Harira

What it is

Harira is a creamy soup that belongs above all to breaking the fast during Ramadan.¹ Harrell’s 1966 dictionary of Moroccan Arabic explains ḥrira as a soup, usually of flour, lentils, chickpeas and sometimes rice; for the English word soup it gives ḥrira first.² There is no single correct version: the recipes are handed down in families, and according to the researcher Abdelhaï Diouri no two families make it the same way.³ The portal maroc.ma lists it among the country’s intangible cultural heritage⁴ and in the lists of the individual regions, from the Oriental to Dakhla-Oued Eddahab.⁵

Where it comes from

Where the soup comes from is not settled: one interpretation traces it to Andalusian influences, another to Amazigh or Arab roots.⁶ Diouri links the name to the Arabic root h-r-r, which has to do with heat; according to him the word may originally have denoted a separately cooked mixture of water, flour and fat used to thicken the soup.⁷

History

Older cookbooks know related dishes: Ibn Razin’s “Fadalat al-khiwan” records many soups (haswa) for the Islamic west, and an anonymous manuscript from Marrakesh describes a soup close to today’s harira, though with chicken.⁸ According to Diouri, early recipes consisted mainly of flour, milk and fat.⁹

What it is made of

Almost every pot contains tomatoes, pulses (lentils, chickpeas or both), usually a little lamb or beef, and fresh parsley, coriander and celery leaves; some cook it without meat.¹⁰ Spices such as cinnamon, ginger, caraway, cubeb pepper or cumin make the differences, as do rice or vermicelli depending on the area.¹¹ Some harira is red from tomatoes, other harira yellow from turmeric or saffron.¹² Harrell’s 1966 dictionary already names flour, lentils, chickpeas and sometimes rice as the usual ingredients.¹³

How it is made

It is cooked in two stages: first the broth with the diced meat (tqata), then the tadwira, in which flour mixed with water is slowly stirred in so that no lumps form.¹⁴ Diouri considers the tadwira the essential part; some areas cook harira with it alone, without meat.¹⁵

In Fez and Rabat the bufertuna is considered the true harira; its flour mixture is started with sourdough from the previous day’s bread dough.¹⁶ A lighter version is called harira bida, white harira.¹⁷

When

During Ramadan the harira is put on in the afternoon, because it is the first proper meal after sunset; it is served with dates, chebakia and lemon wedges.¹⁸ Among the places where it is named as part of breaking the fast are Fez, Meknes, Tangier, Marrakesh, Rabat, Casablanca, Beni Mellal and Khenifra.¹⁹

Outside Ramadan, harira is served at family celebrations: weddings, births, circumcisions and funerals.²⁰ In the Oriental region it also comes to the table as a starter before the méchoui, lamb roasted whole.²¹