Syrian Sweets

01Geography

Syrian sweets are not one tradition. They are a set of regional specialities that grew out of what each city could grow, mill, or trade for — and the differences are still visible in the pastry shops.

Aleppo — the pastry city

Aleppo's reputation rests on pastry rather than on syrup. The city's confectioners are known for layered filo work, for nut-packed baklava, and for the shortbreads that go with coffee. A 13th-century cookbook compiled in Aleppo, the Kitab al-Wuslah ila l-habib, is one of the earliest written records of the region's kitchen, and the city's sweet shops still work in the same idiom: thin dough, clarified butter, and pistachio.

Damascus — sesame and syrup

Damascus is the city of the sesame cookie and the cheese pastry. Barazek is generally traced to the Ottoman period and specifically to the Al-Midan quarter of Damascus, where the trade of the barāziqī — the barazek seller — was recorded as a distinct profession. Kanafeh has a Damascus origin story too: one tradition places its invention at the Umayyad court, made for the caliph Mu'awiya I.

Homs — the simple sweets

Homs has its own repertoire, less exported than Aleppo's and less written about. Syrian state media and Arabic-language press describe a family of Homs sweets — bashmina, qarmashliyya, balatat jahannam, and simsimiyya — whose appeal is explicitly described as lying in their simplicity. These are sesame- and semolina-based confections, closer to a biscuit than to a pastry.

Hama and the countryside

Hama and the surrounding agricultural belt supply much of the raw material: wheat and semolina from the plains, pistachios from the orchards around Hama and Aleppo, and sesame grown across the north. The sweets of the smaller towns tend to be the ones that keep — maamoul pressed in wooden moulds, halva in blocks, sesame biscuits — because they were made to be carried.

02The sweets

Thirteen confections, grouped by what holds them together: semolina, filo, spun pastry, cheese dough, or nothing but sugar and sesame.

Maamoul

معمول

A filled cookie of semolina and butter, pressed into a wooden mould called a tabe that stamps a pattern into the top. The pattern is not decoration alone — different moulds denote different fillings, so a buyer can tell dates from walnuts by shape.

The dough is mixed and then left to rest so the semolina absorbs the butter before the filling goes in. Fillings run to dates, figs, pistachios, walnuts, and occasionally cheese. Food historians link the Levantine maamoul to kleicha, a Mesopotamian date cookie, and to the Egyptian kahk. An 1895 Arabic-English dictionary already glossed maʿmūl as "a kind of Syrian cake".

• BaseSemolina, butter
• FillingDates, figs, pistachio, walnut
• MethodMoulded, then baked
• OccasionEid and Easter
• WhereAleppo, Damascus, Hama — pressed in wooden moulds across the Levant

Kanafeh

كنافة

Spun pastry — kadayif — layered with soft cheese and soaked in a sugar syrup called attar. Served hot, usually with more syrup poured at the table and a dusting of pistachio on top.

The name has a contested etymology: possibly Coptic, possibly from an Arabic root meaning "to flank or enclose". The origin story is equally contested — one version places it in Fatimid Egypt, another at the Umayyad court in Damascus. The most famous regional variant, kanafeh nabulsiyeh, comes from Nablus in Palestine and uses a firm, stretchy cheese.

• BaseKadayif, cheese
• SyrupAttar
• MethodBaked or fried, then soaked
• OccasionRamadan, celebrations
• WhereDamascus (Umayyad origin story); Nablus for the nabulsiyeh variant

Basbousa

بسبوسة

A semolina batter baked in a sheet pan, soaked in sugar syrup, and cut into diamonds or squares. Known as harisa, nammoura, or revani depending on where you are standing.

The Oxford Companion to Food traces it to ma'mounia, a 9th-century Abbasid dish of rice cooked in fat and syrup, later adapted to semolina. Ottoman revani was a frothier, egg-rich cousin; street sellers used semolina and fewer eggs, which is closer to the Syrian version.

• BaseSemolina, yogurt, butter
• SyrupSugar, lemon, rose water
• MethodBaked, then soaked
• FinishAlmond or pine nut
• WhereHoms and Hama; the Syrian name is harisa

Ghraybeh

غريبة

A shortbread that melts rather than crunches, usually made with ground almonds and clarified butter. The texture comes from the fat-to-flour ratio, not from leavening — there is none.

Versions exist across the Arab world, the Balkans, and the former Ottoman lands, and it is a close relative of the Andalusian polvorón. An 1889 congress of Orientalists described Syrian ghraybe as a kind of maamoul shaped into small rings or hexagonal stars, with no nut filling and a high butter content.

• BaseFlour, samneh, sugar
• FlavourAlmond, pistachio, rose water
• MethodShaped, baked low
• ServedWith coffee or tea
• WhereAleppo — the shortbread that accompanies coffee

Barazek

برازق

A thin, crisp cookie whose defining feature is a dense coating of sesame on one face, often with pistachio in the dough. Sweetened with sugar or dibs — fruit syrup — and sometimes finished with qatir.

