Aşure: The Kurdish Noah’s Pudding and the Forty Neighbours

Jamal Latif
May 30
6 min read

Aşure: The Kurdish Noah’s Pudding and the Forty Neighbours

According to the legend, Noah made this pudding on the ark. When the flood had lasted long enough that the grain and fruit and nuts in the hold were almost gone, he mixed everything that remained — wheat berries, chickpeas, dried figs, dried apricots, raisins, walnuts, beans, rice — into a single pot and cooked it, and the passengers of the ark ate it on the day the waters began to recede. They were alive, the flood was ending, and the last of the provisions had become a meal of gratitude and survival. That pot of mixed grains and dried fruit is what Muslims across Anatolia and Kurdistan call aşure, and it is still made each year during the Islamic month of Muharram and sent in small bowls to forty neighbours. The mountain where Noah’s Ark is traditionally said to have grounded is Ağrı Dağı — Mount Ararat — a volcanic peak in the Ağrı province of Kurdish Bakur, visible from across the Kurdish highlands on a clear day. Noah’s pudding, then, has a Kurdish mountain as its first address. The Kurdish communities of Bakur and Bashur make aşure during Muharram and distribute it to their neighbours, as they have done for generations — and they fill the bowl with the same ingredients the series has been covering for a hundred and thirty-five articles: the wheat of Karacadağ, the walnut of the Zagros, the pomegranate of the Kurdish heartland, the dried fig of the oldest cultivated fruit, the dried apricot of the mountain orchard. Aşure is the dish in which the entire Kurdish pantry comes together. This is the one-hundred-and-thirty-fifth article in the series. No dish that has come before it contains more of what this series has covered. Aşure is the pot at the end of the series: the synthesis.

Key Takeaways

• Aşure is Noah’s pudding — wheat, walnuts, dried figs, apricots, pomegranate seeds, chickpeas and beans in one pot

• Made during Muharram and sent in small bowls to forty neighbours — the tradition of Kurdish communal sharing

• Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) — the traditional landing site of Noah’s Ark — is in Kurdish Bakur

• Aşure contains more ingredients from this series than any other dish — the synthesis pudding of the Kurdish pantry

Quick Facts

Name: Aşure / Ashure (from Arabic ʿashura, meaning “tenth” — the tenth day of Muharram)

Core Ingredients: Wheat berries, white beans, chickpeas, rice; dried figs, apricots, raisins; walnuts; sugar; cinnamon, rose water

Tradition: Made during Muharram; distributed to forty neighbours; the essential rule is at least seven ingredients

Significance: Said to be the oldest dessert in the world; named after the day of the flood’s end; Noah’s Ark on Ararat (Kurdish Bakur)

The Pot That Holds Everything

Making aşure begins the night before. The wheat berries, chickpeas, and white beans are soaked in separate bowls of cold water, because each needs long soaking and all three cook at different rates. In the morning, each is boiled separately until tender — the wheat until it softens and begins to release its starch, thickening the liquid around it; the legumes until they are fully cooked but still hold their shape. Then they come together in a large pot: the grains and the beans, the cooking liquid, enough water to make a loose, creamy pudding. Rice goes in, and the whole pot simmers slowly for a long time, stirring regularly, until it thickens into a porridge. The dried fruit comes next: chopped dried figs, dried apricots, raisins, orange peel. Sugar. Cinnamon. Rose water, which lifts the whole pot with a floral sweetness. The pudding is poured into bowls while still warm and left to cool and set, and when it is ready — when the surface has taken on a gentle skin and the pudding has firmed to a soft, spoonable consistency — it is garnished: pomegranate seeds scattered over the top, walnut pieces arranged in a pattern, a dusting of cinnamon, a drizzle of rose water. The red of the pomegranate against the pale pudding, the dark walnut against the white — aşure is the most beautiful bowl the Kurdish pantry produces. And then it is given away. Not kept. Given away, to forty neighbours.

The Mountain, the Ark, and the Kurdish Pantry

This series has spent many articles making the case that the Kurdish mountains are where the world’s food came from. The olive tree was domesticated in the south Taurus mountains of Bakur. The wheat was first cultivated on Karacadağ near Amed. The fig was one of the oldest cultivated fruits in the world and grew wild in Kurdistan. The walnut and the apricot and the pomegranate all have their wild ancestors in the Zagros. Aşure brings all of these together in one pot and adds a legend: that the mountain where it all began — the mountain on which the last human beings and the last animals survived, the mountain on which the flood grounded and the world started again — is Ağrı Dağı, Mount Ararat, the great volcanic peak of the Ağrı province of Kurdish Bakur, which is visible from the Kurdish plains of Van and from the Armenian plateau and which has been called the mountain of the Kurds by Kurdish poets since the medieval period. The legend of Noah’s pudding says that the first aşure was made on or near that mountain — with the last wheat and the last dried fruit and the last nuts that survived the flood. Every aşure made since is a re-enactment of that first sharing. And the Kurdish communities who make it during Muharram and carry it to forty neighbours — to the east and west and north and south, the full circle of those to whom you owe neighbourly love — are practising the oldest form of the series’ central argument: that the Kurdish mountains fed the world, and that those who live on them still feed each other.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is aşure?

Aşure (Noah’s pudding) is a sweet grain pudding made with wheat berries, beans, rice, and an abundance of dried fruits and nuts — dried figs, apricots, raisins, walnuts, pomegranate seeds — cooked together into a thick, aromatic pudding and garnished with cinnamon and rose water. It is made during Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, and distributed to forty neighbours as an act of communal sharing. Kurdish communities across Bakur and Bashur take part in this tradition.

Why is aşure given to forty neighbours?

In Islamic and Anatolian tradition, “neighbour” extends to the residents of the forty houses to the east, west, north, and south — the full circle of those to whom you owe neighbourly care and generosity. Making aşure and distributing it to these forty households is understood as both a religious obligation and a community act: you make more than you can eat and give away the rest, because that is what Noah did on the ark, and that is what a community does.

Why does aşure have so many ingredients?

The legend says Noah made it from whatever was left on the ark: the last of every grain and fruit and nut that survived the flood. The tradition requires at least seven different ingredients (some traditions say twelve, or fifteen). The variety is the point: aşure is the pudding of ‘everything that remains,’ the dish that brings every stored provision into a single pot and transforms scarcity into abundance, survival into gratitude, the end of the flood into a gift for the neighbours.

Conclusion

Aşure is the one-hundred-and-thirty-fifth article in the series, and the one in which everything comes together. The wheat that was first grown near Amed, the walnut whose ancestor grew in the Zagros forests, the pomegranate of the Kurdish heartland, the dried fig of the oldest cultivated fruit, the dried apricot of the mountain orchard, the chickpea that also grew wild near Karacadağ — all of them, in one pot, on a day in Muharram, in a Kurdish home anywhere in the world. Made in large quantities, not for keeping. Carried in small bowls to forty houses in each direction. This is the series’ final answer to its own central question: what is Kurdish food for? It is for sharing. Always for sharing. One hundred and thirty-five articles in, aşure is the dish that carries the whole argument to forty neighbours’ doors and knocks.