the birth of pasta, pasta asciutta, Arab Sicily and the history of noodles

It seems like I'm always writing about food, you'd think all I do all day is eat. If only. But perusing one of my favorite cookbooks/history books of Sicily, Pompa nd Sustenance , Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti, she reminds me once again of the origins and birth of pasta and some more food history, like the history of noodles. She talks about pasta asciutta which is spaghetti or fettuccine covered with sauce and cheese. She believes that that dish was born in Arab Sicily when noodles known as rishta were eaten in ancient Persia and discussed in medieval Islamic cookbooks. Al-Idrisi, King Roger II's famous geographer, talks about pasta vermicelli called itriya, an Arabic word that survived as "tria" in Sicilian that, along with the pasta, was taken north by Genoese merchants. Check out page 143 where she lists some of the different forms of 19th century pasta. I never heard of most of them! Melinfanti, pastarattedda, filatieddi and ciazzisi, just to mention a few.