NEW DELHI: When traders from the Arabian Peninsula began to reach the shores of the Indian subcontinent, they exchanged not only goods and information, but also tastes which, over thousands of years, formed the shared gastronomic heritage we know today.
While an Indian meal is generally incomplete without naan, a sourdough flatbread that originated in the Middle East, most Arab favorites are inconceivable without Indian spices.
Since 2000 BC. BC, spices from South and East Asia were exported along the Silk Road to the Middle East, from where they later entered Europe. They were highly valued and used not only for cooking, but also for ritual, religious or medical purposes.
english word”seasoning(“spice”) comes from the Latin “type(“cash”) or “special goods”, which refers to goods of special value, as opposed to ordinary trade goods.
In Arabic, the word “spice” is closely associated with India.
“The spice is known as ‘baharat’, a term similar to the ancient Indian name Bharat,” he said. Arabic News Muddassir Quamar, expert on Middle Eastern stories, lives in New Delhi.
“Baharat” for “spice” refers to its origins in India, or the name Bharat for India is related to the term spice. Either way, the close relationship between the two is evident.”
Middle Eastern traders sailed the Arabian Sea and reached the coasts of southwest India long before the arrival of Islam in the 7th century.e century.
Archaeological excavations show strong commercial and cultural exchanges between the civilizations of the Indus Valley, in the northwestern region of South Asia and Mesopotamia.
Colleen Taylor Sen, author of “History of food in India» («History of food in India), saw ancient Arab traders as “connectors on the spice route from Southeast Asia to Europe via India”.
“Since the time of the Harappa, or Indus Valley civilization, India and the Arabian Sea mainland have had close trade relations and cultural exchanges,” he said.
“Today, Indian spices are widely used in Arabic cuisine. Rice dishes, such as Saudi chicken kabsa, are the aromatic cousins of Indian biryani.” Food in the Arabian Peninsula, especially in Yemen, shows Indian influence with the extensive use of chilies, cumin, coriander seeds and turmeric.
The gastronomic exchange has gone both ways, however, and that’s evident in the comforting Indian stew haleem or much-loved snacks like samosas and jalebi.
Haleem was introduced to the region during the Mongolian period, while fried dumplings were known several hundred years earlier – from as early as the 13th century.e century approx.
“In India, haleem comes from the Arabic harissa, while samosa and jalebi come from the Middle East,” says Colleen Taylor Sen.
“The last two were probably introduced to India during the era of the Delhi Sultanate, which attracted scholars and administrators from across the Islamic world.”
The complexity of forming a shared culinary heritage is reflected in how certain food products traveled to the Middle East from India and returned in new and modified forms that are now considered native.
Vir Sanghvi, a well-known Indian food columnist and writer, points to documented examples from the ancient food trade showing that the introduction of poultry – a staple in Middle Eastern cuisine – came from undergrowth in the Indian subcontinent.
It is generally accepted that chickens were first domesticated in the Indus Valley Civilization in 1500-2000 BC. JC. The Indus Valley had strong trade links with Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq. Chickens are thought to have migrated from the Indus Valley to the Middle East, and from there to other places,” said Vir Sanghvi. Arabic News.
Instead, India accepted bread, which has since become one of the most important elements of the country’s diet.
“I think one of the most important contributions from the Arab world to India is refined flour or maida. We had no refined flour and therefore no baking traditions, and it was the Arabs who brought dumplings to India,” said Sanghvi, mentioning another culinary element, which is key to the evolution of Indian and Arab cuisine: rice.
There is disagreement about when rice was introduced, but according to the Sanghvi, the first grain probably made its way to the Middle East from India.
“There are two points of view. The first is when Alexander the Great came to India in 326 BC. J. -C., his soldiers had never seen rice before, and they brought it back to Greece. On their way back, these soldiers set up camps and towns and introduced rice to the Middle East,” he said.
“The second view is when the Arabs conquered Sindh India in the IX centurye centuries, they also found rice there and brought it to their homes.”
Several centuries later, rice returned to India from the Middle East, but in a new form that has since become one of the region’s favorite party dishes: biryani.
This delicious dish originates from mandi, Arabic rice pilaf.
“The Middle East created this dish called pilaf and it came to India with Arab travelers,” says Sanghvi.
“We changed and modified it. Probably during the reign of the Mongol emperor Jahangir in XVIIe century, we created biryani, which is distinctly Indian, but born out of pilaf, out of an Arabic dish, which in turn was born out of the rice that India shipped there.
This text is a translation of an article published on Arabnews.com
