Moorish
Moroccan cooking hasn't really travelled the world like other 'cuisines' - hampered perhaps by language as well as poverty. The second tongue is French - and so it's here that they've largely come. Not entirely welcomed, and not well-assimilated (France's hopeless employment laws fuelled last year's youth riots, while the parents remain serious, hardworking, devout and respectful of a superb health & social welfare system) - the food still manages to be fairly ubiquitous, and quite well-liked by the French. I can't think of one North African/Moroccan/Tunisian/Algerian ( ' Maghrebi ' ) restaurant in Ireland - but then I never get out enough - and I doubt if there are many in the UK, outside London.
Which is where Moro comes in. Moro is the Moorish restaurant at 34-36 Exmouth Market London EC1 started by Sam and Sam(antha) Clark in 1997. It's also the book. Here they draw together ' the robust styles of Spanish cooking with the lighter, more exotic dishes of the Muslim Mediterranean cooking ' . They hold that ' vegetables should play as important a role as meat & fish ...' They are hugely successful in both, and they have been a major inspiration for us. Working with their first book didn't so much revolutionize our cooking as draw it all together. Stumped for a tasty & dramatic vegan dish? It's there. Loooking for something hearty & meaty? Look no further. This is not French cuisine: no cream, butter or wine. It appeals to the educated peasant. It has simplicity and authenticity.
Knowing where it all comes from only increases the pleasure!
Mediaeval Moorish Spain excelled in city planning - the sophistication of their cities was astonishing. One early historian marveled at Cordoba Province with its '...300 public baths … the number of houses of the great and noble were 63,000 and 200,077 of the common people... There were upwards of 80,000 shops. Water from the mountain was distributed through every corner and quarter of the city by means of leaden pipes into basins of different shapes, made of the purest gold, the finest silver, or plated brass as well into vast lakes, curious tanks, amazing reservoirs and fountains of Grecian marble." The houses of Cordova were air conditioned in the summer by "ingeniously arranged draughts of fresh air drawn from the garden over beds of flowers, chosen for their perfume, warmed in winter by hot air conveyed through pipes bedded in the walls."
During the height of the Western Caliphate ( the Eastern Caliphate was based in Baghdad), the city of Córdoba was one of the major capitals in Europe and probably the most cosmopolitan city of its time. Córdoba under the Caliphate, with a population of perhaps 500,000, was far larger and more prosperous than any other city and province of the time in Europe, with the exception of Constantinople, and competed on at least equal terms as a cultural centre with anywhere else in the Islamic world. The work of its philosophers and scientists would be a significant formative influence on the intellectual life of medieval western Europe.
Muslims and non-Muslims often came from abroad to study in the famous libraries and universities of al-Andalus (Andalucia). The most noted of these was Michael Scot, who took Ibn Rushd 's (Averroes') works, and his commentaries on many of Aristotle 's works as well as the works of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), to Italy. This event was to have a significant impact on the formation of the European Renaissance.
However in 1480, the newly crowned Catholic Christian monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, instituted the Inquisition in Spain. This was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but who were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly. Many thousands suffered at the hands of the cruel Torquemada and his men. Tens of thousands were expelled from Spain. The Christian forces swept south and on 2 January 1492, Boabdil, the last of the tolerant Moorish caliphs, surrendered Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella. Legend has it that as the royal party moved south toward exile, they reached a rocky eminence which gave a last view of the delectable city. Boabdil, surveying for the last time the Alhambra and the green valley that spread below, burst into tears. The spot from which Boabdil looked for the last time on Granada is known as "the last sigh of the Moor" (el último suspiro del Moro).
There was an important witness present that day. On the first page of his journal for the year 1492, Christopher Columbus himself refers to the surrender: 'I saw the royal banners of Your Highnesses planted by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra ...' In December of that same year, Columbus set foot in the Americas.
In a lecture - entitled The Moor's Last Sigh - sponsored by the Center for African and African-American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin this september, Edwin Dorn says this at the beginning: 'For this lecture, I am going to venture far back in time, more than half a millennium. I do so because events that transpired 500 years ago may provide a perspective on the challenges that our country is confronting today in the Middle East. The lesson of this excursion is that those who wish to change the course of history ought to be familiar with history.'
Edwin Dorn was an Under Secretary of Defense in Washington under the Clinton administration. For the full lecture: http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/faculty/dorn/moors_last_sigh.pdf He acknowledges his primary source as: Maria Rosa Monocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston, Back Bay Books, 2002)