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Syrian Culinary Regions — a note

Comparison

⚠ ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES ARE NOT CULINARY ONES, and Syria is the clearest case in the Levant. Fourteen governorates, but the food divides another way: DAMASCUS and its ghouta; ALEPPO and its countryside, which is a cuisine in its own right and was a city of the Ottoman first rank; the COAST at Latakia and Tartus, Mediterranean and citrus-growing; the central plain of HOMS and HAMA; the NORTHWEST around Idlib; the JAZIRA and the EUPHRATES in Hasakah, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, which is Mesopotamian rather than Mediterranean; the SOUTH at Daraa and the Hawran; and the DRUZE mountain of Jabal al-Arab in As-Suwayda. ⚠ AND THE WAR IS A FOOD FACT. Since 2011 displacement, destroyed orchards, lost herds, a collapsed currency and the loss of Syria as a wheat exporter have changed what is actually eaten, and a foodways system that described only the pre-war kitchen would be describing a memory.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

Languages: North Levantine Arabic

What is recorded

  • Syrian foodways are recorded across culinary regions that do not coincide with the fourteen governorates: Damascus and its ghouta, Aleppo and its countryside, the Mediterranean coast, the Homs-Hama plain, the northwest, the Jazira and Euphrates, the southern Hawran, and the Druze mountain of Jabal al-Arab. Displacement since 2011, destroyed orchards, lost herds, currency collapse and the loss of Syria as a wheat exporter are recorded as having changed what is actually eaten. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Ottoman Foodways documented

    Damascus and Aleppo were Ottoman cities of the first rank for four centuries, and the urban kitchen is elaborated within that world.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.