Kusaybeh, Latakia’s Ramadan sesame paste

Kusaybeh is a dark brown sweet with the texture of a paste, made by roasting and grinding unhulled sesame and kneading it with water and salt. It is a by-product of sesame oil, known as sirej: the kneading separates the oil, which is sold on its own, and some is left in the paste. The taste has a light, pleasant bitterness. In Latakia it belongs to Ramadan and is eaten as a sweet after iftar, the meal that breaks the fast.

How it is made

Al-Wehda, the daily paper covering Latakia and Tartus, described the method in 2022: the sesame is roasted well and ground, then kneaded with a measured amount of water and salt. That is what separates the sirej oil. Part of the oil stays in so the paste remains soft. This is why kusaybeh comes out of tahini and halva workshops.

How it differs from tahini halva

Both come from sesame. Tahini halva is made with hulled sesame and kusaybeh with unhulled seed, and in kusaybeh most of the oil is drawn off as sirej.

How it is eaten

Not on its own: with halva, dates or dried figs. Al-Wehda writes that Latakia stands apart from other cities for this product. The same article says demand for sirej oil rises towards the end of Ramadan, for the Eid sweets.

On winter carts in Idlib

In 2024 Enab Baladi reported kusaybeh being sold in Idlib from winter sweet carts next to halva, sahlab, mushabbak and awameh. There it counts as one of the old sweets, and its buyers are mostly older people. It is believed to help sore throats and bronchitis; the sources report this as folk belief, not as a medical finding. Idlib’s sesame sweet called abu hadid is a different thing.

Where else it exists

Arabic Wikipedia says the same product is known as kusbeh in Hebron, in Palestine, and in Rashid, in Egypt. So it is not unique to Syria, but in Syria its name goes with Latakia.