Spaghetti Didn’t Originate in Italy?
Widely shared social media posts claimed in January 2025 that spaghetti, often regarded as a quintessentially Italian dish, actually owes its origins to Arab traders who introduced dried pasta to Italy in the 8th century.
“Spaghetti didn’t originate in Italy. It was introduced to the country by Arab traders in the 8th century. The Italians embraced it, and its popularity quickly increased,” one Facebook post (archived) stated.
The example above was shared on Jan. 9 by Hashem Al-Ghaili. It was also shared on other social media platforms, including X and Instagram.
Al-Ghaili’s post claimed that “spaghetti didn’t originate in Italy,” but was introduced in that region by Arab traders in the 8th century. However, the accompanying description elaborated that dried pasta, not spaghetti specifically, was introduced to Italy at that time. This created confusion, as the post appeared to conflate spaghetti (a specific type of pasta) with dried pasta in general:
Spaghetti wasn’t created in Italy — it was brought to the country by Arab traders:
Contrary to popular belief, spaghetti didn’t originate in Italy. In fact, historical records suggest that dried pasta, a game-changer in preserving and transporting the food, was introduced to Italy by Arab merchants in the 8th or 9th century.
The durable nature of dried pasta not only transformed it into a staple in Italy but also made it a globally beloved culinary delight.
So the next time you’re enjoying a traditional Italian pasta dish, remember that it’s the ingenuity of Arab merchants that we have to thank for pasta’s widespread popularity today.
In short, the debate over pasta’s origins remains unresolved. While evidence exists that Arab traders and settlers influenced the evolution of pasta in Sicily, attributing the invention of spaghetti — or pasta in general — solely to them oversimplifies its complex and possibly multicultural history.
A Look Inside the ‘Encyclopedia of Pasta’
Al-Ghaili told us via email: “Throughout the book, there is a recurring theme of Arab contributions, including the naming, growing and spreading different types of pasta into various regions, ” indicating the book sections he used as a source. The University of California Press provided us with a copy for verification, and we confirmed the quotes were authentic (emphasis and page numbers added in examples below).
The first part acknowledged that the belief that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy in the 13th century has been disproved, as pasta was already well established in Italy at that time:
Historically, busiata belongs to the large fusilli family and was made in Sicily long before Marco Polo returned from China. Local historians consider it the oldest Sicilian homemade pasta and place its birth date at around the year 1000. Lucie Bolens, who has studied Arabic manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, reports the presence of dry pierced pastas in Sicily already in that period. (page 52)
Importantly, Sicily, now known as one of the Italian regions, was under Arab control from the late 9th to the 11th century and at that time the concept of “Italy” as a unified nation did not exist.
In the second reference (page xiv), it was mentioned that dried pasta was found in Italy from about A.D. 800 and it was Muslim occupiers of Sicily who “spread the manufacturing and drying technique.”
The book’s third excerpt (page 16) mentioned Arab geographer al-Idrisi, who lived in Sicily during the Norman rule of Roger II (1100-1165). His account describes Trabia, Sicily, as a town known for producing string-shaped pasta in large quantities, supplying both Muslim and Christian territories. However, it does not suggest that Arabs introduced pasta to the island, stating, “according to al-Idrisi, then, dry pasta, or what he called itriya, was of Sicilian origin and was carried elsewhere by Arab ships.”
The book also noted (page 302) that the ancient pasta named tria appears in a description by al-Idrisi. Some historians argue that while Sicily was known as a “granary” for its durum wheat production, this primarily reflected its role in trade, not widespread local consumption.
According to the last part excerpted from the book (page 258), itryya was the Arabic name for dried pasta in the form of “strings,” which was widely sold in the Mediterranean “also under the Arabic term fidaws, which later became the Castilian fideos, hence the Italian fidelini.”
However, the same book also concluded that the origin of pasta in general cannot be attributed to one nation: “We can conclude that the origin of pasta is not Italian, not Greek, not Jewish, not Arab. It spread throughout the whole Mediterranean area at a stage that could be defined as endemic, with probability of contagion along the Silk Road.”
In a similar tone, Len DeFrancisci, chair of the History Committee of National Pasta Association, told us via email that “more than likely, just about every culture developed their own form of pasta because it is a very basic food. There’re even some wooden figurines showing people kneading dough that was uncovered in ancient Egyptian tombs.”
Giancarlo Gonizzi, coordinator at the Parma Food Museums, told us via email, “the history of pasta is extremely complex.” He stated that “pasta production began in the Middle East and spread to the Mediterranean countries and Italy thanks to the Arabs around the 8th-9th century,” adding that “recent studies have also hypothesized an important role of Jewish communities in the spread of pasta.”
Ongoing Debate on Pasta Origins
However, food historian Silvano Serventi’s book titled “Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food,” which Gonizzi referred us to, presents a different perspective. Serventi wrote that the origin of pasta products “remains the subject of speculation” and “cannot be explained by the simple movement of objects or people.”
“Nowadays it seems difficult to attribute full credit for the invention of pasta to the Arabs, but this does not mean that they played no role in the spread of certain types of pasta products,” he summarized, further elaborating:
If, as is so commonly reported, the Arabs really did introduce the technique of drying pasta into Sicily, it would appear that the Sicilians quickly surpassed their teachers, and developed the art as it had been developed nowhere else. It is anything but surprising that intensive pasta production should have developed first in Sicily, since the island had all the appropriate characteristics for its pursuit.
Anthony Buccini, a scholar specializing in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, with a particular interest in the foodways of the Mediterranean world, argued in 2013 and 2015 that the Arab influence on pasta in Italy may be overstated. Buccini claimed that pasta’s history in Southern Italy and Genoa predates significant Arab involvement and “many scholars invent erroneous etymologies when they claim that certain consonantal shifts between Arabic and medieval Italian dialects are ‘evidence’ for the Arab origination of these pasta dishes.”
“Though today it is communis opinio [common opinion] that the Arabs introduced pasta, especially dried pasta, to Sicily and from there it spread to the continent, there is no evidence to support this theory,” Buccini wrote in a 2024 paper from the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium conference, “There is, however, ample evidence both textual and linguistic that this food has been known in southern Italy at least since classical times.”
We have reached out to Buccini, Culinary Historians of NY, and other food history experts and organizations for comment and will update this report if we receive any responses.