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[…] the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread. […] and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest. And she went and came and gleaned in the field after the reapers. Division of labor: millers and bakers Important as meat and olive oil were in the daily diet of Jerusalemites, for the majority of the population bread was the most essential staple. The demand for meat was curbed to some extent by its relatively high price. Olive oil was cheaper, easier to procure and store and, as we have seen, was very widely used. Bread, however, was the major source of calories and other nutritional elements for all social strata. Due to its lower price, in its various forms it tops the list of foodstuffs consumed in sixteenth-century Jerusalem; it was readily available and production and supply were quite dependable. To encourage the town's merchants to engage in the economic activities involved in bread-making and in order to keep the price down, grains imported for bread were tax-exempt. The kanunname of Jerusalem which set the rates for the various taxes to be levied on goods imported to the town specifically stated: “from wheat nothing shall be levied.” Although barley was not mentioned, one may assume that by the same logic, it too was tax-free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[…] “Swine is good Saxon […] but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn and quartered, and hung up by the heels like a traitor?” “Pork”, answered the swine-herd, “I am very glad every fool knows that too”, said Wamba, “and pork, I think, is good Norman-French, and so when the brute lives […] she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles” […] “there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs […] but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner he is Saxon when he requires tenance, and takes a Norman name, when he becomes a matter of enjoyment. The muḥtasib and the butcher The office of ḥisba, although not mentioned in the Koran or in any of the other canonical texts of Islam, is one of the oldest institutions of the Islamic state. Opinions may vary as to whether the muḥtasib which was entrusted with it was actually a revised version of an earlier Greek institution or an authentic Arab term that emerged in the new socio-political reality of the ʿAbbasid empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]