Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq


Abu Muhammad al-Muthaffar ibn Nasr ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq was an Arab author from Baghdad, he was the compiler of a tenth-century cookbook, Kitab al-Ṭabīḫ. This is the earliest known Arabic cookbook. It contains over 600 recipes, divided into 132 chapters.

Kitab al-Tabikh

Kitab al-tabikh is the oldest surviving Islamic cookbook, written by al-Warraq in the 10th century. It is compiled from the recipes of the 8th and 9th century courts of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. Some scholars speculate that al-Warraq may have prepared the manuscript on behalf of a patron, the Hamdanid prince Sayf al-Dawla, who sought to improve the cultural prestige of his own court in Aleppo as the court in Baghdad had started to decline.
Some recipes in the book like asida - date-sweetened porridge - come from the relatively simple cuisine of the Arabian peninsula, but the book also contains recipes for fancy stews with Persian names. There is an entire chapter about nabatiyyat, hearty stews of Nabataean origin.