Beryān

Beryān, a renowned, savory, fatty dish, often served for lunch.

The dish, which is called beryūn in the esfahānī dialect*, is prepared from the sheep’s flank meat together a small portion of white liver (known in esfahānī usage as shush). The place where this dish is cooked and sold is the beryānī shop,¹ which is dedicated exclusively to its preparation and serving.

For the preparation of beryān, the boiled meat is first separated from the bones and minced. It is then portioned into small sizes—typically about 90 grams—mixed with cinnamon and dried mint, pressed into special small copper ladles used for beryān, and fried over a gentle fire, usually covered by a large tray placed above the heat. After frying, it is put on the oil-brushed bread that has been moistened with the same meat broth, together walnut kernels or slivered almonds, and garnished with a small amount (about 20 grams) of white liver. The white liver is previously minced and boiled, but not fried. This dish is usually served with basil, onion, and a yogurt-based drink (dugh). Beryān, when eaten with sangak bread (a traditional Iranian flatbread baked on hot pebbles) or homemade tāftūn bread (a thin, soft Iranian flatbread, often home-baked), is considered more delicious because these breads are semi-leavened and somewhat bulky. At the customer’s request, along with beryān, a mixture of meat broth, bread, and curd is also offered in the form of tarīt or tarīd—known in Arabic as tharīd and in the esfahānī dialect as tīlīt. The way of cooking beryān in the not-so-distant past was different.²

 Etymology

Dehkhudā (d. 1956), a prominent Iranian philologist and lexicographer, under the entry beryān, records several meanings: first, “an adjective denoting a state, from the infinitive berīshtan/bershtan, meaning roasted or cooked over fire”; second, “parched or fried, as in gandum-e beryān and gandum-e bereshte (parched wheat), and figuratively, in the sense of “burning with passion, in torment”; and third, “a dish composed of minced meat and onion with spices, which is sautéed.” Under the entry beryānī, he further notes: “A kind of food for which the people of Isfahan are renowned, made from minced meat, onion, and spices,” and refers the reader back to beryān.³ According to this explanation, in the past century the word beryānī was also current, although Dehkhudā’s distinction between beryān and beryānī is not entirely clear. Another Iranian lexicographer, Muhammad Mu‛īn (d. 1971), however, gives only one meaning and a sample: 1- “beryān: meat or other food roasted over fire; 2- a dish composed of minced meat and onion, sautéed.”⁴ The etymology of this word, according to an ethimological encyclopedia, is as follows: “beryāny, with -y-, meaning ‘roasted, cooked over fire,” is probably derived from Old Persian *brīdāna, from the root braid ‘to roast, to fry’.”⁵ It should be mentioned that the word kebab (kabāb) is Arabic⁶ and has a Babylonian/Semitic origin, entering European languages through Turkish kebāb.⁷

In Persian literature, beryān and beryān kardan most often mean “to roast over fire, to broil, to parch, or to fry,” while their figurative sense is “to be burning with passion, consumed by grief, or deeply afflicted.” Ḥakīm Maysarī,⁸ in the oldest known medical poem in Persian (composed around 980/370), wrote:

When you take roasted meat out of the oven

(ke beryān az tanūr ārī be bīrūn)

If you cover it, the blood turns venomous
(bepūshī garm gardad zahrī khūn)

the one who eats of it has also eaten poison

(kasī kū zū khurad ham zahr khurdast)
and it brings about much sorrow and pain

(kaz-ū besyār andūhān va dard ast)

Here the sage advises that when roasted meat is taken out of the oven, one should not cover it, for that would cause harm.

