The Murder of Egypt's Forgotten Queen - Shajar al-Durr & Om Ali

Today I am making the national dessert of Egypt, a bread pudding called omelette, a dessert with an interesting story of deceit, murder, and the rise and fall of Egypt's only female sultan. So thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video as I make omelette, this time on Tasting History. So this dish omelette is said to have received its name in the 13th century but bread puddings very much like the modern version have been in cookbooks from Egypt and the region going back at least to the 10th century like in the Kitab al-Tabikh or Book of Cooking by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq which says take semolina or white bread and soak it in milk until saturated. Then take half a pound of sugar or as much as is needed for the amount of bread, crush it, and mix it with the bread. Then take a clean and shallow pot, add the soaked bread, milk, and sugar, return the pot to slow burning coals. When the filling is cooked and set, remove the pot from the fire, turn it out onto a wide bowl, and serve God willing. Other versions from the medieval period include some flavors that you will find in the modern version like cinnamon, and almonds, and pistachio, and even rose water but then there are also some ingredients that you don't really find today in this dish like camphor and chicken. Now I am going to steer clear of the chicken but I will use some of the other ingredients that I found in some of the medieval recipes. I'm also going to use the bread that was used at the time. Today it's very often made with croissants which I'm sure is delicious but back then they used a flat bread that was unleavened called rukak, and to make that all you do is mix a half teaspoon of salt into one pound or 450 grams of flour and then add 200 milliliters or a little over three quarters of a cup of water and mix it all into a dough. Once the dough comes together knead it on the counter for about 15 minutes or until it starts to become smooth, and then wrap it in some plastic wrap and set it aside for an hour to allow the gluten to relax. It'll also give you plenty of time to relax because kneading that dough that really takes it out of you. Once you and the dough are nice and relaxed though divide the dough into eight pieces then form each into a ball and begin to roll it out. Stretch and roll until it becomes as thin as you can possibly make it. Then set the dough on a pan and put it in the oven at 475 degrees Fahrenheit, 245 Celsius for five minutes. Now you can bake this for like two minutes and it will be done but it'll be nice and soft and you can use that for like a wrap or something, but we want to have crispy bread. So you want to wait until it puffs up and begins to get some color on it, then take it out and if it's nice and crisp you know it's ready. This bread is still made in Egypt today though I feel like usually it's used for a stuffed meat pie that they have, but it's used the same way that you would use like phyllo dough or puff pastry, and if you don't want to make it you can actually just use some phyllo dough or puff pastry. It's going to end up being very similar especially because after you've done all of the work of making it you're just going to crumble it up into a baking dish. So sad. Like I said the modern version just uses croissants and so you can just dry some croissants and break those up. That'll work too but if you are doing that then skip this next part because croissants have a lot of butter in them whereas most of the old historic recipes say to melt beef tallow or butter and put that over the bread. I opted for butter. I used a half cup or 120 milliliters. Along with the melted butter you can top this with an assortment of different nuts or dried fruits. Many of the old recipes have just all sorts of variations. I am using three quarters of a cup of almonds, three quarters of a cup of pistachios, and one cup of sultanas. Sultana is actually the word for a female sultan or more often the person who is married to the sultan so it's pretty fitting for this dish. Also the nuts are going to be best if you toast them for a little while in a dry pan and then break them up before scattering them across the top and then add that layer of sultanas. Now when it comes to the milk that you use most of the modern recipes use condensed milk but they didn't have condensed milk in 13th century Egypt so I looked toward some of the older recipes and they would use things like sour milk, some used yogurt, and then some just used basic milk and cream so I am using one quart or one liter of whole milk plus two cups of cream to help thicken it. To that whisk in three quarters of a cup or 150 grams of sugar and then set the pot on the stove and let it heat up. Once it starts to simmer remove it from the heat and let it cool for about five minutes and this is where you can add in all of the different flavors that you want to. Some of the old recipes used musk or poppy seeds or camphor, lots and lots of different things. I opted for three quarters of a teaspoon of cinnamon, three quarters of a teaspoon of cardamom, and one teaspoon of rose water. Whisk those into the warm milk and then gently pour the Make sure all of the bread gets nice and