Awassi Sheep: the Lamb Behind Syrian Cooking

Almost every line in Syrian cooking that says lamb rests on one breed. The Awassi is a fat-tailed sheep: white body, brown head and legs, long pendulous ears, a slightly convex profile. Rams are usually horned and ewes more often polled. A ram weighs around 70 kg.

Where it comes from, where it is kept

Arabic sources place its origin in the Badiyat al-Sham, the Syrian steppe; English sources point to Mesopotamia and settle on no firm starting point. Today it is kept across Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, and the largest flock is in Turkey. In drought it lives off the fat in its tail, walks long distances and keeps giving milk through the hardest season — which is why nomadic and village herding both ended up with the same animal.

Why it is called Naimi

At the butcher’s counter this meat is usually called Naimi. The name comes from the Naim, a tribe known for its sheep around Homs and Hama, and it now works as a label: where the counter says Naimi, the price sits above the rest. Asking by that name gets you further than asking by the breed.

What it does in the kitchen

The tail fat — liyyeh locally — is the fat of kibbeh and kebab. Worked into minced meat it melts on the grill and bastes the meat from inside. That is one reason Syrian kebab does not taste like kebab elsewhere. The flock’s milk is the raw material of labneh, shanklish and kishk, and clarified butter comes from the same milk. The kitchen of Aleppo builds itself directly on two things: lamb, and animal clarified butter.

Where you see it

In the countryside of Hama and Homs, on the roads that open onto the steppe, flocks are an ordinary sight. At the butcher’s the whole carcass hangs and you choose your own cut; if you want mince, it pays to ask which cut it was taken from. Demand rises in the weeks around Eid, and the price rises with it.