Kofte

Timur is the Turkic warlord known as Tamerlane in the west.

And the etymology of the name is from Timur-e-Lang, the derogatory "Timur the lame" in Persian. Not a bad history of conquest for a gimpy guy, eh? What's really interesting is the West's fascination with Tamerlane, since he was -- by most accounts -- a pretty nasty piece of work. It comes down to the fact that he halted the advance of Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire, who Europeans rightly feared (and would continue to fear and battle for another few centuries).

Great thread of pedantry, guys! Keep it coming!
Mark Lipton

Timur is the Turkic warlord known as Tamerlane in the west.

And the etymology of the name is from Timur-e-Lang, the derogatory "Timur the lame" in Persian. [...] Great thread of pedantry, guys! Keep it coming!

True, but that is the derogatory Persian name he had. The Chagatay name Timur seems to be a loan from the Indo-Iranian languages (totally unrelated to the Turkic Chagatay) and comes from the root in the Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian languages and had the meaning of "iron". AFAIK he had no derogatory second name in Chagatay, but rather was sometimes simply called Gurkani, meaning son-in-law in the original Mongolian (the Timurids were of Mongolian origin, but were fully assimilated linguistically into a Turkic (Chagatay was a lingua franca in central Asia) and culturally into a Persian sphere of influence - hence the mix of Mongolian, Turkic and Persian words...).

But where did he stand on meatballs???

But where did he stand on meatballs???

The meatballs he stood on were most likely those of Bayezid I, and I'd expect that he stood on as much of them as he could.

Just my 2¢
Mark Lipton

Sue--my mind went Indian as well, because that is when I eat kofta--although my faves are from chick peas and served with a creamy, tomato-y curry sauce..

Well, from a purely emotional point of view -- I would imagine that the Persians would mind having "their" Kufteh called "Arab" food even more than they would mind it being labeled "Turkish".

But I'm not Persian and I don't know that for sure.

At any rate if you want to open a can of worms -- the foods served by Jews at Passover correspond closely to the foods served at the main Persian feast, Nowruz, which comes at the same time of year. And the Jews were kept in Persia for quite a long while, so the correspondence makes a lot of sense. And some of the foods transferred into the Christian celebration of Easter -- the name comes from Astarte. All of these feasts occur around March 21, plus or minus, and all of them are centered on eggs and herbs...

Actually, the eggs in the Passover seder are from the Romans not the Persians, but don't ask a Rabbi about that . The Romans always began their meal with eggs and salt.