Chapter I: Etiquette of Eating
(1) To avoid eating in markets is good as far as practicable.
Hazrat Ali said : God removes seventy kinds of disasters from one who begins eating with salt. He who eats daily seven dried dates, every worm of his stomach is destroyed. He who eats daily ' twenty one raisins of reddish colour will not feed any pain in his body . Meat begets meat. Sarid (cooked dates with sugar) is a tiffin of the Arabs. Belly grows large if sweet things are eaten and two testicles hang down. Beef creates diseases/milk has got cure .
and clarified butter has got medicinal effect. Fat comes out of disease like it . There is no better thing than fresh grapes for a mother who just gives birth to a child . Fish melts the body.
Quran-reciting and tooth stick remove scum.
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(2) He who wishes to live long should eat in the morning , eat very little at night, wear shoes, should not entertain a man with clarified butter, should have little sexual intercourse and should put on simple dress. These are the injunctions also of religion.
(3) Once Governor Hajjaj said to a certain physician : Tell me such a medicine which I shall use. The physician said: Don't marry except a grown-up girl. Don't eat except the meat of a stout
Vol-II The Book of Wordly Usages 19
and strong animal. Don't eat food unless well-cooked. Don't use medicine except in illness. Don't eat fruits unless ripe. Don't eat food unless it is chewed well. Eat what you like but don't drink water after it. Don't eat anything after drinking water. Don't hold up stool and urine. Sleep a little after breakfast and walk a little after dinner before going to bed but not less than one hundred steps. It is said that if urine is held up, it is harmful to the body, just as everything around a stream is destroyed if it is held up.
(4) The rupture of a vein is a cause of disease and to give up dinner at night is the cause of old age. A certain physician said to his son : Don't go out of the house without eating food in the morning as there is patience in it and it removes thirst and greed for food.
(5) As a diseased man who gives up patient's diet suffers, so a .healthy man suffers if he takes a patient's diet . Some-one said* :
he who takes care of his diet has got certainty of no disease and no doubt of sound health . It is better not to be careful at the time of sound health.
(6) It is better to carry food to a house wherein a man has died. When Jafar-b-Abu Taleb died, the Prophet said : The family members of Jafar are busy owing to his death and cannot £ook food. Take to them what they eat. It is sunnat. "»