History of Gergoush

Gergoush bread from Sudan appears to be have mysterious origins from around the Nile River and across North Africa. As one of the few global rivers that flows north, the Nile has more miles within the borders of Sudan and South Sudan than Egypt. Over the past ten thousand years, the Nile River populations have witnessed influences from a variety of ancient regimes, triggering monumental societal and cultural transformations. Early on Sudan was known as Nubia, the land of gold. Their material wealth and rich culture began from as far back as 2,000BC by trading gold, ivory, and slaves with the Egyptians, then the Persians, followed by Christians, the Amazigh peoples, and across the Silk Road. This trading economy brought innovations and new cultural ideas into their sphere.

The two major, early civilizations along the Nile River were Nubia (the land of gold) and Pharaonic Egypt. Trading along the river was fierce between these two cultures more than four thousand years ago. The Nubians were mining gold and hunting ivory for trade. In exchange, the Egyptians had copper, domesticated animals, plus the knowledge of how to ferment beer from wheat (Edwards, 2016). Wheat didn’t grow well in Sudan, but sorghum did. The Nubians artfully designed ceramic shapes that were filled with sorghum grains. Once fermented these sorghum grains turned into beer. The tradition of drinking sorghum beer became a cherished community ritual for hundreds of years. Archeological sites around Sudan are littered with ceramic shards of beautifully painted images of sorghum on the surface (Doherty, 2021, Fuller et al, 2018). This may have been the beginning of the fermented foods for the Sudanese (Dirar, 1993).

Historical facts about early bread-making in the Nubian culture are not well documented and because the native sorghum grain does not contain gluten, raised bread was most likely not a part of the early Nubian food culture. It is worth mentioning that the origins of the term "Gergoush", sometimes spelled Qarqoush or Gergouch, may be Turkish, or from the Amazigh (Berber) languages, which belong to the indigenous populations from the Magreb region of North Africa (personal communication with Dr. ELlhadi at the University of Khartoum). There is ancient history of the Amazigh in the terrain of Egypt and the Nile River region from as far back as 500BC and as recent as the 7th Century, around the time when Arabic word-borrowing may have occurred (Blench, R. 2014, Kossmann, 2013). One can easily imagine how foods, along with linguistics were exchanged over the centuries of adaptation.

By the late 7th C, the Byzantine Christians had been exerting positive influences on the Nubians for several centuries, resulting in a written Nubian language, architecturally designed churches, and the integration of Byzantine culture, food, and art into the Nubian daily life. This era has been described as "Afro-Byzantine" (Lajtar and Ochala, 2021). Yet there were also negative forces in the form of social inequalities from the Byzantine rulers. As part of the dissent from the Byzantium empire, Arab armies gathered strength from the increasing popular Islamic movement. These armies aligned with the Nubians and dismantled the Byzantine establishment, converting many of the churches into Mosques (Martens-Czarnecka, 2015). Muslim Caliphates took over the collection of taxes and brought welcome relief to the Nubian masses. One of the distinctions in the Muslim faith that distinquishes that religion from Christianity is their disdain for alcohol, which may have also given yeast derived from beer a negative association. This could have motivated bakers to look for an alternative method of raising bread with the foam from the fermentation of lentils. Could this alternative to yeast-raised breads explain how Gergoush bread became a tradition? Similar cultural conditions existed in Turkiye, with opposing influences between the Byzantines and Muslims. There is documentation by a Byzantine poet from the 11th century in Constantinople, named Theodore Prodromas, who traveled and wrote prolifically about food and culture. While he was in Constantinople, one of Prodromas’ quotes describes a white foam produced when making a particular bread. Prodromas did not like this bread (Dalby, 2010). This may be the first written evidence of yeast-free fermented bread 900 years ago. As Prodromas was a Byzantine Christian, was he expressing his prejudice of a bread from the Muslim culture?