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Zarb

زرب

Specialised

An underground oven: a pit is dug, a fire burnt down to coals in it, meat — lamb, goat or chicken — and often vegetables and rice are lowered in on a rack or in a sealed drum, the pit is covered with a lid, sacking and then sand so no steam escapes, and it is left for hours. ⚠ BEDOUIN AND SOUTHERN, and strongly associated with WADI RUM, Wadi Musa and the Ma’an desert. ⚠ AND THE HONEST DISTINCTION THE SPEC ASKS FOR: what a tourist eats at a Wadi Rum camp is a real technique genuinely descended from a desert method, but it is a staged and scaled version of it — nightly, for groups, with a metal drum and a presentation of the lifting. The household and occasional practice it comes from is a different event, done rarely and for a reason. Both are recorded and neither is presented as the other. It belongs to the same family as the earth ovens of Polynesia, the Maori hangi, the Mexican barbacoa and the Yemeni madfun — an independently reached solution to the same problem, recorded as parallel rather than as diffusion.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Bedouin community documented

Languages: South Levantine Arabic

What is recorded

  • Zarb is documented as a pit oven: a fire burnt to coals in a dug pit, meat and vegetables lowered in, sealed with a lid, sacking and sand, and left for hours. It is associated with Bedouin communities of southern Jordan, particularly Wadi Rum, Wadi Musa and the Ma’an desert. The nightly tourist-camp preparation is recorded as a staged and scaled version of an occasional household practice, and the two are recorded separately rather than presented as each other. Earth ovens elsewhere — the Maori hangi, Mexican barbacoa, Yemeni madfun — are recorded as parallel solutions rather than as diffusion. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • part of Bedouin Foodways documented
  • related to Māori Foodways possible

    ⚠ EARTH OVENS ARE A PARALLEL SOLUTION, NOT A DIFFUSION. The hangi, the barbacoa and the zarb are independently reached answers to the same problem, and this edge asserts resemblance only.

Recipes

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