[ID: Bowls of dugga and olive oil, with flatbread wrapped in a kitchen towel in the background. End ID]
دُقَّة غزاوية / Gazan dugga (Bread dip)
دُقَّة ("duqqa"; Levantine pronunciation "dugga") is a blend of grains, pulses, nuts, and spices which is eaten with bread in Egypt, Sudan, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia. The most minimalist duqqa consists of salt and black pepper; another very simple preparation of salt, pepper, and dried mint is sold in cones by street vendors in Egypt. Most household blends, however, have longer and more varied lists of ingredients.
The noun "dugga" means “fine powder," and is derived from the verb “دَقَّ” (“daqqa”; Levantine pronunciation “dagga” or “da'a”), meaning “to crush,” or “to grind.” The verb is of the root pattern “د ق ق” (d q q), which produces words related to accuracy and precision, and thus, to small measures of things: compare “دِقّة” (“diqqa”) “accuracy”; “دَقِيقَة” (“daqīqa”) “minute” (the measure of time); and “دَقِيق” (“daqīq”), which means both “accurate” and “flour, meal.”
This recipe is for dugga in a Gazan style. Toasted wheat berries provide an earthy, nutty base onto which sumac and coriander layer tart, fruity flavors. Dill seeds, caraway, and aniseed add a rich pungency, with notes of rye, mint, and licorice; and dried red chilis provide spice. This profile pairs wonderfully with the flavor of a traditional Palestinian flatbread—whole wheat and fermented overnight until slightly sour—and a rich, complex olive oil.
[ID: A close-up on a plate of whole spices, wheat berries, dried red chilis, and salt. End ID]
In Egypt
It is often claimed that duqqa was eaten in ancient Egypt. I have been unable to find any direct evidence supporting this claim, but the ingredients for it would have been available: cumin (tpnn), coriander (š3w)*, and garlic (ḫiṯ3n3) have been found at ancient Egyptian burial sites, and tiger nuts (giw) were abundant.**
What is probably the first description of duqqa in English was written by British translator and Orientalist Edward William Lane in 1836. His Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians tells us:
A meal is often made (by those who cannot afford luxuries) of bread and a mixture called doock'ckah, which is commonly composed of salt and pepper, with za'atar (or wild marjoram) or mint or cumin-seed, and with one, or more, or all, of the following ingredients; namely, coriander-seed, cinnamon, sesame, and hhom'moos (or chick-peas): each mouthful of bread is dipped in this mixture. The bread is always made in the form of a round flat cake, generally about a span in width, and a finger's breadth in thickness. (p. 164)
In 1904, Walter F. Miéville gives an identical list, except that cinnamon is omitted:
With his fingers [the Egyptian fellah (فلاح: "peasant")] breaks his coarse round flat cakes of bread, and dips each morsel into a sauce piquante called dukkah, composed of salt, pepper, mint, or cummin seed, coriander seed, sesame, and chick peas. (p. 447)
Much wider variance occurs in this 1911 account of a trip to Egypt taken in 1904, and this 1907 text, which both describe duqqa as a mixture of "lentils," "onions," "pepper," and "a variety of herbs." These ingredients would all have been readily available to the poor at this time: John Gardner Wilkinson writes in 1843 that "[l]entils, [...] together with the three roots, figl [فجل, radish], onions, and garlic [...] are still in common use among the lower orders of Egyptians."
Common between all of these accounts is the emphasis on duqqa as a food eaten by the peasantry. Indeed, in Egyptian culture, the link between duqqa and frugality was well-established: one 1895 source claims that "مسكين دقة" ("miskīn duqqa") roughly means "he is as poor as a church mouse."
In Sudan and Saudi Arabia
19th-century accounts also describe various duqqa mixtures eaten in present-day Sudan. In 1862, Bedouin Arabs of the Bayuda Steppe (northeast Sudan) are written of as dipping bread in "duqqah," defined as "einem Gemisch von grobem Salz, Ḥelbeh, den Samen von Trigonella Foenum greacum, Linn. und Śiṭêṭah": that is, "a mixture of coarse salt, حلبة (fenugreek seeds), and شطة (hot chili pepper)". Very similarly, an 1863 account of the region surrounding سنار (Sannār) in Sudan gives the ingredients as "Kümmel, Salz und rothem Pfeffe" (caraway, salt, and red pepper).