In Ferdawsī’s Shāhnāme, the word beryān is employed repeatedly in all three senses.⁹ For example, in the story of “Rustam and Suhrāb”:

if you lonely roast a whole wild ass

(be tanhā yekī gūr beryān kunī)
with your sword then you make the very air lament

(havā rā be shamshīr geryān kunī¹⁰)

And in the story of “Bījan and Manīzhe”:

He ordered a roasted fowl to be served hot
stuffed with fresh, soft bread inside

(yekī murgh-e beryān befarmūd garm)

(navashte bedū andarūn nān-e narm¹¹)

Beryān in the Safavid and Qajar Periods

As far as we know, in the sources and documents prior to the late Qajar period, there is no reference to a dish corresponding to today’s esfahānī beryān. Some travelers who visited Isfahan during the Safavid* era described the ways of grilling and roasting meat, but by “beryān” they meant simply “roasting” or “broiling meat” over fire. Tavernier*, who recorded his observations of Iran between 1632/1041 and 1668/1078 writes in his travelogue, while describing the Iranians’ ovens (tanūr) and their method of fueling them: “Iranians roast meat only in the oven, and their oven is very different from ours… They prepare a sheep and hang it whole, uncut, inside the oven, and at the bottom of the oven they place a pot full of rice, which cooks from the oven’s heat and from the dripping fat.”¹² He also explains: “There are several kebab shops in Isfahan where numerous roasted sheep are hung, and anyone can ask for any part of the sheep and it is given to them; there are other shops that sell boiled meat.”¹³ This ancient way of roasting meat in an oven, still practiced in some parts of Iran, is known as tanūrī kardan (cooking in the oven), of which it is said: “Oven-roasted meat must be cooked with dry heat.”¹⁴

Jean Chardin* likewise described this way of roasting or grilling sheep in the Safavid period in two ways. He wrote: “Large pieces of meat are roasted in the oven with a pan… They have a kind of roasting pan in which a whole sheep, lamb, or goat is roasted in its own juice, and it is excellent.”¹⁵ He further explained another way: “Their oven consists of pits in the ground. The animal is suspended on an iron spit that passes through its neck and is fixed at the gate of the oven, and beneath it a clay tray is placed. In this way the animal’s meat is cooked evenly without being burnt. The pans in which the meat is roasted are similar to those used for preparing pastries.”¹⁶

Beryān in the Qajar Period

In the Qajar era the form of the oven (tanūr) changed, and the underground ovens were replaced by above-ground structures resembling small chambers, much like the ovens still used in sangak bakeries today. Mīrzā Hussein Taḥvīldār*, in his Geography of Isfahan, when introducing the guilds of the city under the heading of the beryānī profession, writes: “There are several shops in Isfahan that supply the entire city with beryān, and all of their beryān is cooked in a single factory. This market-made dish of Isfahan is very tasty and famous. They tried to introduce it in Tehran, but it did not catch on, let alone in other provinces.”¹⁷ He further adds: “[If] it is cooked without adulteration, there is no better food in the markets for shopkeepers and others. In most households it also forms part of the midday meal. It is something between kebab and boiled meat, more delicious and more wholesome than either.”¹⁸ From these descriptions, it is clear that by the late Qajar period, beryān, which had by then come closer to its modern form, was so simple and accessible that large centralized cooking establishments were set up for preparing sheep in bulk, with portions allocated and distributed to each shop. In a time when meat grinders were not yet available, these shops chopped the meat with large cleavers. Taḥvīldār’s description of the old beryān is the most precise, showing us what a wholesome, delicious, and nutritious dish it then was: “They place the meat on a tray and send it to the beryānī shop, where it is chopped with a large cleaver and sold in small portions.”¹⁹ According to this account, between the years 1877 and 1890 (1294 and 1308), when the book was composed, this style of preparing beryān was unique to Isfahan.

