Maamoul is a buttery cookie baked with semolina and stuffed with dates or nuts—usually walnuts or pistachios. Seasoned with a variety of spices, for centuries it has flavored the Easter holiday for Christians, the end of Ramadan for Muslims, and Purim for the Sephardic Jews of Jerusalem.
Three shapes are common: an elongated oval, a circular ring, and a rounded dome. Patterns are pressed into the dough by tweezer or with a traditional wooden mold, often in the shape of a sunburst and sometimes with a cross.
For Christians, the oval resembles the sponge given to Jesus to drink from. The ring, his crown of thorns. And the dome is shaped like his rock-hewn tomb, sealing its scented treasure within.
“Is that so?” asked Hoda Khoury, a Lebanese mother of three adult children, hard at work preparing the sweet. “That’s nice. That would make maamoul a Christian tradition.”
Not all believers know the deeper meaning.
Recipes vary, as do the names. Called kakh in Egypt, kleicha in Iraq, and kombe in southeast Turkey, experts have differing opinions on the cookie’s origin. Many find traces of Pharaonic or Mesopotamian beginnings, some suggesting the imprinted patterns reflect ancient worship of the sun.
Charles Perry, translator of the medieval Baghdad Cookery Book, says maamoul descends from the Persian kulachag, perhaps reflected in the Iraqi name today. Lebanese historian Charles El Hayek suggests the cookie may have originated in the Neolithic period but that the modern sharing of the sweet began in Fatimid Egypt (A.D. 909–1171).
Ultra-modern is the chocolate filling—promoted by Hershey’s Middle East.
But the tradition of maamoul distribution began in Cairo, Hayek said, when the Islamic caliph ended the Muslim month of fasting by giving cookies to the masses on Eid al-Fitr, stamped with the phrase “eat and be grateful.” Some were even stuffed with gold coins. Eventually the royal generosity was taken over by domestic households, and Hayek believes the modern maamoul recipe developed during the period of Ottoman rule over the Levant.
Khoury continues the tradition today.
Imitating her grandmother, she does double duty with the dough. The first batch of a few hundred maamoul reflects their life in Beirut, the recipe learned from neighbors when her grandfather moved the family to the capital in 1925, long before Khoury was born.
The second batch of a few hundred akraas—a similar half-moon–shaped sweet from her ancestral hamlet of Maghdouche—reflects the diversity of the Middle East’s many religious communities. The Greek Catholic town only 30 miles south of Beirut did not have maamoul at all. Perhaps this is why she did not know the Good Friday symbolism.
But the great quantity she bakes is measured out carefully.
“If we make too much, we have to eat them ourselves—and they are not very healthy,” Khoury said. “But we don’t mind tiring ourselves out; homemade is much more delicious.”
The Arabic word for maamoul means…
This article was originally published at Christianity Today, on March 28, 2024. Please click here to read the full text.
Jayson Casper 