In 8th-century Abbasid Iraq, meals were not served in successive courses: a sufra, a simple mat of leather or cloth, was spread on the ground, and people sat around it in a circle. Everything was placed at once — the bread that served as both plate and utensil, a porridge or broth shared with the fingertips of the right hand, dates, a jug of water. In the homes of wealthy emirs, the sufra groaned under fragrant meats; among ascetics and the poor of the suburbs, like Rābiʿa, it was reduced to barley bread, a few dates, and water. It is this stripped-down table, where the humblest food becomes an act of gratitude to God, that we recreate here.

Barley, the grain of the poor, and the date, the energy fruit of the Iraqi desert, form the foundation of this ascetic cuisine. Where the Abbasid court refined wheat, sugar, and spices from the East, Rābiʿa deliberately stuck to the two humblest foods of Basra — those that nourish without attaching the heart to worldly pleasures.