Descriptions of duqqa in Saudi Arabia date back, as far as I can find, to the same period. Scholar and official to the Dutch colonial government Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje wrote in 1886 that there were people in Makka (مكَّة) "who eat bread and salt, or bread and 'powder,' for breakfast every day" ("welche jeden Tag Brod und Salz, oder Brod und 'Pulver' (دُقَّة) zum Frühstück essen"). Here, too, a simple duqqa of pepper and salt was sometimes eaten, but other spices were usually added.
Madina (مَدِينَة) had its own style of duqqa, which was frequently eaten by the inhabitants of Makka as well:
Ein besonders geschätztes duqqah wird von den Mekkanern aus Medinah mitgebracht, wenn sie zum Grabe Muhammeds gepilgert sind; dasselbe ist grün und hat einen pikanten Geschmack. Die Pilger aus Mekkah gehen gewöhnlich im Rèĝèb auf die Reise und bringen für alle ihre Freunde einige Datteln, etwas medinensisches duqqah und vielfach auch ein paar aus Palmenblättern gefiochtene Fächer heim. (ibid.) A highly appreciated duqqa is brought by the Meccans from Medina, when they have performed a pilgrimage to the grave of Muhammad. It is a green powder and has a spicy taste. The pilgrims from Mecca usually go out there in the month of Ragab and they bring back some dates, Medinan duqqa and often also a few baskets woven of palm leaves for all their friends. (trans. Jan Just Witkam)
We might wish that Hurgronje had asked somebody what this green duqqa contained. The green color may have been due to wild marjoram, or perhaps to ground pistachios.
As it is, however, no explicit mention has yet been made of nuts as an ingredient in duqqa! They would not become part of the text trail until 1968, when Cairo-born food writer Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food was published. The recipe, which is considered the first true recipe for duqqa in English, calls for sesame, coriander, hazelnuts, cumin, salt and pepper.*** Ingredient lists for duqqa in cookbooks from the 70s and 80s follow Roden's lead, including chickpeas, hazelnuts, or almonds along with the spices and sesame seeds.
In Palestine
Today, Palestinian dugga primarily comprises wheat berries, toasted and coarsely ground, with anywhere from an eighth to half the quantity of dried sumac berries as wheat, and smaller quantities of various other spices. Lentils or chickpeas may also be included, similarly after drying, toasting, and grinding.
Wheat has a very ancient history in Palestine, and its trade has been a major feature of Palestine's economy into the modern era. In 1662, Thomas Fuller, arguing against the idea that the Palestine of Biblical times had been "barren[]" of wheat, noted that the wheat crop in the 17th century was "plentifull": "Yea our modern Merchants will tell you [...] that even at this day they carry much Wheat out of Palestine into Italy it self."
In Palestine, the berries and seeds used to make dugga would traditionally be roasted at home before being sent off to be ground at the village's stone mill. Today, dugga is more commonly made with household coffee mills, an inescapable feature of Gazan kitchens. As in Egypt, then, dugga is composed of locally plentiful ingredients, and accessible to the common people. These characteristics make it a valuable food in times of scarcity.
Dugga in the First Intifada
F. Robert Hunter, in The Palestinian Uprising: A War by Other Means, writes that Gazans survived curfews and other aspects of Israeli suppression during the First Intifada in part by relying on bread and dugga.
The First Intifāḍa ("اِنْتِفَاضَة"; "shaking off," or "uprising") began in Gaza on December 9, 1987. An Israeli truck driver collided with civilian vehicles, killing four Palestinians and injuring seven; protests and demonstrations arose in the جباليا ("Jabalia") refugee camp where this had occurred, and the Israeli military responded to them with lethal force.
