Ful Nabit (Sprouted Fava Beans)

Ful nabit is dried fava beans left to sprout and then boiled. The name says as much: nabit means sprouted. The beans stay whole; at the cart they go onto a plate with a fork and lemon. In the memory of Damascus it is the snack of the Eid square, and today it is sold from licensed street carts.

No Eid without nabit

In 20th century Damascus, children crowded round the nabit seller in the square on Eid. His call is recorded in a memoir piece published by al-Watan in 2019: “yalli ma byakul nabit ma lu eid”, whoever does not eat nabit has no Eid. Another memoir piece from 2018 lists sellers of boiled ful nabit at the old Eid stalls, beside the sherbet sellers and heaps of pickles.

On the Ramadan snack plate

On Ramadan evenings in Damascus, after iftar, people set out tasali, plates of nibbles. Ful nabit sits on them next to termos (lupin beans), naem, balila and maarouk. Balila and maarouk have their own entries on this site.

Where to find it today

The Damascus Governorate lists ful nabit, together with corn, green almonds, pistachios, liquorice and tamarind, among the cart trades it covers with a “folkloric seasonal licence”. On seafront corniches, carts that come out in the morning sell to students and to drivers who pull over; in the neighbourhoods it is a plate from the bean-and-corn stall. It is also mentioned as one of the small-capital jobs people take up during Eid.

It is not an easy trade. A seller who spoke to al-Watan in 2020 said the cost of gas and dried beans was pushing the job towards extinction.

Not ful medames, not balila

Ful medames, which also has an entry here, is mashed beans eaten from a bowl at breakfast. Ful nabit is whole beans with lemon, a street snack. Balila sounds similar but is made from chickpeas. In Egypt a dish with the same name is a soup; in Syria the beans come whole on a plate.