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Sinai and Eastern Desert Bedouin Foodways

Community

⚠ FILED UNDER THE EXISTING BEDOUIN ROOT AND KEPT PLURAL. The Sinai holds distinct tribes — among them the Tarabin, Muzeina, Jebeliya of the St Catherine massif, Sawarka and Rmeilat — and the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea holds the ABABDA and the BEJA-speaking BISHARIN, who are not Arabs and whose language is Cushitic. Filing all of them as "Bedouin cuisine" is the flattening the spec forbids. The food: sheep, goat and camel and their milk; dried and clarified dairy; DATES; coarse breads baked in sand under a fire — the form called libba or farasheeh; FATTA of broken bread with broth; COFFEE roasted and pounded at the fire and served in tiny cups as the whole grammar of hospitality; sage and desert-herb teas; and, for the Jebeliya, the orchard gardens in the high wadis around St Catherine’s, which are a documented and unusual mountain horticulture. Along the RED SEA coast, fishing communities and now a very large tourism industry at Sharm, Dahab and Hurghada. ⚠ CURRENT HUNTING AND FORAGING SITES ARE NOT RECORDED HERE, and nothing in this system encourages taking protected desert species.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Sinai Bedouin community documented
  • Jebeliya community documented
  • Ababda community documented
  • Bisharin community documented

Languages: Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic, Beja, Egyptian Arabic

What is recorded

  • The Sinai holds distinct tribes including the Tarabin, Muzeina, Jebeliya, Sawarka and Rmeilat, and the Eastern Desert holds the Ababda and the Beja-speaking Bisharin, whose language is Cushitic and who are not Arabs. Recording all of them as one Bedouin cuisine is treated as an error. Bread baked in sand under a fire, fatta, and coffee roasted and pounded at the fire are documented. The Jebeliya high-wadi orchard gardens around St Catherine’s are a documented mountain horticulture. Current hunting and foraging locations are not recorded. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • part of Bedouin Foodways documented

    ⚠ Kept plural: the Sinai holds distinct tribes, and the Ababda and Beja-speaking Bisharin of the Eastern Desert are not Arabs at all.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.