A strategy of "steadfastness" or "staying put" ("صُمُود"; "ṣumūd") on Palestinian land throughout Israeli attempts at displacement, which had been interspersed with sporadic efforts at violent resistance, became a more concerted struggle to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Strategies of resistance to occupation employed during the intifada were multi-pronged: protests, strikes, and boycotts of Israeli companies and goods (largely organized by women) were combined with rock-throwing, blockading of roads, tire-burning, Molotov cocktails, and gasoline bombs.
The Israeli military attempted to suppress the uprising with gunpower, beatings, mass arrests, curfews, and collective punishment in the form of shutting down universities and cutting off water, electricity, and telephone lines without warning: often as a retaliatory measure "whenever the UNL declared a full strike" (Hunter, p. 143).
The curfews, which were supposedly imposed in order to restrict the movement of freedom fighters, of course restricted everyone's movement: and these restrictions on activities such as grocery shopping, combined with sporadic access to the water and electricity needed for cooking, negatively impacted Palestinians' access to food.
In the West Bank, Palestinians responded by planting food gardens in their yards or on communal plots; but things were more difficult in Gaza. Gardening in private yards could not be relied on as a strategy of resistance. Space was scarcer, a third of the population lived in refugee camps, and water facilities were more likely to be contaminated or destroyed, leaving very little water for agriculture.
Communal strategies were employed to meet food scarcity: farmers donated produce to those unable to leave their houses due to curfews (Hunter, p. 145), and Palestinian determination to boycott Israeli goods and create Palestinian markets for their own output ensured that some fruits and vegetables could be purchased in local markets. Still, F. Robert Hunter notes, "Gazans had to co-operate more and make do with less than West Bank Palestinians" (ibid.)
This is the situation that caused a reliance on dugga during the years of the First Intifada. Because it was cheap and nonperishable, it could be depended on to furnish "a basic meal for the day." In interviews with Palestinians conducted during these years, Hunter noted that they referred to the bread-and-dugga meal as "eating dust," responding to the situation with "wry humour" (ibid).
[ID: An extreme close-up of dugga on a piece of flatbread. End ID]
In the present
A similar situation existed in Gaza very recently. مقداد جميل المقداد (Muqdad Jamil al-Muqdad) recounts on the تقارب ("Taqarab"; "convergence" or "drawing close") podcast the state of nutrition in the months after Israel broke the latest ceasefire, and specifically notes a reliance on dugga as a shelf-stable food:
الحليب [...] هذه أيضًا صعب أن تتخزّن لانه لا يوجد ثلاجات. الاشياء النواشف مثل الزعتر، الزيت، الدُّقة، الرز، الطحين. هذه الخيارات التي تكون موجودة عندك، فانت يكون مطلوب منك أن تعيش نمط حياة مرتبط بهذه الخيارات؛ يعني اذا انا بدي أفطر اليوم فلديّ خيارات محددة، فآكل نوع من الجبنة المتوفرة عندي، والتي هي قليلة جدًا وهي جبنة مصنَّعه، وليست جبنة صحيّه أصلا. أو أنني آكل زعتر أو زيت أو دُقَّة غزّاويّة مثلا مثلا هذا اذا كنت أريد تناول الإفطار. [...] فنمط الطعام كثير سيء للأسف [...].
Milk [is] difficult to store because there are no refrigerators. Dry things like thyme, oil, dugga, rice, and flour. These are the options that you have, and you are required to live a lifestyle that's tied to these options. So if I want to have breakfast today, I have specific options. I can eat the available cheese, which is very limited in supply and is processed cheese, not healthy cheese at all. Or I can eat thyme, oil, or Gazan dugga, for example, if I want to have breakfast. [...] Our style of eating is unfortunately very bad [...].. (01:31:40)
Today, even dugga is almost impossible to come by. Israel has turned an area with a surplus of wheat into one with a fatal scarcity. Gazans line up in hopes of obtaining flour from the wildly insufficient quantities of aid that Israel sporadically admits, only to be shot and killed en masse by Israeli soldiers. But starvation is such a real and present threat that aid points are sought out even though Palestinians know of this mass killing strategy.
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Recipe under the cut!
