Culinary Culture of the Kurds by Fariborz Hamzeh'ee: vol I ژیان گه زاگروس %

An investigations about Culinary Culture & Cuisine of Iranian peoples: Culinary Culture of the Kurds by Fariborz Hamzeh’ee: vol. I, Razi University Press Kermanshah 2009

One of the known scholars in the field of culinary culture of the Middle East, namely Claudia Roden, writes: “Cooking is always that part of culture and tradition which survives the longest.” (Roden, 1968) In the field of the science of ethnicity it has been proved that all aspects of culture may go through changes which are caused by combinations of various factors.

In addition to combination of several factors which are responsible for making culinary culture to be sustainable, there exist two other factors which contribute to sustainability of culinary culture. First -especially in the past and at least for a great part of the population living within a certain region- used to be the existing natural conditions. For that sake, culinary culture of a region depended on those agricultural products which could be grown there. At the same time the introduction of new products could take place only once a while within a very long period of time. For example -after many centuries- some vegetables like tomato and potato brought about minor changes in the culinary culture of the Middle East.

Introduction and table of contents of the book: Kurdish Cuisine vol I, II To download in PDF file

Culinary Culture of the Kurds

Secondly, changing of the taste is something which may occur not only as a consequence of cultural changes, but also some physical factors may be involved. If a person gets inhabited with certain types of food mere cultural changes may not be sufficient to make a sudden change of his taste. In addition to that, if the new findings regarding the role of genetic factors in consumption of milk can be trusted, about 75% of the people of Africa and between 95% to 100% of the people of Asia or Far East – do not have the necessary gene for the consumption of milk as North Europeans do. (Reinhard 2004: 41).

In general it can be observed among different societies that compared to other factors such as dress and even language, changes in culinary habits occur very slowly. This matter makes such aspects of cultural life very interesting for various types of cultural investigations.

In spite of high position of the Iranian culinary culture among all other’s in the world and despite its deep influence on the culture of Middle Eastern and Central Asian as well as Indian societies, no any significant scientific investigation of any type has yet been accomplished in this direction. An even more neglected field has been the regional culinary cultures of different Iranian peoples.

Kurdish Cuisine byFariborz Hamzehee

Among all people speaking Iranian languages, the Kurds have very special position regarding culinary culture. After all they are considered as those who still have preserved the cultural aspects of the Sassanids at most. This is partly because they have been the inhabitants of the central parts of Sassanid Empire with its capital in Ctesiphon and their summer residence in Kermanshah. This is important especially because it was the Sassanid culinary culture which -through the Arab Abbasid dynasty- is supposed to have been the archetype high culinary culture of the modern Middle Eastern. It means that the origin of all Arabic, Turkish, and Persian and Central and Southern Asian high culinary cultures is to be found in Sassanid period; regardless of the secondary influences which usually might have come from different directions including Byzantine, Chinese and Indian.

This work is a second attempt – following a previous study- in order to open the field of investigations about Iranian culinary culture by the scholars of different disciplines. (Hamzeh’ee 2008)

This work constitutes two main parts. The first part is based on secondary sources and has an analytical nature. In this part it is attempted to make readers familiar with the subject of culinary culture as a part of material culture in general and that of Iranian and Kurdish culture in particular. In this analytical part the following subject are discussed: Natural and cultural ecology, food and natural environment, food and structuralisms, food and women, natural and cultural environment of Western Iran, culinary culture and ethnicity, non-material culture of the Kurds, Sassanid culinary culture and Kurdish culinary culture etc.