# Baklava



## RealityCheck4you

*Moderator note: Split from quoted thread.*



apmoy70 said:


> Right, because the Turkic nomads that arrived in Anatolia in the 11th c. CE had advanced cooking techniques and created exquisite dishes (including the super thin phyllo pastry for baklava) on their horsebacks or in their yurt, and they also had advanced microtonal music...in written form.
> Other than yogurt, which is truly Turkic (well the Bulgarians think differently), "Ottoman" music in reality is a fusion of Arabo-Persian maqams with Byzantine modal music, and "Ottoman" cuisine is a fusion of Levantine-Persian-Balkan-Armenian dishes. Even the names are 90% Armenian or Persian.


Baklava is Turkish, not Greek. You just adopted it from the Turks.


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## Abaye

But it seems that baklava is not of Turkish origin, it was adopted by Ottoman Turkish from some other language.
Luckily for us, Hebrew speakers, there's no doubt: we borrowed baklawa from Arabic.


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## RealityCheck4you

Abaye said:


> But it seems that baklava is not of Turkish origin, it was adopted by Ottoman Turkish from some other language.
> Luckily for us, Hebrew speakers, there's no doubt: we borrowed baklawa from Arabic.


Wrong. Baklava is Turkish and so is the word. Arabs took the word and food from the Turkish.


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## berndf

RealityCheck4you said:


> Wrong. Baklava is Turkish and so is the word. Arabs took the word and food from the Turkish.


There is very little to support this claim (concerning the word; the dish is a different matter).


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## apmoy70

Abaye said:


> But it seems that baklava is not of Turkish origin, it was adopted by Ottoman Turkish from some other language.
> Luckily for us, Hebrew speakers, there's no doubt: we borrowed baklawa from Arabic.


Every culture in the region has or had in the past, similar dishes, the Byzantines had a similar dessert called πλακοῦς, probably a traditional Roman dish called placenta, made of layers of super thin phyllo pastry shaped into a pocket, stuffed with fruits or cereal dipped in honey, the Arabs have their own version, .... Modern baklava is the fusion of all the specific recipies ...

*Moderator note: Post edited after split of thread.*


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## Apollodorus

apmoy70 said:


> probably a traditional Roman dish called placenta, made of layers of super thin phyllo pastry shaped into a pocket, stuffed with fruits or cereal dipped in honey, the Arabs have their own version, .... Modern baklava is the fusion of all the specific recipies ...
> 
> *Moderator note: Post edited after split of thread.*



According to Wikipedia, the Latin word _placenta_ is derived from the Greek _plakous_ (Ancient Greek: πλακοῦς, gen. πλακοῦντος – _plakountos_, from πλακόεις - _plakoeis_, "flat") for thin or layered flat breads.

_plakous_ as a dessert (or second table delicacy) is mentioned in the poems of Archestratos who describes _plakous_ as served with nuts and dried fruits and commends the honey-drenched Athenian version of _plakous _

Placenta cake - Wikipedia

So, the Roman dish seems to have been borrowed from the Greeks along with its name. 

The Greeks themselves could have borrowed it from the Persians.


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## SparkInTheDark

RealityCheck4you said:


> Baklava is Turkish, not Greek. You just adopted it from the Turks.





RealityCheck4you said:


> Wrong. Baklava is Turkish and so is the word. Arabs took the word and food from the Turkish.


May I ask what kind of proof you have to substantiate your claims?



Abaye said:


> But it seems that baklava is not of Turkish origin, it was adopted by Ottoman Turkish from some other language.


May I ask the above question to you too? And, of course, what other language is it?



Apollodorus said:


> So, the Roman dish seems to have been borrowed from the Greeks along with its name.
> 
> The Greeks themselves could have borrowed it from the Persians.


So you say "baklava" is already a modern version of "plakous", which Romans had borrowed from Greeks. And Greeks, on the other hand, might have taken it from Persians. Do you have any kind of evidence to support your view?


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## Apollodorus

SparkInTheDark said:


> So you say "baklava" is already a modern version of "plakous", which Romans had borrowed from Greeks. And Greeks, on the other hand, might have taken it from Persians. Do you have any kind of evidence to support your view?



That isn't quite what I said.

1. I said that according to Wikipedia, Roman "placenta" and the dish of that name came from Greek "plakous". The evidence for that is the Wikipedia article.

2. I suggested that the Greeks may have taken the dish (not the name) from the Persians. This was a suggestion based on the fact that Greeks borrowed a few other cultural and even linguistic elements from the Persians. I merely mentioned it as a possibility that may be worthwhile looking into.


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## sotos

I think the names go around more easily than the dishes. Plakountes (plural of placous), i.e. pies made of various things were known to ancient greeks. The name baklava is a loan from Asia Minor, but old turkish was a mixture of turkish, arabic and iranian words, before artificially purified in 1930s.


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## raamez

Abaye said:


> But it seems that baklava is not of Turkish origin, it was adopted by Ottoman Turkish from some other language.
> Luckily for us, Hebrew speakers, there's no doubt: we borrowed baklawa from Arabic.


