500 years of producing tasteful Tahini continues in Amedi

Amedi, Feb. 12, 2022 (Photo: Kurmanj Nhili)
Amedi, Feb. 12, 2022 (Photo: Kurmanj Nhili)

Amedi has been famous for its Tahini for many centuries. The climate and soil in the area are good for growing crops, especially the sesame used for producing Tahini.

In Amedi, Tahini is a part of people’s diet and has also become an essential part of the region’s heritage.

This delicious food is still produced by traditional methods in a factory on the Amedi River, which has kept the traditional water mills for making Tahini operational for hundreds of years.

Sulaiman Hussein Dashtani has been running the Ise Dela Bridge Tahini factory near Ise Bridge on Amedi River for 23 years. That factory has been in the family for generations.

Sulaiman told Kurdistan 24 that the Ise Bridge and the factory’s water mills were constructed around the same time, some 500 years ago. It is still producing the same tasty Tahini to the present day.

Ise Bridge is only 3 kilometers to the southwest of Amedi town on Amedi River and, according to Duhok’s antiquity directorate, the bridge was built in the 16th century. The bridge’s name is connected with the name of Ise Dela, a Kurdish figure from the Bahdinan Emirate.

“Our factory, named after Ise Bridge, uses locally grown sesame in the process,” said Sulaiman. “At first, sesame is soaked well in water for two days. Then they are grounded down and washed and then put in salted water.”

“Later the sesames are roasted in an oven heated by a wood fire. Lastly, they reach the mill that produces the tasty and smooth paste called Tahini,” he added.

This Tahini factory operates for 24 hours, seven months a year, between October and June, mainly because that’s the season when there’s enough water and the current is strong enough to turn the water mills.

Ahmed Amedi, a worker at the factory, explained that the grinder millstone is turned by hydropower underneath. The water cools off the millstone temperature, so none of the seeds are burnt.

“We still use water mills for producing Tahini. That’s why the taste is unique,” he said.

According to the owner of the factory on the Amedi River, there’s no official export of their Tahini. However, there’s so much demand for it that each year they send 300 kilos to Australia, as well as to the US, European countries, and some Arab countries. The owner is now in talks with a businessman to have regular exports to Europe.

The factory produces 80 tons of Tahini each year. One kilo is sold for over 10,000 Iraqi dinars (approximately $7) in the local markets.

There are 100 Tahini factories in Duhok province that produce around 24,000 tons daily. The most popular ones are in Amedi.

The bridge and the factory together are now a tourist destination, with many people wanting to see this beautiful and historic spot of the Kurdistan Region that is still lively.

Some kinds of sesames are imported to the Kurdistan Region from Uzbekistan, India, Romania, Syria, and the south of Iraq. However, according to Walat Tariq, owner of a Tahini factory, none of them come close to the quality and taste of sesame grown in the Kurdistan Region and particularly in Amedi.

A ton of imported sesame currently costs over 2 million dinars (approximately $1,370), while only one ton of Kurdistan sesame costs around 4 million dinars (approximately $2,750).