Fantail Fancier

"50% floofy animals by volume" - rhythmelia || Also food, history, bookbinding, MDZS, The Old Guard, The Magnus Archives, and other fandoms. Fanbinding tumblr is fantailpress. AO3 account is rhipiduridae.

[rhipidurafan]

A Primer On Medieval Islamic Food

[Image ID: Illustrated table filled with medieval Islamic dishes. For a detailed description, go to the References section, Full Image Descriptions subsection for Image 1. Illustration by rhipiduridae. /end ID]

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Welcome to this giant series of posts about medieval Islamic food. I am a food lover who fell down the research rabbithole in an Old Guard fever dream, initially to add authentic foods to fic but it turns out medieval Islamic food is really tasty. People in various forums were interested in my excited rants and gave me motivation to write stuff down so others can benefit from my haze of reading and experimenting.

Eternal thanks to @rhythmelia​ for proofreading, feedback, and cheerleading services; S for additional proofreading and for enduring a sudden proliferation of spices and non-vegetarian dinners; D for the beautiful kitchen, recipe critiques, and being the best sous chef; and the many people on tumblr and various discord channels who listened to my ramblings and wanted even more. This would not have been possible without any of you.

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Disclaimer: I am not a historian or professional cook, nor am I Muslim or from the MENA region. If I got anything wrong, please let me know. I will also not be covering the history or geopolitics of the general MENA region. At the same time, it is obviously important as it relates to historical food and I will make occasional references to specific locations and caliphates. I encourage you to read up on it yourself.

I am assuming readers will have some basic knowledge of modern Middle Eastern, North African, Persian, and Indian foods and ingredients. If you want any further explanations on something, just let me know!

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I will be posting (almost) every Friday. Please see below for the schedule, which will be updated with links on this post when they are live:

Part 1: Medieval Islamic Cuisine 101 A discussion on the history and characteristics of medieval Islamic food as found in cookbooks from the 10th-15th centuries, with a small section on The Old Guard.

Part 2: References Sources for all the known medieval Islamic cookbooks and other historical food references, along with detailed image IDs.

Part 3: Typical Ingredients A list of the most commonly mentioned ingredients in medieval Islamic cookbooks.

Part 4: Typical Meals A list of the most commonly mentioned dishes in medieval Islamic cookbooks.

Part 5: Recipes For Home Cooking A small sampler of recipes from the cookbooks (with modern instructions). Some of these recipes are pretty long so they will have their own posts.

Sikbāj: Sweet and sour lamb stew

Tharīd: Chicken stew with bread

Fatīr: Thin flatbread

Mujabbana: Cheese fritters

Byzantine himmas kassā: Sweet hummus

Tabāhaja: Lamb with spiced sauce

Atrāf al-Tīb: Spice mix

Murrī matbūkh lil-maghariba: Maghrebi barley sauce

Baid mutajjan: Fried hardboiled eggs

Murakkaba: Layered date cake

Bādhinjān Būrān: Eggplant of Būrān

This primer (minus the recipes) is now on AO3.

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[cognitiveinequality]

[primarybufferpanel]

I love a highly specific pet advert

[ninjabunny]

ISO: A Pasture Potato / Xanax with a Tail | Facebook

ISO: A Pasture Potato / Xanax with a Tail Attention Sellers: Our pasture is currently a 24/7 reality show of "Mare Drama" and hormonal side-

Here’s the Facebook post if anyone wants to read a lot of comments about very dumb horses! It’s public so no log in is needed

[cumaeansibyl]

GREAT NEWS check out the post! they found their potato!!!

[freckledmer]

Screenshoted the update for anyone who doesn't want to deal with Facebook:

[ferrific]

And a picture of the ham sandwich:

[viralfrog]

[dragongirlbunny]

[wheeloffortune-design]

CONTROVERSIAL OPINION ABOUT BISEXUALITY

that purple in the middle is not the right saturation, it doesn't fit with the other two colors and it drives me crazy.

[deus-ex-aquila]

all right, I think I got this, I've got dual citizenship and I have another flag we can borrow from:

step 1

step 2

step 3

[varangianviper]

[wheeloffortune-design]

This is true bi/ace solidarity.