It is generally traced to Ottoman-era Damascus and specifically to the Al-Midan neighbourhood. The trade was formal enough to have its own name: the barāziqī, the barazek seller, appears as a profession in Zafir al-Qasimi's Dictionary of Damascene Industries, which notes that sales peaked during Ramadan and that cheaper versions used sesame oil instead of butter.

• BaseFlour, butter, sesame
• SweetenerSugar or dibs
• MethodRolled, seeded, baked
• OriginDamascus, Al-Midan
• WhereDamascus, specifically the Al-Midan quarter

Halva

حلاوة

A broad family rather than a single recipe. The Syrian and Levantine version is usually sesame-based — ground tahini folded into hot sugar syrup — which gives a dry, crumbly, faintly bitter confection quite unlike the gelatinous semolina halva of Iran and Turkey.

The word descends from Arabic ḥalwā, from a root meaning "sweet". The confection itself is older than the name: Athenaeus describes a Greek sesamidios, a ball of honey, roasted sesame and oil, which is recognisably the same idea.

• BaseTahini, sugar
• TextureDry, crumbly
• MethodSyrup folded into tahini
• FinishPistachio, sometimes chocolate
• WhereAleppo and Homs; sesame halva is the Levantine form

Baklava

بقلاوة

The most exported of the group and the least specifically Syrian — but Aleppo's version is distinct. Where Greek baklava leans on honey and walnut, the Levantine version uses sugar syrup, clarified butter, and pistachio, and the pastry is rolled thinner.

The technique is the point: dozens of sheets of filo, each brushed with butter, layered over a nut filling, cut before baking so the syrup can penetrate, then soaked after. The shredded-pastry variant in the photo is a different construction entirely — spun dough coiled around nuts.

• BaseFilo, samneh, nuts
• SyrupSugar, lemon, rose water
• MethodLayered, cut, baked, soaked
• RegionalAleppo pistachio style
• WhereAleppo — pistachio and sugar syrup, not honey and walnut

Halawet el-jibn

حلاوة الجبن

A cheese dough — mozzarella or a mild akkawi — cooked with semolina and sugar until it becomes elastic, then rolled thin, filled with ashta (clotted cream), rolled into cylinders, and drenched in syrup. The texture is the whole point: it should stretch before it yields.

Hama is the city most associated with it, and the photograph above was taken in a Hama workshop. It is a fresh sweet, sold by weight and eaten the same day, which is why it rarely travels.

• BaseCheese, semolina, sugar
• FillingAshta, sometimes pistachio
• MethodCooked, rolled, filled, syruped
• WhereHama — the city's signature sweet

Awameh

عوامة

Yeast-leavened batter dropped into hot oil, fried to a dark gold, then plunged into cold syrup so the shell stays crisp. Known across the region as luqmat al-qadi — "the judge's morsels" — a name recorded by al-Baghdadi in the 13th century.

The Turkish lokma and the Greek loukoumádes are the same sweet under different names, all descending from the Arabic luqma, a morsel. In Syria it is street food, fried to order.

• BaseYeasted batter, oil
• FinishCold syrup, sometimes cinnamon
• MethodDeep-fried, then soaked
• WhereDamascus and Aleppo street stalls

Qatayef

قطايف

A pancake cooked on one side only, so the uncooked face stays porous and can be sealed. Stuffed with cheese or nuts, folded into a half-moon, then fried or baked and soaked in syrup.

It is the most strictly seasonal sweet in the repertoire: in Syria, Jordan and Egypt it appears almost exclusively during Ramadan. The name comes from the root q-ṭ-f, to pick up or pluck, and the dish is recorded in Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's 10th-century Kitab al-Ṭabīḫ.

• BaseBatter, cooked one side
• FillingCheese, walnut, ashta
• MethodFolded, fried or baked, syruped
• WhereDamascus — a Ramadan fixture

Tamriyeh

تمرية

A semolina pudding — often flavoured with mastic — wrapped in very thin dough, fried, and finished with pistachio and syrup. The name means "made with dates", though most versions contain none; the reason for the name is not recorded.

Homs is one of the four cities named in the literature as a home of tamriyeh, alongside Nablus, Sidon and Port Said. Its origin is genuinely disputed: Nablus is the usual claim, but some Nablus vendors point instead to the village of Tamra.

• BaseSemolina pudding, thin dough
• FlavourMastic, pistachio
• MethodWrapped, fried, syruped
• WhereHoms — one of four claimed homes

Muhallebi

مهلبية

A milk pudding thickened with rice flour, cornstarch or semolina, set in bowls and finished with pistachio, rose petals, or a spoon of syrup. The lightest thing in the repertoire, and the one most often eaten at the end of a heavy meal.

