Family of Levantine and Iranian sweet-syrup drinks — rose, sour cherry, vetiver, tamarind — diluted with cold water and ice. The ancestor of Western sherbet/sorbet.
From Arabic sharaba (شرب, to drink) via Persian sharbat. Rooted in pre-Islamic Persia, where fruit syrups were chilled with mountain snow; documented in 10th-century Baghdad (Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's Kitab al-Tabikh, ca. 950) as a category of medicinal cooling drinks, and detailed in Ibn Sina's 11th-century Canon of Medicine and Gorgani's 12th-century Persian treatise. The word entered Italian as sorbetto and English as sherbet by the 16th century via Ottoman Turkish; Cortas (Lebanon) and Sharbat Hafiz Kanji (Mumbai) bottle the syrups commercially today.
Sharbat-e Sekanjabin (mint-vinegar) is served with raw romaine leaves at Persian Nowruz tables — the leaf scoops the syrup-vinegar mix. Sharbat al-zhourat (the seven-flower blend) is a Damascus old-city specialty; Bakdash on Souq al-Hamidiyya has been making it since 1885.
Color depends on the syrup — rose is pale pink, sour cherry deep ruby, vetiver (khus) jade green. Texture is thin water with a sweet floor; the syrup carries the aromatic load. A good rose sharbat smells like a flower stall on hot tarmac, not perfume.
Syrup is cooked to ~65 Brix (1.5kg sugar per liter water) — anything thinner ferments in a week, anything thicker crystallizes. Aromatics (rose petals, sour cherries, khus root) are infused after the syrup has cooled to 40°C; boiling them volatilizes the floral notes. Dilution is 1:5 with iced water.
Variations
Persian sharbat-e gol-e mohammadi uses Damask rose from Kashan. Iraqi sharbat al-zabib is raisin-based for Ashura. Lebanese sharbat el-toot uses mulberry; Damascene sharbat el-louz is almond-milk-based. Indian Rooh Afza (Hamdard, since 1907) is the South Asian descendant, a multi-herb sharbat.
On the Palate
Where Sharbat sits in the Lebanese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
4 steps · 4 min active + 30 min waiting
- 12 min
Combine 100 g sugar + 100 ml water + 2 tbsp rose water (or sour cherry/tamarind) in a pot.
- 230 min
Simmer 5 min to syrup consistency; cool.
Watch outPull it off the heat the moment it coats a spoon in a thin sheet — cook it darker and it sets into candy as it cools.
- 31 min
Mix 30 ml syrup with 200 ml cold water and ice per glass.
- 41 min
Garnish with edible petals or fruit slices.
Watch outAdd the rose water only after the syrup is cool — stir it into hot syrup and the floral note steams away.