The popularity of beryān among all classes was due to its taste and nutritional qualities. This dish was prepared not only in homes but also in shops. According to Mīr Sayyed Ali Jenāb* Eṣfahānī, reporting on the census of guilds in Isfahan in his al-Eṣfahān*, written in the late Qajar period, the number of beryānī shops exceeded all others: “The number of beryānī shops was thirty-eight, and if one counts the cooks and beryānī together, sixty-eight. By contrast, there were only nine rice shops, eight liver kebab shops, and fifteen kebab shops.”²⁰ It appears that in the Qajar period lamb’s white liver was also sold independently of beryān at a cheap price in Isfahan. Mīrzā Ali-Akbar Khān Āshpazbāshī, the chef of Nāṣer al-Dīn Shah, writes under the heading beryān: “It is prepared such that the white liver is cooked with the windpipe, seasoned with salt and pepper, and served with its broth.”²¹ At the time of the dynastic transition from the Qajar to the Pahlavi, Ali Javāherkalām, who was originally from Isfahan, lived in the city for a period in 1924/1303. He recounts that on most days he dined on four dishes, foremost among them being beryān, and in his words, “the taste of beryūn is the best among all the foods in the world.” His description of beryān in Isfahan brings it closer to its present-day form, with no mention of the oven. He writes: “A large copper tray was set over a brazier of coals, and the minced [half-cooked] roasted meat, together with pieces of lamb fat, was scooped by the shopkeeper—his waist bound with a cloth and his sleeves rolled up—handful after handful with his henna-stained fingers into copper plates, while the apprentices served it with sangak bread, washed basil, and sliced onions.”²²

According to literary and historical sources, the beryān of Isfahan is not the same as what is described in travelogues and texts of earlier centuries, but rather a distinctive dish that cannot be more than a hundred years old. The purpose of presenting this historical overview and the cited examples is to trace the transformation of what the name beryān has signified and to show how the changes in its way of preparation have led to a change in its very nature, quality, and probably also its properties.

Today, in many Asian countries there are dishes called beryān/beryānī or beryānī pulu (cooked rice), which are generally prepared with rice, chicken or meat, hot spices, and various vegetables, and which are entirely different from what is known in Isfahan as beryān. Their names, however, are “beryān/bīryān,” such as “pulu beryānī Hendī,” “beryānī morgh-e Pakestānī,” “beryānī Baluchī,” and “beryānī Afghānī” also known as “zarde pulu” and “qābulī pulu/kābulī pulu”.²³

Najaf Daryābandarī, an Iranian writer, in discussing beryānī pulu, writes: “The name of this dish in India and along the Persian Gulf coast is simply beryānī, but since the artful people of Isfahan have applied the name beryānī to another dish… we call this Indo-Iranian dish beryānī pulu, for in reality it is a kind of rice in which pieces of [lamb] meat or chicken are placed. This meat or chicken may originally have been roasted.”²⁴ In his explanation of different ways of cooking meat, Daryābandarī defines roasting (beryān kardan) as a kind of grilling: “Beryān kardan is a type of grilling, with the difference that the roasted meat has already been cooked or half-cooked, and it is placed beside or under the fire, not above it. One example of beryān cookery is the famous esfahānī beryānī, which is prepared from cooked and minced meat that is also seared in the oven. The cooked meat can be roasted again in the oven or under a flame (grill) before being served, so that its surface becomes golden.”²⁵

/Hosein Masjedi/

Bibliography

Āshpazbāshī, Ali-Akbar b. Mahdi. sufre-ye aṭ‛eme. Facsimile edition. Tehran: Bunyād-e Farhang-e Iran, 1974/1353.

Āshpazbāshī, Nūrullāh. resāle-ye māddat al-ḥayāt. With an introduction by Īraj Afshār. In Farhang-e Iran Zamīn, vol. 1. 1953/1332.

Chardin, Jean. safar-nāme-ye Shārdan: qesmat-e Eṣfahān. Translated by Hussein ‛Urayḍī. Edited by Murtaḍā Teymūrī. Isfahan: Nashr-e Gulhā, 2000/1379.

Daryābandarī, Najaf. ketāb-e mustaṭāb-e āshpazī az sīr tā pīyāz. Tehran: Nashr-e Kārnāme, 2005/1384.

