Dried apricots give shilay qaysi its sweet fruit flavour. Family recipes and memories show how this Kurdish dish accompanies rice and meat, while also revealing variation in ingredients and serving occasions.
A fruit name and a dish name
Qêsî, qeysi and qaysi are spellings encountered in discussions of apricots and their preparation. Wahby and Edmonds’s A Kurdish-English Dictionary gives qeysi as apricot; its definition does not restrict the word to dried fruit. [1] The preparation discussed here uses dried apricots and appears as shlei qaisi or shilay qaysi in the culinary accounts below. [2] [3] Distinguishing the ingredient from the dish makes room for differences in language and household usage, rather than treating one English gloss as a universal Kurdish definition.
One grandmother’s preparation
A recipe published by Kurdin kanssa keittiössä in September 2018 credits nana, or grandmother, as its source. It uses about 250 grams of dried apricots, 30 grams of raisins, three tablespoons of oil, a little salt and water. The chopped apricots are softened in oil, then simmered with the other ingredients. The writer serves the sweet preparation alongside meat and rice, rather than as a dessert. Raisins can be omitted. Tomato paste occurs in some recipes, although the writer says she does not recall tasting that version. [2] These are useful details of a particular family preparation, not a fixed recipe for all Kurdish kitchens.
Eid memories and the wider meal
In Goran Shakhawan’s November 2024 interview with designer Sayran Barzani, she recalls her mother making shilay qaysi every Eid. The recollection connects the dish to family continuity in the Kurdish diaspora, without establishing that every household serves it on the same festival. [3] Kurdish Central’s account of brinj u shla places apricot among several stew varieties eaten with rice. It describes small bowls of stew served beside the rice, with meat or chicken also offered. [4] Read together, these accounts show why describing qaysi only as lamb cooked inside an apricot stew is too narrow: fruit preparation, rice and meat can be distinct parts of the meal.
Cultivation is different from botanical origin
Apricots can matter deeply to Kurdish food without originating exclusively in Kurdish mountains. A 2021 population-genomics study by Alexis Groppi and colleagues analysed nearly 600 Armeniaca genomes. It identified separate domestication histories for Chinese and European cultivated apricots, deriving from different wild Central Asian populations, followed by gene flow. [5] This does not support presenting the Zagros as a demonstrated original homeland of the cultivated apricot. Nor does botanical ancestry determine which communities can call a dish their own. For this food history, the strongest evidence is the documented preparation and remembered meal, with its named contributors and household variations.
Sources and further reading
- Taufiq Wahby and C. J. Edmonds, A Kurdish-English Dictionary (Clarendon Press, 1966), entry qeysi.
- Kurdin kanssa keittiössä, “Shlei qaisi – Juhlien makea aprikoosikeitto,” 10 September 2018; family recipe and firsthand meal photographs.
- Goran Shakhawan, “Adorning Jewelry with a Touch of Kurdish Culture,” Kurdistan Chronicle, 14 November 2024; interview with Sayran Barzani, including her Eid food memory.
- Kurdish Central, “Cuisine,” section Brinj u Shla; account of rice, separately served stews and accompaniments.
- Alexis Groppi and colleagues, “Population genomics of apricots unravels domestication history and adaptive events,” Nature Communications 12, 3956 (2021), doi:10.1038/s41467-021-24283-6.