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 Sleymaniye 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 Kitb al Tabkh's original 160 and the expanded edition was retitled Kitb 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 Sirvni made a Turkish translation of Kitb al Tabkh, to which he added some recipes current in his own day, the first Turkish cookery book.
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 Sleymaniye 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 Kitb al Tabkh's original 160 and the expanded edition was retitled Kitb 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 Sirvni made a Turkish translation of Kitb al Tabkh, to which he added some recipes current in his own day, the first Turkish cookery book.
