--- title: 'Tea in the Arab world: the glass, the sugar, the qouri and karak' url: 'https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia/arab-world' markdown: 'https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia/arab-world.md' lang: en date: '2026-10-25' description: "Tea in the Arab world: Egyptian koshary and sa'idi, the Iraqi istikan and qouri, Gulf karak, sage and mint in the Levant, and the tea ladies of Sudan." --- # Tea in the Arab world: the glass, the sugar, the qouri and karak Editors · October 25, 2026 · 10 min read Arab countries grow almost no tea, yet they drink it by the ton: Egypt used 86,104 t of [black tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/black) in 2022, Iraq 47,000 t. Everywhere it is strong black tea with sugar in a small glass. ![Two glasses of strong black tea, one with sage, and a sugar bowl](https://howtotea.me/images/c/o/v/e/r/cover-eb41fccb.webp) Illustration Arab world Base: strong black tea, plenty of sugar, a clear glass Egypt: koshary is steeped in the glass, sa'idi is boiled long Iraq: qouri kept over steam, served in an istikan Gulf: karak: tea, cardamom, evaporated milk Levant: black tea with sage in winter, mint in summer Sudan: tea ladies at street corners, a kanun charcoal stove **700 ml**, water **180 ml**, evaporated milk **5–8 min**, simmering The Arab world drinks both coffee and tea, and in Egypt and Iraq tea comes first. It has little in common with Chinese or Japanese tea: a lot of leaf, even more sugar, and a brew that is steeped, boiled or diluted however the household or the coffeehouse is used to. There is no single Arab method. There are several, and you can tell them apart by the glass. ## The glass, the sugar and the color of the liquor The basics are shared. Black tea, often cheap and finely cut, goes into a thin glass without a handle so you can see the color. In Arabic black tea is often called "red" (*shay ahmar*). Nobody is stingy with sugar: in Upper Egypt a glass takes three or four spoons. Where they differ is in the vessels and the habits. The Iraqi istikan is a waisted glass, wide at the rim, narrow in the middle and wider again at the base, often faceted or painted with gold, and it stands on a glass saucer. The Egyptian *kubbaya* is plainer: a round, undecorated glass, larger than its Turkish or Iranian cousins. The teapot varies as well. In Iraq and the Gulf people brew in a qouri, traditionally earthenware, and boil water in a *ketli*, from the English "kettle." The same two-tier setup, a small pot on a large one, turns up in Yemen and in [Turkey](https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia/turkey). Even the spoon matters. In Iraq, leaving it in the glass is an insult, while laying it on the saucer shows respect. ## How tea reached the coffeehouses Coffee had a two-century head start in the region. Baghdad's first coffeehouse, Khan Jahan, opened in 1590, and by the 17th and 18th centuries coffeehouses were common in Egypt. Tea stayed rare until the late 19th century; in Ottoman Iraq it was something wealthy households drank. That changed with the British. After they occupied Egypt in 1882, tea settled into the coffeehouses, and the historian Mohammed Afifi argues that the British were promoting a commodity they traded themselves. In Iraq, tea pushed coffee out of the coffeehouses during 1914–1918, and merchants in Baghdad's Shorja market started importing tea in bulk. Baghdad went from 184 coffeehouses in 1882 to 285 in 1903, and they served tea in a glass from a qouri, with hot water from a tank with a tap. Iraqis also see Russian traces in the tableware. Hasan Ajami's coffeehouse, opened in 1917, was known for its [samovars](https://howtotea.me/teaware/by-region/europe-and-russia/samovar) decorated with portraits of tsars, and Professor Ibrahim Khalil al-Allaf traces both the samovar and the istikan to Russia. Sources disagree on whether samovars are still used in Iraq. The popular claim that the British brought tea to Egypt in the 16th century is wrong: they held no power there then, mass tea drinking began after 1882, and coffee arrived in the 17th