September 12: The Legend of the Bagel

A coalition of Christian European armies defeated the forces of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vienna on this date in 1683, breaking a two-month siege of Vienna and marking the final push to drive Islam out of Europe. Legend holds that a Jewish baker in Vienna paid tribute to King Jan III Sobieski of Poland, a noted horseman, by shaping dough into a circular shape resembling a “beugal” — a stirrup. This was meant to commemorate the king’s cavalry charge against the Turks, which was the largest cavalry charge in history. The defeat of the Ottomans was a mixed blessing for Europe’s Jews, who had been far less persecuted by Islamic rulers than by the Catholic Church and its affiliated Christian kingdoms, but were now able to grow, economically, with the capitalist system and would, within a little more than a century, begin to be emancipated into citizenship in much of Western Europe.

Another culinary legend holds that “the croissant was invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or during the earlier siege in 1529, to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman attack of the city, with the shape referring to the crescents on the Ottoman flags. This version of the origin of the croissant is supported by the fact that croissants in French are referred to as Viennoiserie, and [by] the French popular belief that Vienna-born Marie Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770.” —Wikipedia