Fragner, Bert G.

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ASPATHINES. See ASPACANÄ. 
ASPASll-ÄSPAZT 
ÄSPAZ, 'ABDALLÄH HERAVI. See 'ABDALLÄH 
HERA VI. 
ÄSPAZI, cookery. 1. Iranian foodstuffs. 2. Iranian 
cookery. 
1. Iranian foodstuffs. The history of food consump-
tion in Iran is primarily part of the history of agri-
culture and stockbreeding on the Iranian plateau. The 
staple food since ancient times has been based on 
wheat (gandom), millet (arzan), and to some extent 
barley (jow) as a substitute for wheat. Reports 
from the Islamic period show that rises in the price 
of barley relative to that of wheat, with accom-
panying disappearances of wheat from the markets, 
were always seen as portents of incipient famine. Rye, 
(i'iivdiir), though apparently indigenous to the east of 
the plateau (Afghanistan), is not normally eaten. After 
the development and spread of intensive plantation 
systems dependent mainly on use of elaborate irrigation 
techniques, fresh fruit and vegetables, eaten raw, 
became important items in the people's diet. Quinces, 
apples, pears, muskmelons, watermelons, pomegra-
nates, grapes, peaches, and mulberries have been grown 
in Iran since antiquity. In keeping with Iran's historic 
role as center of interchange between the civilizations of 
Anatolia, Caucasia, the Near East, India, Central Asia, 
many crops, fruits, and vegetables were transplanted 
from one to another of these regions by way of Iran. 
Plants brought from or through India were acclimatized 
in Iran earlier than in the lands of other Near and 
Middle Eastern civilization: e.g., sugarcane, eggplant, 
citrus (lime, bitter orange, sweet lemon), and water-
melon (hendoviina, i.e., Indian-type), later also rice and 
tropical spices (which had further uses in medicine). 
There are indications that saffron, rhubarb, and spinach 
were first cultivated on the lranian plateau. Onions, 
garlic, carrots, broad beans, chickpeas, and linseed are 
known to have been used for food in Iran since early in 
the ancient period (Watson, Agricultural Innovation, 
passim. Laufer, Sino-lranica, pp. 372, 392, 399, 580f.). 
The methods of preparing milk products stem, in the 
main, from the traditions of pastoral and nomadic 
groups Jiving both on the Iranian plateau andin Central 
Asia. These products, together with cereals, formed the 
staple food of the nomadic tribes, being much more 
important than meat in their diet. The making of 
yoghurt (Persian miist, standard Turkish yogurt, Azeri 
qiiteq), dried yoghurt (Persian kask, Turkish qurut), and 
white cheese (Persian panlr, similar to the Greek feta) 
probably originated from Central Asia but spread in 
ancient times to the Iranian plateau. The raw material 
for these products used by Central Asian tribes has 
always been ewe's milk. In Iran likcwise, popular taste 
preferred ewe's milk to cow's milk and still does today. 
The Central Asian beverage koumiss only came into use 
in Iran during the Mongol and Timurid periods and 
thereafter went out of voguc (Doerfcr, Türkische und 
monf?olische Elemente, nos. 481, 1472, 1866). 
Together with milk and eggs, meat was of course a 
source of animal protein. From ancient times breeders 
supplied goatflesh, mutton, beef, pork, and poulty. 
With the spread of Islam, pork lost its place in Iranian 
cookery. In suitably endowed regions, particularly the 
Caspian coastlands and ~üzestän, and localities on 
river banks, fishing made and still makes a quite big 
contribution to the people's diet. From early times, 
however, most of the meat available from pastoralism 
wcnt to the tables ofthe upper classes, and so did all of 
thc meat obtained through hunting (in the Sasanian 
pcriod for stags, gazelles, hares, wild boars, and 
wildfowl), except in areas still dependent on hunting as 
a regular economic activity. 
The inventory of traditional foods has always shown 
regional variations. Dietary habits were determined 
primarily by what the locality could produce. Many 
varieties of fruit and vegetables were only produced in 
particular, often narrowly limited, areas; mainly on 
account of the high cost of transport, they were 
considered in distant regions and cities to be exotic 
luxuries, and consumption ofthem was one ofthe "fine 
distinctions" (Bourdieu) by which the upper classes 
could set themselves apart. Dried fruits and nuts, 
however, not being perishable, were less expensive and 
have a wider market (See Spuler, Iran, pp. 508-512; 
Polak, Persien i, pp. 106f.). 
2. Iranian cookery. lt may be assumed that parti-
cular regional, ethnic, and social traditions of food 
preparation existed in every period and that their 
mutual interaction and differentiation led to the 
emergence oftraditions definable as "Iranian cookery." 
The scanty direct and indirect information on eating 
habits in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods 
suggests that very refined culinary traditions were 
maintained at royal courts and in wealty households. 
