Rewas: The Wild Rhubarb of the Kurdish Spring Mountains

Sherko Sabir
May 30
6 min read

Rewas: The Wild Rhubarb of the Kurdish Spring Mountains

Rewas is the wild rhubarb of the Kurdish mountains — a thick-stalked, tart, deeply sour plant that pushes up through the rocky slopes of the Zagros and Taurus each spring, and is immediately eaten. Not cooked. Eaten: raw, on the spot, the stalk snapped off and dipped in salt or rubbed with sumac, the sourness so sharp and refreshing that it makes the eyes water and the mouth flood. This is the food of children running on the hillside in May, of shepherds on the zozan, of anyone who has walked the Kurdish mountains in spring and come across the wide, wrinkled leaves of rewas pushing up between the stones. Rewas holds a place in Kurdish culture that goes beyond its flavour. In many parts of Kurdistan it is called the “Kurdish banana” or the “alpine banana” — a name that says everything about how the plant is loved and how it is eaten: just as you would snap a banana, you snap a stalk of rewas, and you eat it as you walk. It is the mountain’s candy, the wild sour treat of the spring season, and a Kurdish child’s first taste of the year’s new growth. It also has a long medicinal reputation: rich in vitamins and valued as a digestive tonic, rewas is considered good for the body as well as the palate, one of those plants whose pleasure and medicine overlap. This is the one-hundred-and-seventeenth article in the series, and the sixth member of its foraged-plant collection — after kenger, kepari, tareh, avelik, and sirmo. Wild rhubarb grows across the whole Zagros, Caucasus, and the mountains of Iran and Turkey, and is known and eaten by many peoples. But rewas is its Kurdish name, and the Kurdish love of this particular sour stalk is a thing of its own.

Key Takeaways

• Rewas is the Kurdish name for wild rhubarb (Rheum ribes), foraged in spring from mountain slopes

• Known as the “Kurdish banana” — eaten raw with salt and sumac, the sour spring snack of the mountains

• Also cooked in a sour stew with sumac and served with rice; stems dried for winter use

• Valued as a medicinal spring tonic — rich in vitamins after the long winter months

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Rewas / revas (rêvas, rêwas, ribêz); Turkish ışgın, Persian rīvās; species Rheum ribes

Where: Rocky high-mountain slopes of the Zagros and Taurus, Soran region and across Kurdistan

Season: Foraged in spring, mainly May, when the stalks are young and tender

Eaten: Raw with salt and sumac; stewed with sumac and rice; dried for winter; medicinal tonic

In the Kitchen and on the Hillside

The most honest way to eat rewas requires no recipe at all: snap the stalk from the plant, rub it or dip it in a pinch of coarse salt, add a little sumac if you have it, and eat. That is the classic, and nothing else competes with it — the sharp crack of the raw stalk, the flooding sourness, the salt cutting through and drawing out sweetness underneath. It is so good eaten this way that in much of Kurdistan, rewas rarely makes it home from the mountain; it is consumed where it is found, by whoever found it. When the stalks do make it into the kitchen, the two main uses are a stew and a preserve. For the stew, the stems are cut and simmered with sumac water, onions, and lamb, the same technique this series has traced through the great sour dishes of Kurdistan — and served with plough rice or steamed wheat to absorb the sharp sauce. For the preserve, the stalks are peeled and dried in the sun, so that a little of the spring’s sourness can be used to flavour dishes through autumn and winter. Rewas is also valued as medicine: it is rich in vitamins A, B, and C — nutrients that a body running low after a winter of preserved food genuinely needs — and traditionally taken to improve digestion and restore strength. It is the plant where the tonic and the treat are the same thing.

The Alpine Banana

The nickname Kurdish banana is not a joke. It is an expression of affection from a people for whom this plant is genuinely special — available on every mountain, free for the taking, handed to children as a treat, carried home by foragers as a staple, and woven into the spring imagination of Kurdistan the way strawberries are woven into an English June. This series has been gathering the wild plants of the Kurdish spring for many articles now, from the thistle-like kenger to the sharp little caper kepari, from the lemony dock-leaf avelik to the pungent garlic of sirmo. Rewas is the sour one, the one you eat raw while you walk, the plant that most directly expresses the Kurdish love of sharpness and acidity that runs through tirşik and meftûne and the pickle jar of tirşî. A spring morning on the Kurdish mountains is: salt in one pocket, a stalk of rewas in the hand, the soreness making you squint, and everything tasting alive again after the long winter. The honest note: wild Rheum ribes grows across the Zagros, and the stalks are eaten and loved in Iran and other parts of the region too — the series already covered the Persian rhubarb stew in its own article. The raw snacking tradition, the Kurdish banana nickname, and the name rewas itself are the specifically Kurdish dimensions of this plant’s story. And there is one darker note worth recording: in recent years, several Kurdish civilians have been killed by Turkish airstrikes while foraging for wild plants in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. The mountain that offers rewas is also the mountain that is bombed. To forage is, for some Kurds, an act of resistance as much as an act of appetite.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is rewas?

Rewas (also revas, rêvas, ribêz) is the Kurdish name for wild rhubarb, specifically Rheum ribes, a sour-stalked plant that grows on rocky mountain slopes across Kurdistan. It is foraged in spring, mainly in May, and is most traditionally eaten raw with salt and sumac as a sharp, refreshing snack. It is also cooked in a sour stew with rice, dried for winter, and valued as a medicinal plant.

Why is rewas called the Kurdish banana?

Because of how it is eaten and how much it is loved. Like a banana, a stalk of rewas is snapped off and eaten on the spot, without cooking or preparation. The nickname — Kurdish banana or alpine banana — reflects the cultural affection Kurds have for this plant: it is the spring treat that grows free on every mountain, eaten by children and adults alike on the hillside, the sour counterpart to the sweet fruit that the lowlands might offer.

Is rewas uniquely Kurdish?

The plant grows across the Zagros and beyond, and is eaten and loved in Iran and other parts of the region too. This series does not claim the rhubarb for Kurds alone. What is specifically Kurdish is the name rewas, the raw-snacking tradition as the first spring treat, and the cultural affection that earned it the name “Kurdish banana” — a plant so central to the spring mountain experience of Kurdistan that it has become part of the identity of that landscape.

Conclusion

Rewas is the one-hundred-and-seventeenth article in this series, and the souring of the Kurdish spring. It is the stalk snapped from the hillside in May and eaten with salt while the mountain is still waking up — sharp enough to make you squint, free for the taking, beloved enough to carry a nickname. It joins this series’ gathering of wild plants: kenger and kepari and tareh and avelik and sirmo, each one a different way the Kurdish mountains feed their people in the weeks when the garden has not yet started and the stores are running thin. Rewas is the sour one, the one that tastes most like the land itself. And the mountain it grows on is also, in the same breath, a mountain that is bombed — so that to walk out in May and snap a stalk of rewas is also, in some quiet way, to insist on staying, on eating, on being here. One hundred and seventeen articles in, rewas stands for the raw pleasure of a sour spring morning, and for the stubbornness it takes to keep finding food on a mountain the world keeps trying to take away.