For one thing, we understand he had a chip on his shoulder from having being thrown into the wilderness to starve as a child. For another, although his descendants the Grand Moghuls of India are known for one of the richest and most sophisticated cuisines in history, Genghis’s idea of hospitality probably ran to plain boiled mutton. So, a long road of development to trace there. Nevertheless, despite having come from a very backwoodsy part of the world, the Mongols did contribute one party dish that is still made from Iran to Siberia.

Charles Perry majored in Middle East Studies at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation he pursued a writing career, serving as an editor and staff writer at Rolling Stone from 1968 to 1976 and a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times Food Section from 1990 to 2008. He began collecting medieval Arab cookery manuscripts in 1980 and has published widely on Middle Eastern food history.