Description

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For centuries, it had been the favourite Arabic cookery book of the Turks. The original manuscript, formerly held in the library of the Aya Sofya Mosque, is still in Istanbul; it is now MS Ayasofya 3710 in the S leymaniye Library. At some point a Turkish sultan commissioned very a handsome copy, now MS Oriental 5099 in the British Library in London. At a still later time, a total of about 260 recipes were added to Kit b al Tab kh's original 160 and the expanded edition was retitled Kit b Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada (my translation of it also appears in Medieval Arab Cookery); three currently known copies of K.Wasf survive, all in Turkey - two of them in the library of the Topkapi Palace, showing the Turks' high regard for this book. Finally, in the late fifteenth century Sirv ni made a Turkish translation of Kit b al Tab kh, to which he added some recipes current in his own day, the first Turkish cookery book.