The ampler information on the haute cuisine of the 
'Abbasid period leaves no doubt that many practices of 
Sasanian royal and aristocratic cookery were taken over 
more or less directly. On the other hand there is little 
evidence of any continuous threads of development 
linking the e!ite cookery ofpre-Islamic and early Islamic 
Iran to the ordinary cookery current in Iran today. In all 
probability modern Iranian cookery belongs to a line of 
tradition traceable to the period between the 8th/14th 
and 1Oth/l6th centuries. As a result of the vast con-
quests of the Mongols and Timür, Central Asian and 
Far Eastern culinary practices penetrated to the Iranian 
plateau and merged with regional traditions of everyday 
cookery rather than with pre-Mongol aristocratic forms 
of fine cookery. 
Reports which have come down present a rough 
picture of the everyday cooking of townsfolk in the 
Iranian lands in the 8th/14th and 9th/15th centuries. 
Soups with the consistency of porridge, generically 
knwon as iis (q.v.) and mainly composed of cereals, 
vegetables, and herbs, doubtless very similar to the 
present-day concoctions of that name, were a legacy 
from old Iranian traditon. The word ii.f had passed 
several centuries earlier from Persian into the 
ÄSPAZI 
Central Asian Turkish languages (see Äs, i.). The versa-
tile and skillful use of viscera probably also stemmed 
from Iranian tradition. The wider use of milk products 
(e.g., of kask for flavoring iis) is likely to have been due 
to the Central Asian influences at work in the Mongol 
and Timurid periods. The same is probably true of the 
use of boiled pasta, which is known to have spread to 
the Iranian plateau at that time. Pasta was made into 
various sorts ofnoodles, ravioli, and dumplings, mostly 
with Turkish names (AfSär, Ä.fpazi-e dawra-ye ~afawi, 
part 1, passim. Various Central Asian cookery books 
with recipes similar to early Safavid items but not found 
in later Iranian cookery books. M. Mlnov1 and T. Afsär, 
eds„ Waqfniima-ye Rab'-e Rafldi, Tehran, 1350 S./ 
1971, chaps. 7, 8, 9). 
In the present-day cookery of Afghanistan, Tajiki-
stan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, pasta prepar-
ations, particularly ravioli with various stuffings (under 
names such as ii.1', iiJak, mantü, göSbiira, qüs-tili, and 
others), still occupy an important place. In these 
territories, rice in a limited number of recipes is offered 
as a prestige food at festivals and banquets. The 
position is very different in Iran, where the use ofrice, at 
first a speciality of Safavid court cuisine, evolved by the 
end of the 10th/16th century into a major branch of 
Iranian cookery. From that period have come down the 
two methods of serving rice most popular in Iran today: 
celow-fs.ores, a combination of boiled white rice 
(celow) with a stew or sauce (fs.oref), and polow, rice 
combined with various ingredients. Both are evidently 
techniques of Central Asian origin elaborated and 
diversified in Iran during the first century of Safavid 
rule. The rising demand led to an expansion of rice-
growing, mainly in the Caspian coastal provinces. 
Attention was concentrated on costlier, better-flavored 
varieties originating from northwest India, and for a 
long time recurrent importation of Indian seed was 
found necessary (Polak, Persien II, p. 138). In contrast 
with Afghanistan and Central Asia, the once popular 
pasta dishes vanished from Iranian menus. Millet 
consumption, long traditional in Iran, also fell because 
rice was preferred, and likewise the use of wheat groats 
(bo/gür), which in other Middle Eastern countries is 
much commoner than in Iran. On the other hand, the 
new fashionableness of rice at the Safavid court influ-
enced the haute cuisine of the Mughul empire. The 
modern cookery of north India (sometimes known as 
Mughul cookery) evolved from the adaptation of 
Safavid skills to Indian traditions and circumstances. 
Many Persian and Turkish words, imported from Iran, 
are still current in the culinary vocabulary of North 
India. (See also Fragner, "Zur Erforschung.") 
The lranian culinary style, shaped by Central Asian 
and indigenous traditions and developed to a high 
degree of refinement in the Safavid period, has re-
mained until today the norm of good cookery for the 
middle and upper classes. lts characteristics differ 
markedly from those of Ottoman cookery, which is a 
special combination of Central Asian Turkish and to 
some extent Iranian elements with old Mediterranean 
790 ASPAZI-ASPAZ-~ÄNA 
culinary traditions, and consequently from those ofthe 
Ottoman-influenced types of cookery now current in 
Turkey, some of the Arab countries, and the Balkan 
peninsula. While rice, so widely used in Iran, remained 
on the whole alien to Ottoman cookery, vegetables of 
American origin such as tomatoes, paprika, and 
potatoes, likewise maize, and also another import from 
America, the turkey (known in Turkish and Arabic as 
hendi, in Persian as biiqalamün because thought to 
change color like a chameleon) did not come to Iran 
until the nineteenth century, much later than to the 
Mediterranean lands comprised in the Ottoman empire. 
