THE BOOK OF FOODS: A THIRD/NINTH CENTURY IMĀMĪ-SHĪʿĪ GUIDE TO EATING

Nearly a thousand traditions in one of the earliest Shīʿī ḥadīth compilations extant, Kitāb al-maḥāsin by Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Barqī (was active in the late third/ninth century), are devoted to food and eating. The hypothesis standing at the background of the present article is that an analysis of this substantial amount of material may lead to insights with regard to early Imāmī-Shīʿī thought that are not restricted to practical aspects of food and eating. This study demonstrates how different kinds of foods, as well as various phenomena related to eating, are strongly interwoven with the Imāmī-Shīʿī cosmological and historical narratives and with this community’s self-perception as God’s elect. The extensive preoccupation with food and eating from these perspectives inevitably portrays this universal issue as an essential building block of the Shīʿa’s confessional and sectarian identity. Shīʿīs, the findings in Kitāb al-maḥāsin show, do not eat the same way as others.