century. ## Egypt: koshary, sa'idi and friska Egyptians call tea their national drink, and serving it to a guest is a duty, hence the joking name *wagib*, "obligation." The most common coffeehouse order in Cairo is a glass of black tea with three spoons of sugar, especially during Ramadan. Loose leaf accounts for about 90% of consumption, and tea bags are mostly used in Cairo and Alexandria. There are two methods. *Shay koshary*, from the north, is made right in the glass: less than half a teaspoon of tea plus sugar, boiling water on top, sometimes mint. This is the light tea of Lower Egypt. *Shay sa'idi* from Upper Egypt is dark: two teaspoons per glass in a metal *barrad* pot over high heat. How long it boils depends on whom you ask. One source says up to five minutes; the Egyptian press says 2–4 hours on charcoal until it turns black, with 7 tablespoons to the pot. Africa Tea notes that it found no scholarly description of either method, only blogs and shops, though a 1995–1996 FAO survey did confirm the north-south difference in taste.[1](#fn:1) Coffeehouses have their own vocabulary. *Khamsina* is tea boiled down by half and served in a half glass. *Friska* is weak, *bosta* means sugar on the side, *tayyara* is a tea bag, *maya beida*, "white water," is barely tea, and *bannour* is brewed in a pot. For milk tea there is *minnu fih*, tea boiled directly in milk, and *barbari*, with cloves and half milk. With mint it becomes *shay bin-na'na*, which Cairenes call *ganayni*. Outside Ramadan people take it with milk in the morning and with mint toward evening. The leaf itself changed within a generation. Between 1990 and 2003 Egypt switched from Ceylon orthodox leaf to Kenyan CTC dust: shipments from Kenya rose from 8,121 to 47,800 t, and by 2003 Kenyan tea held about 75% of the market. Egypt does its own packing, in factories in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, the Delta and Upper Egypt. ## Iraq: the qouri over steam Iraqis drink more tea than coffee, which is unusual in the Arab world. Tea is served at weddings and funerals and drunk in heat approaching 50 °C. Most of it is Ceylon leaf: in 2025 Iraq was the largest buyer of Ceylon tea (39.36 million kg), though Sri Lanka's customs figures for January to September 2026 already put Turkey ahead (35.7 against 18.4 million kg). Every source describes the classic method the same way. Water boils in the ketli. Tea and crushed cardamom pods go into the qouri, and boiling water goes over them. The small qouri then sits on the ketli to keep warm in the steam without boiling. Iraqis say it comes out best over charcoal. At home, people use two teaspoons of tea to two glasses of water (about 500 ml) and steep for 7–10 minutes. The concentrate is poured into an istikan and topped up with hot water, with the sugar added to the glass. Dark tea is called *sangin*. *Numi basra*, a decoction of dried lime, is a separate drink. A guest should get two glasses per visit, and an underfilled glass is a sign of disrespect. Turning down tea at a tribal gathering signals displeasure or a demand. You never point the spout at anyone seated. "Bride's tea" is diluted with boiling water until it is almost plain water.[2](#fn:2) ## The Gulf: karak In the Gulf, Arabic coffee is still the drink of hospitality; UNESCO inscribed it in 2015, and Jordan joined the nomination in 2024. Tea is drunk alongside it and after it. The region's best-known tea, karak, is not Arab in origin. Workers from India and Pakistan brought it to the Gulf in the 1950s and 1960s. The word goes back to the Hindi for "strong," and Livemint derives it from Bombay *kadak*. Karak is black tea, cardamom, sugar and evaporated rather than fresh milk, all simmered together, sometimes with saffron. FrieslandCampina estimated in 2020 that about 7,400 tea shops in the UAE make karak with evaporated milk. A glass costs 1 riyal at a cafeteria in Qatar and 1.5 dirhams in Dubai (2024). People order without getting out of the car: they just honk. Since 2014 Doha has had Malabar-style tea rooms, where hot water comes from a 40-liter copper samovar and the tea is poured back and forth between glasses to build foam. The Qatari vendor Shams al-Kassabi says people there drank milk tea brewed over wood fires before karak came along. Karak, Smithsonian Folklife Festival recipe For 700 ml of water: 3–4 teaspoons of black tea, cardamom, 2 tablespoons of sugar. