Persian Cheese and Arab Lizard: Food and Propaganda in Late Antique and Medieval Iran

A lecture by Touraj Daryaee
Howard C. Baskerville Professor in the History of Iran and the Persianate World
University of California, Irvine

Different societies have different codes and laws and dietary restrictions with regard to food consumption. These codes and laws reflect a set of values which usually distinguishes one civilization from another. This lecture discusses diet as a Zoroastrian Persian mode of identification and differentiation in the late antique and the medieval period. The talk will demonstrate how the Zoroastrians and later Muslim Persians distinguished themselves from others, through comparative diet. This will be done through the examination of Pahlavi Zoroastrian legal and Persian epic and historical texts.