Bersaq (Beji): The Southern Kurdish Fried Sweet Bread

Mero Ranyayi
May 29
5 min read

Bersaq (Beji): The Southern Kurdish Fried Sweet Bread

Bersaq is a Southern Kurdish fried sweet bread — an enriched dough of flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and oil, left to rise, shaped into flat rounds, and fried until golden. It is eaten plain or filled, and the fillings tell you where you are: walnut powder, fennel, or sweet dried-mulberry powder folded into the dough. It is made above all in Kermanshah, Ilam, Lorestan, and Kurdistan provinces — the Southern Kurdish lands of Rojhelat. Its real name is Kurdish. The pastry is properly called beji — in Southern Kurdish bijî or birjî, in Gurani pişî — and the common form “bersaq” is, as one reference states plainly, the Arabized version of the Southern Kurdish word birjiyag or birşiyag, a past participle meaning “toasted.” The dish is named, in Kurdish, for exactly what is done to it: it is the toasted thing. The familiar spelling bersaq is simply that Kurdish word run through another language’s sound system. This is the eighty-eighth article in the series, and it documents both a sweet and a small act of erasure. Beji is a Southern Kurdish pastry whose very name carries a Kurdish meaning — “toasted” — yet circulates mostly in an Arabized form that hides that root. To call it beji, or to know that bersaq is birjiyag, is to put the Kurdish word back on the Kurdish food.

Key Takeaways

• A Southern Kurdish fried sweet bread of enriched, risen dough — plain or filled

• Properly called beji (Kurdish bijî/birjî); “bersaq” is the Arabized form of birjiyag, “toasted”

• Made in Kermanshah, Ilam, Lorestan, and Kurdistan provinces — the Southern Kurdish lands

• Filled with walnut, fennel, or dried-mulberry powder — the Kurdish preservation pantry as a sweet

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Beji / Bijî / Birjî (Gurani: Pişî); birjiyag = “toasted”

Region: Southern Kurdistan / Rojhelat — Kermanshah, Ilam, Lorestan, Kurdistan

Ingredients: Flour, milk, eggs, sugar, oil; fillings of walnut, fennel, or dried mulberry

Type: Fried sweet bread / pastry — plain or filled

Traditional Preparation

Flour, milk, sugar, oil, and eggs are mixed into a soft dough, with enough flour added that it no longer sticks to the hands, then kneaded until smooth. The dough is wrapped and left to rise for around a day in a cool place — if the room is warm, it is moved somewhere cooler so it does not sour before it is ready. Once risen, the dough is divided and rolled or patted into flat rounds. For the filled version, a sweet, fragrant powder is worked in or enclosed: ground walnut, fennel seed, or the dark sweetness of dried mulberries crushed to powder. The rounds are then fried in hot oil until they puff and turn deep gold. The plain version is lightly sweet and rich; the filled version carries the perfume of its powder through every bite. Cooled, beji keeps well, which is part of its purpose — like much of the Kurdish sweet pantry, it was made to last and to travel, a sweet bread that survives a journey or a winter.

A Kurdish Word Beneath an Arabized Name

This series has tracked many ways a Kurdish food can lose its name. Sometimes a government decrees a new one, as with kürt tatlısı. Sometimes a region’s identity is laundered into a vaguer label, as with the dishes called “Anatolian” or “Persian.” And sometimes the change is quieter still — the word survives, but reshaped by another language until its Kurdish root is hidden. Beji is the clearest example. The Southern Kurdish word birjiyag (or birşiyag) means “toasted” — a plain, descriptive name for a fried, browned bread. Run through Arabic phonology, birjiyag becomes “bersaq,” and the meaning vanishes: bersaq says nothing, while beji and birjiyag say exactly what the food is. The dish did not change; only the spelling did, and with it the visibility of its Kurdish origin. Recovering the name is not pedantry. When the pastry is called beji, it is legible as Kurdish, rooted in a Kurdish verb, made in Kurdish towns. When it is called only bersaq, it floats free of all that — a sweet with no obvious homeland. The Southern Kurdish kitchen of Kermanshah and Ilam deserves to keep the word it coined for its own bread.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is bersaq (beji)?

Bersaq — properly beji — is a Southern Kurdish fried sweet bread made from an enriched, risen dough of flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and oil, shaped into flat rounds and fried until golden. It can be plain or filled with walnut, fennel, or dried-mulberry powder. It is made mainly in Kermanshah, Ilam, Lorestan, and Kurdistan provinces, and keeps well once cooked.

Why is it called both beji and bersaq?

Beji (Kurdish bijî/birjî, Gurani pişî) is the original Kurdish name. “Bersaq” is the Arabized form of the Southern Kurdish word birjiyag or birşiyag, a past participle meaning “toasted.” In other words, the Kurdish name describes the food — the toasted, fried bread — while the Arabized spelling bersaq obscures that meaning. Both names point to the same Kurdish pastry.

What are the fillings made of?

The filled version of beji uses sweet, fragrant powders worked into or enclosed in the dough: ground walnut, fennel seed, or powdered dried mulberries. The dried mulberry in particular ties the sweet to the Kurdish preservation pantry — mulberries dried in summer and ground for use through the year. The plain version has no filling and is simply a lightly sweet, rich fried bread.

Conclusion

Bersaq is the eighty-eighth article in this series, and it brings the Southern Kurdish lands — Kermanshah, Ilam, Lorestan — their own fried sweet bread, made of risen dough and filled with the walnut and dried mulberry of the Kurdish pantry. But its deepest lesson is in its name. Beneath the Arabized “bersaq” lies beji, and beneath beji lies birjiyag, the Kurdish word for “toasted.” The food was always Kurdish; only the spelling wandered. Eighty-eight articles in, bersaq joins the others as a reminder that erasure is not always loud. Sometimes it is just a word slowly reshaped until no one remembers it was Kurdish — and that recovering it is as simple, and as important, as calling the bread by the name its own bakers gave it.