Dehkhudā, Ali-Akbar. luḡat-nāme. Edited by Muhammad Mu‛īn and Jaʿfar Shahīdī. Tehran: University of Tehran, 1998/1377.

Ferdawsī, Abul-Qāsem. shāhnāme. Books II–III. Edited by Jalāl Khāleqī-Muṭlaq. Tehran: Markaz-e Dāʾerat al-Ma‛āref-e Buzurg-e Eslāmī, 2009/1388.

Ḥakīm Maysarī. dāneshnāme dar ‛elm-e pezeshkī. Edited by Barāt Zanjānī. Tehran: University of Tehran, 1987/1366.

Ḥasandūst, Muhammad. farhang-e rīshe-shenākhtī-ye zabān-e fārsī. Tehran: Māhrīs, 2020/1399.

Javāherkalām, Ali. yāddāshthā-ye safar-e Eṣfahān dar sāl-e 1303 shamsī. Edited by ‛Abdul-Mahdī Rajāʾī. Qum: Majma‛-e Dhakhāʾer-e Eslāmī, 2012/1391.

Jenāb Eṣfahānī, Mīr Sayyed Ali. al-Eṣfahān. Edited by ‛Abbās Naṣr, Isfahan: Nashr-e Gulhā, 1992/1371.

Mu‛īn, Muhammad. farhang-e fārsī. Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 2002/1381.

Taḥvīldār, Hussein b. Mhuammad-Ebrāhīm. juḡrāfiyā-ye Eṣfahān. Edited by Manūchehr Sutūde. Tehran: University of Tehran, 1963/1342.

Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste. safar-nāme-ye Tāvurnīya. Translated by Abūturāb Nūrī. Edited by Ḥamīd Shīrānī. Tehran: Ketābkhāne-ye Sanāʾī, 1984/1363.

Wolff, Fritz, Glossar zu Firdosis Schahname=فرهنگ شاهنامۀ فردوسی , Hildesheim1965, repr. Tehran: Asatir,1377sh..

1. Like kabāb (the dish) and kabābī (the place where it is served).[↩]
2. See also: continuation of the article.[↩]
3. Dehkhudā, vol. 3, pp. 4679–4680.[↩]
4. Mu‛īn, vol. 1, p. 517.[↩]
5. Ḥasandūst, vol. 1, p. 467.[↩]
6. Dehkhudā, vol. 12, p. 18128: “Kabāb (Ar. n.) minced roasted meat.” Also: “Kabāb (n.) meat cut lengthwise for roasting; in Persian usage, it means meat roasted in the customary manner.”[↩]
7. Ḥasandūst, vol. 4, p. 2120.[↩]
8. Ḥakīm Maysarī, p. 231.[↩]
9. Wolff, p. 139.[↩]
10. Ferdawsī, Shāhnāme, Book II, p. 123, verse 68.[↩]
11. Idem, Book III, p. 374, verse 956; see also: Idem, Book II, p. 29, verse 392: “yekī murgh-e beryān va nān az barash / namakdān va rīchār gerd andarash.”[↩]
12. Tavernier, pp. 636–637.[↩]
13. Idem, p. 637.[↩]
14. Daryābandarī, vol. 1, p. 250.[↩]
15. Chardin, p. 256.[↩]
16. Idem, p. 257; see also: Nūrullāh Āshpazbāshī, pp. 26–27.[↩]
17. Taḥvīldār, p. 119.[↩]
18. Idem.[↩]
19. Idem, pp. 119–120.[↩]
20. Jenāb Eṣfahānī, pp. 124–125.[↩]
21. Ali-Akbar Āshpazbāshī, p. 56.[↩]
22. Javāherkalām, p. 27.[↩]
23. Daryābandarī, vol. 1, p. 799.[↩]
24. Idem.[↩]
25. Idem, vol. 1, p. 245.[↩]