[xthehatchick]

holy shit

[finnslay]

This is the only correct way

[transarsonist]

[Patchnotes]

swapped purple in bisexual and asexual flags for better saturation matching and color theory

[dankxsinatra]

Where's his Oscar?

[sergeifyodorov]

I don't read as much fic as I used to but one "tell" for non Canadians writing us, besides the etransfer, is the units you use to describe us measuring something. I hate to tell you this but The Chart is real and it's completely subconscious. Please abide

[demotu-writes]

ETA the chart (or at least a version of it):

ETA2: we do use inches/miles in poetic ways ("he was lost in thought/miles away" or "his lips were a bare inch away").

Also, the length of a dick is in inches for SURE.

[labradorduck]

snow is cm then feet then metres depending on the depth

[shatterthefragments]

Important addition @branches-in-a-flood ! ❄️

[were--ralph]

they slayed

[lilu-the-almighty]

Prev’s tags significantly added to my experience of this video

[weepingwidar]

Anthony Hurd (American, 1975) - You Have This Hold Over Me (2025)

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Imagine The Fellowship all sitting around the campfire halfway up Caradhras retelling the events of the Hobbit to Boromir and Aragorn Rashomon-style with Gimli going "my dad tells it this way" and Legolas going "well, my dad tells it this way" and the Hobbits all going "but Bilbo tells it this way!" and, even though Gandalf was fucking there for half of it, he refuses to weigh in on anything because watching them argue is more fun and also he doesn't remember because it was over 75 years ago.

[felinecorpse]

Even better: Gandalf remembers it perfectly fine but he keeps making shit up and agreeing to multiple different versions just to throw everyone off

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Too good to hide in the tags!

[bixbythemartian]

[id: screencap of tags from tumblr user queenincheck, tag is "#gaslight gatekeep Gandalf" /id]

[hppjmxrgosg]

proud victim of the tumblr accent. it's fading out of public consciousness as the tik tok accent takes precedence; a linguistic evolution that makes the tumblr accent 85% funnier to unsuspecting civilians. it's like releasing a disease on a non-inoculated population. coughing baby versus hydrogen bomb.

[inconspectus]

once my therapist said I used very uncommon and creative phrases and adjectives and i just did not have the heart to tell that Old Lady From A Foreign Small Town that I was translating tumblr speech into our language. so I was like yeah... must be from the books I read...

like girl we have an army of scholars over at tumblr.com crafting our language it's not just little old me I swear

[copperbadge]

I once called a colleague's Borzoi a beautiful Gentle Alien, assuming the term had long since become commonplace outside of Tumblr, and discovered when he burst into delighted laughter at the term that it Had Not. I had to explain to him that I'm not a comedy genius, just repeating a niche meme.

[digitaldiscipline]

Me: "I am getting a good grade in patient, which is normal to want and possible to achive."

My Doctor: "Please stop that."

[gothiccharmschool]

Me: "I want to get a good grade in therapy, which is normal to want and possible to achieve."

My Therapist: "So, how are your peeps on Tumblr doing?"

[morphmaker]

the silmarillion bride

[flightyfinch]

other birds must get so pissed off by mockingbirds. like imagine you get in a fight with your wife and the next week you can hear your upstairs neighbor repeating the argument word for word as sexual roleplay

[runefaustblack]

[adhdedrn]

[Image ID: A reply from @lovingbeing: "(sees username)... is this from personal experience" End Image ID.]

[simply-sithel]

a one thousand page book of Winnie the Pooh this Tigger was a Legal Tiny where as Rabbit was a Letter Sextodecimal

[everythingfox]

(via)

[victusinveritas]

Photo and statement by Peter G. Arnold.

"This spring, a friend notified me that there was a family of Burrowing Owls on the eastern edge of Cheyenne. I made a beeline for the spot and was tickled to see that they were still there. This was in late June and the owlets appeared to be close to abandoning their burrows.

For several years I have developed a method of getting close shots of Burrowing Owls using a GoPro camera on a small tripod. I set the camera to take a photo every 5 seconds. Then I leave the site to allow the birds to feel more comfortable coming out of their burrows. The worst part is having to wait for hours to see whether the method produces anything of value. I took this shot on June 28th."

[parkchanwoohoo]

I loved this post just because all the comments flipped between sincere appreciation and mockery of the birds