One thing for sure, baqlaawah the word can't in this form be Arabic as it doesn't comply to any Arabic formation pattern, but I am not sure if it is Turkish, Greek or Persian in origin. Maybe it is also worth noting that some Turkish words during the Ottoman empire were Arabic but when borrowed back into Arabic like for example the word عرصة (from Arabic عرض honor and Turkish -siz) were no more recognizable and had some Turkish elements. In any case b-q-l in Arabic has to do with Vegetables and legumes so no apparent relation either.


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## Sobakus

Don't take this post too seriously, but I can't unsee this so here goes xD

/bakl/ could be explained as a direct development of _plak(ous)_ in some language of Anatolia - /p > b/ is regular in Turkish borrowings from Greek and exists as a regular sound shift (part of a chain-shift of all stops) in Western Armenian. Since Turkish forbids onset consonant clusters, /l/ would be expected to undergo either vowel insertion or metathesis to the next syllable /bl_k > b_kl/. Even the /w~v/ can be explained as the consonantal counterpart of the Greek /u/ (retained because stressed?), possibly via vowel insertion to break up the forbidden cluster /bla.kwa > bak.la.wa/. Arabic and Persian have the same syllable structure limitations (**bl, **kw) from the looks of it, so even outside of Anatolia is game.

Funnily enough if you look at _burak~börek,_ it also looks derivable from the same Greek word with /r>l/, a trivial interchange. Either form might have been borrowed quite early into an unknown language and might have reached Turkish by a different rout or as a regional Wanderwort. Moreover, Greek and the Hellenistic culture existed from the ancient times at the doorstep of Turkmenistan (the Seleucid Empire and Baktria).


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## desi4life

According to the American Heritage Dictionary entry for baklava:

Ultimately (partly via Greek and Armenian) from Ottoman Turkish, possibly colloquial alteration of baklavī, chain mail (perhaps because a tray of baklava cut into lozenges somewhat resembles chain mail), from Ottoman naval jargon bakla, chain link, from Ottoman Turkish bakla, fava bean (the oblong shape of a chain link being likened to that of a bean), from Arabic baqla, leguminous plant, from baqala, to sprout; akin to Akkadian baqālu, to malt, sprout, and Ge'ez baqwala, to sprout.


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## Apollodorus

sotos said:


> I think the names go around more easily than the dishes. Plakountes (plural of placous), i.e. pies made of various things were known to ancient greeks.



Correct. Also in cultural terms, a dish made of pastry, nuts and honey would seem to be more consistent with the sedentary, agriculture-based populations of southeastern Europe (and the Middle East) than with the nomadic populations of Central Asia. 

But the name remains a mystery. Perhaps @desi4life does have a point, provided that there is sufficient evidence for it.


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## raamez

I think we are forgetting that first the Turks came and lived in and around Anatolia since roughly 1000 years about the time of the Abbasid empire and second the Turks didn't come directly into Anatolia but were already in the process of mixing and adopting Islam and the Persian culture . third no one until now mentioned the first attestation of the word Baklava. Moreover, Baklava doesn't need to be something nomad Turks invented but could also have been made by sedentary Turks who as I said have been living in this region for almost 1000 years. Today's Turks are anyway clearly local to Anatolia who adopted the Turkish language, so they were not nomads neither before nor after the "real" Turks came from central Asia and mixed with them.


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## Apollodorus

However, if the Greeks already had a similar dish hundreds of years before, what need was there for them to borrow it from the Turks?

Another question is, what other similar dishes did the Turks have in order to make a borrowing from them more probable than not?

Finally, what evidence is there in support of this?


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## Awwal12

Apollodorus said:


> However, if the Greeks already had a similar dish hundreds of years before, what need was there for them to borrow it from the Turks?


Developed cuisines are oversaturated with similar yet slightly different dishes. The words required to specify a particular variant are easily loaned.


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## sotos

raamez said:


> I think we are forgetting that first the Turks came and lived in and around Anatolia since roughly 1000 years about the time of the Abbasid empire and second the Turks didn't come directly into Anatolia but were already in the process of mixing and adopting Islam and the Persian culture . third no one until now mentioned the first attestation of the word Baklava. Moreover, Baklava doesn't need to be something nomad Turks invented but could also have been made by sedentary Turks who as I said have been living in this region for almost 1000 years. Today's Turks are anyway clearly local to Anatolia who adopted the Turkish language, so they were not nomads neither before nor after the "real" Turks came from central Asia and mixed with them.


Most of the "Turks" were not actually nomads who came from the East, but locals who changed language and religion. But they didn't change (much) their agriculture production and therefore foods.


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## sotos

In the Lesvos island they make a kind of baklava locally called "Platsenta" (obviously from AGr "plakous", gen. "plakountos"). foto and recipe in greek


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## raamez

I looked up in both Kitaab al-Tabeekh (cookbook) by ibn siyaar alwarraaq from the 10th CE and in kitaab al-Tabeekh (also a cookbook) by Mohammad bin hassan al-baghdaadi from the 13th CE and I couldn't find any similar word for a dessert except maybe for kaboulaa' كبولاء which is a type of Asida. The oldest mentioning of بقلاوة seems to be from the Arabian nights see here. But since the Arabian nights is a collection of storys which were written and collected over many centenaries you can't determine the exact history of this word or anything else.
It is maybe interesting to know about first mentions of this words in other languages.


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## sotos

It reminds Balaklava. There are some other food names deriving from toponyms (in Greek) but here we need a good guess-work to derive the baklava.


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