soaked and you can push some of the nuts down and the sultanas down as you do this. Then set the dish in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 205 Celsius and let it bake for about 25 minutes or until the top gets nice and brown and the milk starts to bubble. So I had not heard of this dish until about a month ago when a viewer emailed me telling me a little bit about this dish, and on that same exact day I went to go see a show and at intermission somebody came up to me and was like hey you should make omelette, and then he proceeded to tell me the story about this dish. It's just kind of weird how that happens. Never heard of it, twice in one day. Anyway the story was filled with intrigue, and deceit, and murder, and was amazing, and just the kind of thing I like to talk about here on Tasting History. So now I am going to tell you the story of The year is 1239, and a young girl named Shajar al-Dur has found herself enslaved, and just like so many enslaved people at the time, at least women, she was to be sold as a concubine. The man who bought her was the prince of Egypt, al-Salih Ayyub. But what happens next? Prince buys concubine, prince becomes sultan, sultan falls in love with concubine, sultan frees concubine, sultan and concubine get married. It's a tale as old as time. Well while this twisted little love story is playing out in Egypt, further to the north in France King Louis IX is fuming. He has just learned that the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem has been captured, and is now in the hands of that same concubine marrying sultan. So he decides to start a crusade because you know it's the middle ages and that's what you do. This is going to be the seventh crusade, and just like so many movie franchises once the seventh one comes along people start to lose interest. They're getting distracted by things like holy wars in Italy, and the new Mongol franchise which is coming in and invading Hungary. So people just weren't really into going on crusade at the time so Louis decides fine I'll do it by myself. So he gathers his almost entirely French army and heads not to Jerusalem but straight for Egypt. Well that is a surprise especially to the Egyptian sultan who happens to be in Syria at the moment fighting someone else. So he hears that Egypt is being invaded and so he heads back. He gathers all of his generals say hey we need to get an army, we're going to set up camp here at Mansoura, and then he dies. He just, he just dies. He had an abscess on his leg, they amputate it, and a few days later at night he's dead, and the only person who was with him when it happened was his wife Shejar The woman had to think on her feet. Now the sultan did have a son from a previous relationship, a man named Turan Shah but unfortunately they did not get along well together, this sultan and his son, and so he had never officially made him his heir. Plus he had sent him to live way, way far away in what is now modern-day Turkey so even if he had been the heir he wasn't around to help, and by now the French army had taken control of many of the port cities on the Nile Delta and was moving in to Egypt, and if people find out that the sultan is dead it's going to be absolute chaos. The generals are going to start fighting for power, and the government is going to collapse so what is Shejar to do? Well have you seen Weekend at Bernie's? Because basically that was her plan. She just pretended like he hadn't died. She told a few people who she really trusted what was going on but most people were none the wiser, and she maybe forged his signature on a stack of documents so whenever he was going to give an order she would write it down and hand it off to a general or whoever, so she was kind of in charge. Now one of the things that she did do was send somebody to get that estranged son and bring him back which he finally did but as he was coming back people started to figure out that something was afoot. Maybe the sultan was you know dead or something and so Shejar finally comes out and is like yeah he died last night. It just happened. He hasn't been dead for weeks. It just happened. Not long after this Turan Shah, the son, finally arrives in Egypt and he according to the sources gathers an army of 3,000 farmers and fights the crusader army of 15,000 strong and defeats them capturing the entire force including King Louis himself. End of Seventh Crusade. Roll credits. Everything's great now. Egypt is happy. They got their new sultan except that it turns out the new sultan is a belligerent psychopath who is bent on killing all the people that his father brought into power. Now this is of course coming from later sources who didn't like him so who knows exactly what the truth is but it does seem that he wanted to get rid of the group of people called the Mamluks. These were people who had started out as enslaved mercenaries but had come to kind of run the place. He wanted to get rid of them and put all of his friends in power. His big mistake though seems to be that he also wanted to get rid of Shajar but Shajar was like uh-uh I don't think so. I did not come all this way just to have it ruined by some snot-nosed little brat even if he is my stepson. So she plotted with the generals to kill him which they