So What Did Andalusis Learn from Ziryab?

Ninth-century Ali Abu Nafi, famously known as Ziryab, fled Baghdad and established himself as the most celebrated musician and arbiter of high style and sophisticated dining in the Cordovan courts of Muslim Spain. While this should not be surprising as he left when Abbasid gastronomy had already reached a high level of sophistication, the modern narratives of him extolling the role he played in revolutionising the dining experiences he had on al-Andalus and the rest of Europe ever after are exaggeratedly portrayed and even fallacious at times. The aim of the article, therefore, is to sift through some of the representative modern accounts of him – they are largely based on early modern translations of Arabic sources – and try to figure out how inaccuracies and misinformation could have crept in. A primary source is used in straightening the record. It is the account of Ibn Hayyan al-Qurtubi, the most detailed and the closest to Ziryab’s time but the latest to have been discovered. It is edited in Arabic only and has not been made use of regarding the role he played in shaping the Andalusi cuisine. That is in addition to what we know of it today through the two medieval Andalusi cookbooks that survived from the region.