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, add 180 ml of evaporated milk and simmer 5–8 minutes. Do not boil the milk. Take off the heat and let it sit under a lid for 5 more minutes. ## The Levant and Sudan: sage, mint and the tea lady In Palestine and Jordan people drink black tea with sage in winter and with mint in summer. Sage is *maramiyya*, and the Palestinian ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan recorded a legend that the plant is named for Mary, who wiped her sweat with it. It is often *Salvia fruticosa* rather than garden sage. *The Gaza Kitchen* gives this method. Boil water with sugar (six teaspoons to six glasses, about 1.4 l) for three minutes, take it off the heat and add dried sage right away. It needs only a brief scald, since a long boil turns it bitter. Then add three teaspoons of tea, cover, and wait five minutes. Good tea is amber-red. Bedouins in South Sinai drink the same tea with maramiyya and *habak* by the fire on winter evenings. Maghrebi mint tea, [atai](https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia/atai), is a different thing: [green tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/green), a mountain of sugar, several pourings. In Sudan, tea is the work of tea ladies, *sitt ash-shay*. They sit at Khartoum crossroads with a *kanun* charcoal stove and jars of tea, coffee, hibiscus and powdered milk. Unless you ask otherwise, morning tea comes with milk (*shay laban*, with cardamom and cinnamon), and the glass always arrives on a small tray. These stalls spread in the 1960s, and many of the women were refugees from the war in the South. In 2019 the association led by Awadiya Koko had 27,000 food and tea sellers, 10,000 of them selling tea. By unwritten rule, only black tea is served during mourning. People in the region also drink things that are not tea: hibiscus, Yemeni *qishr* made from coffee-cherry husks, and mate, which emigrants returning from Argentina brought to Syria and Lebanon. ## Common questions What is "Arab tea"? In dictionaries, "Arab tea" and the Chinese 阿拉伯茶 mean khat, *Catha edulis*, which is not tea at all. For a drink made from tea leaf, "tea in the Arab world" or "Arab shai" is the safer phrase. Tea itself is *shay* (شاي) in Arabic, and black tea is often called "red," *shay ahmar*. How is karak different from masala chai? Karak is made with evaporated milk, not fresh, and everything simmers together. The Qatari version skips masala and ginger: just tea, milk, sugar and cardamom. Emirati recipes also come down to tea, cardamom, milk and sugar, sometimes with saffron. Why is tea served in a small clear glass? In a glass you can see the color of the liquor, and people judge strength by color. In Palestine, good sage tea is amber-red; dark red means it has turned bitter. Iraqi tea is dark but not "burned." Notes 1. FAO, Tea market studies: Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Turkey (2004–2005): [fao.org/4/j5278e/j5278e.htm](https://www.fao.org/4/j5278e/j5278e.htm). On how poorly documented koshary and sa'idi are: [Africa Tea, Tea in Egypt and Sudan](https://africa-tea.com/culture/egypt-and-sudan/). [↩](#fnref1:1) 2. Muhaned Faris, [On tea and people who are addicted to it in Iraq](https://jummar.media/en/5867), Jummar, 2024. The "east tea can" origin of istikan is disputed and many reject it; see [The National](https://www.thenationalnews.com/weekend/2022/11/18/istikan-arabic-word-for-tea-cup-has-a-surprising-origin/). [↩](#fnref1:2) --- ## Navigation - Parent: [Tea in the Middle East and Central Asia](https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia.md) - Previous: [Tea in Iran and Afghanistan](https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia/iran.md) - Next: [Atai: mint green tea of the Maghreb](https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia/atai.md)