did. They hacked Turan Shah to death in the Nile River. Also I love how medieval art makes everyone dress as if they are in Europe like this is Turan Shah of Egypt who is just a tan version of the French King Louis. Anyway with Turan Shah out of the way the Mamluks decide that they are going to make Shajar al-Dur sultan in her own right. Now this is kind of a big deal. This is 13th century Egypt and they have just made a woman in charge of absolutely everything. Kind of a big deal and I feel like more people should know about this especially because she did a really good job. Within days of taking the throne she negotiated the ransom of King Louis and the French army for an enormous sum of money and got them to retreat from the port cities that they'd taken in the Nile Delta. Well everybody should be happy right? Not exactly because there is a group in Syria called the Ayyubids who were kind of in charge of Egypt for the last hundred years. Her husband was one of them and so they're like wait you put her on the throne? That's not cool and so they start revolting but even worse the the Caliph of Baghdad who was the de facto religious leader of the Caliphate says no I don't think a woman should be in charge. So even though it was absolutely not fair Shajar decides fine I will marry one of my top generals a man named Az-Ul-Din Ayyubid. Well Ayyubid already has a son and a wife and Shajar says okay that's fine as long as they stay away which they did. For a while we'll get back to them but at first things go all right. Ayyubid is basically in charge of the militaries and Shajar is in charge of running everything else in Egypt. Hunky-dory until finally Ayyubid is like you know what I should be in charge of everything and so they had some spats and things started to fall apart. In addition some military issues have arisen up in Syria most of which Ayyubid actually caused but Ayyubid needed some help dealing with it so he needed an ally in the region and that ally would be the Emir of Mosul and to cement this relationship Ayyubid says even though he's already married to Shajar but whatever except that when Shajar finds this out she's like uh-uh I don't think so I did not come all this way to have some hussy from Mosul come in and take my power. So she decides how about I deal with this in the same way that I dealt with the last sultan who made me mad. So one night while Ayyubid is taking a bath she has her servants go in and stab him to death and the next morning she goes out and tells everyone oh no my husband of seven years who was in perfect health died last night but they weren't buying it this time. Well those who were loyal to the sultan Ayyubid decide to torture the servants into confessing the murder and so they arrest Shajar and lock her up in a tower and at this same time Ayyubid's former wife the first wife and son who had been kind of cast off came back. The son who was 15 now was named Al-Mansur Ali and he became the new sultan and his mother who was still kind of peeved that she had been cast off in the first place decided that Shajar was maybe too dangerous to keep around so she had her servants go up into the tower one night beat her to death with their shoes and then throw her off the tower and that was the end of the one and only female sultan in Egyptian history. Really, really quite sad especially because she was pretty awesome but after this heinous act the mother of Ali the new sultan decided that they would celebrate with a dessert and the dessert was a bread pudding and so everyone called it Ali's mother because that's who was was having it made for the celebration. Ali's mother in Arabic is omali so that is where the name of this dish supposedly comes from and now it's time for me to try my own omali. So once the milk is boiling and the top is browned take the omali out of the oven and serve, and here we are omali the national dessert of Egypt. Smells so good. Today this is usually served with like a really thick cream that's almost like whipped cream on top but I am not doing that so I'm just eating alone trying to get everything. Try it on. Here we go. The flavors are so good. There is, it's sweet but not overly sweet. You get a lot of sweetness from like the sultanas and everything. Flavor is great. The texture is odd because that bread is basically just flour and water. They're almost like noodles. It's kind of like a noodle dessert which is a thing but I think that if you use the modern day croissants it's going to have a much better texture. This isn't bad, it's just different and I think that just croissants would be better but the flavors, the flavors are great. So especially if you are not making the bread yourself it's actually a really easy dish to make. It doesn't take that much work and I will put the recipe for this as always on the Tasting History website tastinghistory.com which I have made with some help from today's sponsor Squarespace. Squarespace makes building a website so easy with their dynamic tools like their drag and drop technology for both desktop and mobile, and they have lots of different templates which is great if you don't know a lot about building a website like I didn't because you have something to start off with. 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