These vegetables figure in Iranian dishes far less than is 
the case of Mediterranean cookery. 
European (mainly French) and American culinary 
styles have hardly at all supplanted the traditional 
Iranian style in domestic cookery, though they 
have made their mark in another sector, restaurant 
cuisine. Until weil into the nineteenth century, 
eating houses in Iran were limited to a small 
number of types, particularly cookshops serving äs 
(see above), kalla-piica (soups made from sheep's 
heads and trotters), sekamba (soups made from tripe), 
kabäb (skewered meats or viscera grilled over charcoal) 
and ce/ow kabiib (grilled mutton with rice). Taverns, so 
often mentioned in Persian lyric poetry, maintained a 
shadowy existence on the fringe of legality and usually 
under non-Moslem ownership. The only establishments 
providing company and entertainment as weil as re-
freshment were colfee-houses, where since the 
nineteenth century tea has been served though the name 
qahva-ls_iina is retained. The first real restaurants ap-
peared at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries, mainly in Tehran; they were on the Russian-
Caucasian model with terraces and gardens. Restau-
rants on the western European model grew in number 
from the 1930s onward, and more recently American-
style quick food places. Fora lang time these Western-
type establishments supplied predominantly Western-
type food, but in the J 960s some of the modern 
restaurants went in for Iranian cuisine and folkloric 
decor. The only really successful and popular compro-
mise between the European-type restaurant and the 
traditional cookshop is the so-called celow-kabiibi. 
In traditional Iranian practice, most foods are 
cooked over an open fire. Another important methods is 
slow cooking, without exposure to flame, in a copper 
cauldron (dig-e mesi) or a special oven (taniir) made of 
fireclay (once widely used but today largely forgotten). 
Soups (iis}. broths (iib-giW), rice (celow, polow), stews 
(ls_oref), pot-roasts, and many sorts of sweets were 
cooked in this way. The method remains in favor today 
with modern gas or kerosene heating appliances. The 
old-type cooking stove ([er) has ceased to be popular, 
though it remains the best means of cooking certain 
traditional dishes (e.g., the vegetable omelette called 
kükii). Another traditional skill, which still thrives, is 
the grilling of all sorts of kabiibs over red-hot charcoal 
(zogiil-e cüb). 
Since ancient times Iranians have supplemented their 
diet with vitamin-rich fresh vegetablcs, fresh fruits 
(including cucumbers), white cheese, and scveral kinds 
of flat bread. For thirst quenching, iccd fruit syrups 
were formerly used but have been largely replaced by 
American-type soft drinks. Until weil into the present 
century the flat bread also served to lift food to the 
mouth. Only in quite recent times have Western-style 
table implements, particularly spoons and forks, 
become popular; with Iranian dishes, knivcs are seldom 
used. Chronologically the introduction of cutlery coin-
cided with the adoption of table and chairs in place of 
the traditional cloth spread on the floor (sofra). 
The outstanding characteristic of modern Iranian 
cookery is its conservatism. The much discussed "craze 
for Western things" (garb-zadagl) has had little or 
no elfect on the people's eating habits. In this field, 
Iranian cultural resistance to Western influences has 
shown particular strength. 
See also Äs and Äspaz-)5ana. 
Bibliography: T. Alsar, ed., iüpazl-e dawra-ye 
~afawl: Matn-e do resiila az an dawra, Tehran, 1360 
S./1981. A.J. Arberry, "A Baghdad Cookery Book," 
Islamic Cu/ture 13, 1939, pp.21-47. 'All Akbar 
Äspaz-bäsI, Sofra-ye a(ema, Tehran, 1353 S./1974. 
G. Doerfer, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im 
Neupersischen, 4 vols., Wiesbaden, 1963-75. B. G. 
Fragner, "Zur Erforschung der kulinarischen Kultur 
Irans," Die Welt des Islams, N.S. 23/24, 1985 (with 
comprehensive bibliography). B. Laufer, Sino-
Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of 
Civi/i;;ation in Ancient Iran with Special Reference to 
the Historyo/Cultivated PlantsandProducts, Chicago, 
1919. J. E. Polak, Persien. Das Land und seine 
Bewohner. Ethnographische Schilderungen, 2 vols., 
Leipzig, 1865. Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala, King 
!jusrav and His Boy, Paris, n.d. A. M. Watson, 
Agricultural Innovation and the Early Islamic World: 
The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques 700-
1100, Cambridge, 1983. 
(B. fRAGNER) 


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