Tût: The Kurdish Mulberry and the Fruit That Dressed the Silk Road

Mero Ranyayi
1 hour ago
5 min read

Tût: The Kurdish Mulberry and the Fruit That Dressed the Silk Road

In the summer months, the mulberry trees of the Kurdish mountains load their branches with berries — white or purple-black, depending on the variety — and the fruit is eaten fresh for the few weeks of its season: sweet, staining, brief. But in a culture built on preservation, no fruit is simply eaten in season and forgotten. The mulberry is dried in the sun and stored; pressed into a dark, sweet syrup in the copper cauldron; made into a leather like the grape pestil. The dried mulberry — tût kûr / kuru dut — is one of the great winter snacks of the Kurdish pantry: light, chewy, intensely sweet, protein-rich, kept through the cold months in a cloth bag on the shelf. The mulberry has a longer history in the Kurdish landscape than its current culinary reputation suggests. The black mulberry (Morus nigra) is believed to have originated in the mountainous areas between Persia and Mesopotamia — the Zagros foothills, the Kurdish heartland — and spread from there across the ancient world. The white mulberry (Morus alba) has been grown in the Kurdish mountains for centuries, its leaves feeding the silkworms that produced the silk that travelled the Silk Road through Kurdistan. In Tunceli (Dersim), the Zaza-Kurdish highlands of Bakur, heirloom white mulberry trees still grow in village gardens, and their fruit is dried and stored each summer as it has been for generations. The mulberry is old in these mountains. This is the one-hundred-and-thirty-first article in the series. The Kurdish orchard has given this series its pomegranate, its walnut, its apricot, and its olive. Now it gives the mulberry.

Key Takeaways

• Tût (toot / dut) is the Kurdish mulberry — eaten fresh in summer, dried for winter, and pressed into syrup

• The black mulberry is believed to have originated in the mountainous areas of Persia and Mesopotamia — the Kurdish Zagros

• Heirloom white mulberries grow in Tunceli / Dersim (Zaza-Kurdish Bakur) — dried and stored each summer

• The white mulberry’s leaves fed the silkworms of the Silk Road — Kurdish mountains were part of silk’s historic journey

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Tût / toot (Sorani); dut / tût (Kurmanji); tôt in many dialects

Varieties: Black mulberry (Morus nigra, Zagros origin); white mulberry (Morus alba, grown in Dersim/Tunceli and wider region)

Preserved As: Dried whole berries (kuru tût); mulberry syrup/molasses (dut pekmezi); mulberry pestil (fruit leather)

Historical Use: White mulberry leaves fed the silkworms of Kurdish silk production along the Silk Road route through Kurdistan

Three Ways to Preserve a Mulberry

The mulberry season is short — two to four weeks in early summer, the berries ripe and fragile, bruising at a touch, not keeping for more than a day or two fresh. So the Kurdish kitchen does what it always does with abundance: it preserves. The dried mulberry is the simplest form: the berries are laid out in the sun and left to dry until they shrink to a light, chewy dried fruit that is intensely sweet and high in protein. Dried white mulberries in particular are eaten as a simple snack through the winter, alone or mixed with nuts and seeds — a natural energy food, light enough to carry in a pocket, sweet enough to satisfy. The mulberry syrup (dut pekmezi / şirê tûtê) is made the same way as dûşav, the grape molasses: the berries are pressed, the juice collected, boiled down in the copper cauldron over hours until it thickens into a dark, intensely sweet liquid. Mulberry pekmez is thinner and lighter in colour than grape molasses when made from white berries, darker and more complex from black. It is used on bread at breakfast, stirred into yogurt, or poured over cheese. Mulberry pestil — the fruit leather variant — is made by thickening the pressed juice with flour and drying it on cloth, exactly as grape pestil is made. The result is a sweet, purple-black sheet with the specific depth of the mulberry’s flavour: darker and more complex than the grape version, with a faint earthy bitterness underneath the sweetness. Three forms, one fruit, all of them designed to outlast the summer.

The Mulberry and the Silk Road

The mulberry’s significance in the Kurdish landscape goes beyond food. White mulberry leaves are the only food source that silkworms — the larvae of Bombyx mori — prefer, and where silkworm cultivation spread along the Silk Road, white mulberry orchards followed. The Silk Road’s overland route from China to the Mediterranean passed through the Zagros foothills and the Kurdish highlands, and silk production in this region has a documented history: in Bashur (Iraqi Kurdistan), around Suleimaniyah and Erbil, and in the Mardin and Diyarbakır region of Bakur, silk weaving was a significant craft industry for centuries, its looms fed by the white mulberry orchards of the mountain villages. The black mulberry — whose fruit is darker and larger and whose origin, according to botanical records, lies in the mountainous areas between Persia and Mesopotamia, the Zagros range — is specifically a Kurdistani fruit. It spread from these mountains to the wider world, just as the olive spread from the Taurus, as the wheat spread from Karacadağ. The mulberry does not carry the civilizational weight of the olive or the wheat; it is a fruit tree, not a crop that built cities. But it supplied the silk that clothed those cities, and its original home was here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is tût in Kurdish food?

Tût (also toot, dut) is the Kurdish word for mulberry. The fruit is eaten fresh in its brief summer season, and preserved in three forms: dried whole (a sweet winter snack rich in protein and iron), pressed into a dark sweet syrup cooked in copper cauldrons, and made into a fruit leather. Both black and white mulberry varieties grow in the Kurdish region, with the black mulberry believed to originate in the Zagros mountains.

How are dried mulberries eaten in Kurdistan?

Dried mulberries are eaten as a simple snack — carried in a pocket by a shepherd, shared at a table in winter, mixed with walnuts and seeds for an energy-dense portable food. They have an intense natural sweetness and a light, chewy texture. Mulberry syrup is poured over bread or yogurt. Mulberry pestil (fruit leather) is eaten the same way as grape pestil — on its own or wrapped around a walnut.

What is the connection between mulberries and the Silk Road in Kurdistan?

The overland Silk Road passed through the Zagros foothills and Kurdish highlands, and silk production in this region — particularly in Bashur (Iraqi Kurdistan) and the Bakur cities of Mardin and Diyarbakır — depended on white mulberry orchards to feed the silkworms. The white mulberry leaf is the silkworm’s preferred food, and wherever silk was produced, white mulberry trees were planted. Kurdish silk weaving was a significant craft industry for centuries, its history inseparable from the mulberry orchards of the mountain villages.

Conclusion

Tût is the one-hundred-and-thirty-first article in the series. It is a short season and a long preservation: two weeks of berries in early summer, then three forms of the mulberry’s sweetness stored on the shelf through winter. Dried, syruped, leathered — the Kurdish pantry holds the mulberry in all three shapes. And before the Kurdish pantry, there was the Silk Road, and before the Silk Road, there was the Zagros mountain where the black mulberry first grew wild in the forest between ancient Persia and ancient Mesopotamia. One hundred and thirty-one articles in, the Kurdish orchard gives its last major fruit. The pomegranate, the walnut, the apricot, the olive, the grape — and now the mulberry: the fruit that fed the silkworm that spun the thread that clothed the ancient world.