War, Migration and Food in Mongol China: Yuan Dynasty Food and Medicine

10.6641/PICCFC.91012.2011.12.01

E. N. Anderson

中華飲食文化學術研討會論文集

第12屆（2011 / 11 / 01）

1 - 31

英文

China's steady accumulation of west and central Asian foods and medicines was always accelerated during times of control by non-Han dynasties: Wei, Liao, Jin and finally the Mongol Yuan. Some years ago I addressed this body on the spread of west Asian foods and their influence on northwest Chinese food. I now wish to continue describing the west and central Asian foodways of the Yuan court, and their blending with Chinese foods, in the context of further work. My coworker, the historian Paul Buell, has completed a draft translation of the Huihui Yaofang, ＂Muslim Medical Formulary.＂This is an enormous Yuan dynasty medical encyclopedia; most of it is lost, but three chapters and half the table of contents survive in a mid-Ming edition. It is filled with medical foods, as is general in all Asian medical traditions. It mentions some 125 foods used medicinally, and of course the rest of its 302 categories of medicine were generally taken by mouth (though some were for external use). It is clear that conquest and migration were important ways of spreading food to China, with profound influence on China's foodways. Much less is known about the flow in the other direction, but during the medieval period China gave the west such foods as the sweet orange, and a great deal of medical lore; the Mongol-period Persian writer RashId ai-DIn even compiled a book of Chinese medicine, the Tanksuq -namah il-khani, ＂Treasure Book of the Il-qans.＂This was a western counterpart of the Huihui Yaofang. War and conquest are disastrous, and there are better ways to spread food plants and animals around the globe, but the cultural dynamics remain interesting.