Mexican X-plainer: Al-Andalus & the Flour Tortilla

If you search for information about the origin of flour tortillas, you’ll find all sorts of notions. They were Spanish copies of indigenous corn tortillas, some will assert. They definitely aren’t Mexican, others will clamor, but instead some gabacho (US) monstrosity.

Puro pedo. Flour tortillas are definitely Mexican, but with Ibero-Arabic roots.

Before I can begin that argument, some folx on the other side will counter, “Well, they aren’t indigenous to Mesoamerica.”

Okay, let’s start in Mesoamerica. In Nahuatl, corn tortillas are “tlaxcalli,” from the verb “ixca” (to cook [on a comal: grill or griddle]). Transitive verbs in that language must have an object. When you’re not naming a specific object, you need to use the indefinite object “tla-” at the beginning of the verb. So to say “s/he cooks” you use “tla-” + “ixca” → “tlaxca” (you drop the initial “i-” because of the “a”). Literally “s/he cooks stuff.”

Adding the absolutive suffix “-lli” makes a noun, tlaxcalli: “a thing or stuff that’s cooked.” It’s a word like “cookie” (also “cooked thing”) or “biscuit” (“twice-cooked thing”).

Because tortillas weren’t made in Southern Mesoamerica before the 8th century CE (AD), Mayan languages availed themselves of different existing terms. For example, in Southern Mexico, in Maayat’aan (Yucatec Mayan), it’s “waah.” In Chontal and Tzeltal, “wah.” In Tzotzil, “vah.” These all come from Proto-Mayan *wah (“food/to feed”). The ancient…