Legend has it that a Persian cook served it to the Arab general al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra in the late 7th century, and that the general liked it enough to give it his name. The earliest written recipes are 10th-century, and include a version thickened with ground rice and another enriched with chicken.

• BaseMilk, rice flour or semolina
• FlavourRose, mastic, orange blossom
• MethodCooked, set in bowls
• WhereDamascus — sold from sweet shops and carts

Sfouf

صفوف

A semolina cake coloured and lightly flavoured with turmeric, with aniseed, sesame paste and pine nuts. Unlike basbousa it is not soaked in syrup — the sweetness is baked in, which makes it a cake rather than a confection.

The name means "rows", for the way it is scored before baking. It is more strongly associated with Lebanon than with Syria, but it appears in Syrian sweet shops and belongs to the same semolina family as basbousa and maamoul.

• BaseSemolina, tahini, turmeric
• FlavourAniseed, pine nut
• MethodScored, baked — no syrup
• WhereLevantine; common in Syrian shops

03Where to buy

A short list of places that are documented rather than merely recommended. Where a shop is famous enough to have a written record, it is here; where it is not, it is not.

Bakdash

An ice cream parlour in the Al-Hamidiyah Souq in the old city of Damascus, established in 1885. It sells booza — a mastic-thickened frozen dairy dessert pounded with a wooden mallet rather than churned, which gives it its characteristic stretch — rolled in crushed pistachio.

It is the one entry on this page that is a landmark rather than a recommendation: it appears in travel writing, in NPR and Saveur reporting on the Syrian diaspora, and in Lucy Malouf and Anthony Bourdain's Saha. Branches opened in neighbouring countries during the war, some with the founders' permission and some without.

• CityDamascus
• Since1885
• Known forBooza with pistachio
• WhereAl-Hamidiyah Souq, old city

The souqs

Beyond individual shops, the trade is organised by market. Al-Hamidiyah in Damascus and the covered souqs of Aleppo's old city are where the sweets are concentrated — the same geography that produced barazek in Al-Midan and baklava in Aleppo still determines where you go to buy them.

In Aleppo the sweet shops cluster around the citadel and the Jdeydeh quarter. In Damascus, the sweet sellers sit alongside the spice and textile merchants in the Hamidiyah arcade, which is why the photograph above is a reasonable proxy for the whole trade.

• DamascusAl-Hamidiyah Souq, Al-Midan
• AleppoOld city, around the citadel
• HomsLocal sweet shops, less exported
• AbroadDiaspora shops in Amman, Beirut, Montreal

04Technique

Almost everything in this repertoire is one of four constructions. Once you can name the construction, the recipe stops being a list of ingredients and becomes a method.

The ingredients that do the work

Semolina is the backbone of the dough-based sweets. Its coarse grind gives basbousa and maamoul their characteristic grain, and it absorbs fat slowly, which is why the dough rests.

Clarified butter — samneh — carries flavour and controls shelf life. Its absence of milk solids means it does not burn at the temperatures filo work requires.

Sugar syrup is the preservative as much as the sweetener. A saturated syrup poured over a baked pastry both sweetens it and seals it, which is why so many of these sweets travel well.

Pistachio is the signature nut of the Aleppo repertoire, and sesame the signature seed of the Damascus one. The split is not absolute, but it is a useful way to read a pastry counter.

Rose water and orange blossom water appear throughout, usually in the syrup rather than the dough, and usually in small enough quantities to read as perfume rather than flavour.

05History

The written record of these sweets is older than the names they now carry.

The cookbooks

The 10th-century Baghdad cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh is the earliest surviving Arabic recipe collection, and it already contains a shortbread close to ghraybeh — khushkanānaj gharīb — as well as the first proper halva recipes. A 13th-century collection from Aleppo, the Kitab al-Wuslah ila l-habib, records the city's kitchen in detail. A 14th-century Egyptian collection describes a cookie called nuhūd al-ʿadhārī — "the virgin's breasts", for its shape — made from equal parts samneh, sugar and flour.

The Ottoman layer

Many of the sweets now thought of as Syrian took their present form under Ottoman rule. Barazek is dated to that period in Damascus. Baklava's layered construction spread from the imperial kitchens outward. The vocabulary shifted too: revani, kadayif, and helva are Ottoman Turkish forms of words that had earlier Arabic and Persian lives.

The modern trade

By the late 19th century these sweets were a documented industry with named trades, guild-like specialisations, and their own literature. The 1889 Congress of Orientalists described Syrian ghraybe and Egyptian ghurayba side by side. Zafir al-Qasimi's dictionary of Damascene trades recorded the barazek seller as a profession. And in 1910, a pastry counter in Manhattan's Little Syria was photographed serving the same repertoire to an emigrant community — the first appearance of these sweets in the American record.

06Credits and sources

All photographs are from Wikimedia Commons under the licences shown. The text draws on the reference literature listed below.

Photographs

References