and the values of these measurements, see footnote 41.
88 Ibid., ff. 33a–b.
89 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 14, 27–28, 40; Anon., Risāla, ff. 18–19, 54–55, 97–98; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 32b–33b, 88a–88b.
90 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 42–43; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 91b–92a.
91 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 47–48, 73; Anon., Risāla, ff. 32–33, 55–56, 97–98; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 83b–84a, 90b–91b.
92 Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 102b–103a; Hūšang A‘lam, ‘Būqalamūn’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (1989), https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/buqalamun (accessed 6 July 2023).
93 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 137–139; Anon., Risāla, ff. 104–105; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 159a–159b.
94 Necipoglu, Gulru, ‘The scrutinizing gaze in the aesthetics of Islamic visual culture: sight, insight, and desire’, Muqarnas 32 (2015), pp. 32, 33Google Scholar.
95 Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17595, f. 105a–105b.
96 Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas-i-Shahjahan-nameh, (ed.) Jamil ur Rehman, (New Delhi, 2009), p. 377.
97 Jahangir, Jahāngīrnāma, p. 239.
98 Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, p. 88; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, f. 54a.
99 Fray Sebastian Manrique, Travels of Fray Sebastien Manrique, 1629–1643. A Translation of the ‘Itinerario de Las Misiones Orientales’, vol. 2, (ed. and trans.) Col. C. Eckford Luard and Father H. Horton (London, 1927), p. 187. Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, (trans.) Irving Brock, (rev.) Archibald Constable (Westminster, 1891), p. 250.
100 Vermani, ‘From the cauldrons of history’, p. 456.
101 Anon, Mirzānāma, f. 92b.
102 Terry, Edward, A Voyage to East-India…Empire of the Great Mogul (London, 1777), p. 197Google Scholar; Fazlulla (ed.), Nuskha, pp. 30–31, 131–132; Anon., Risāla, ff. 17–18, 43, 44, 100–101; Anon., Khwān, MS. Add. 17959, ff. 38a, 39a–b, 158a; Vermani, ‘From the Court to the Kitchens’, pp. 209–213. Narayanan suggests the Roe consumed sweet potato: Narayanan, ‘Cultures of food’, p. 119. However, sweet potatoes were not cultivated in South Asia during this period. See George Watt, A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1890), p. 118.