History of Samosa

The samosa originated in the Middle East and Central Asia. It then spread to Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and elsewhere. The term samosa and its variants cover a family of pastries and dumplings popular from north-eastern Africa to western China. The samosa spread to the Indian subcontinent, following the invasion of the Central Asian Turkic dynasties in the region. A praise of samosa can be found in a 9th-century poem by the Persian poet Ishaq al-Mawsili. Recipes for the dish are found in 10th–13th-century Arab cookery books, under the names sanbusak, sanbusaq, and sanbusaj, all of which derive from the Persian word sanbosag. In Iran, the dish was popular until the 16th century, but by the 20th century, its popularity was restricted to certain provinces, such as the sambusas of Larestan. Abolfazl Beyhaqi (995-1077), an Iranian historian, mentioned it in his history, Tarikh-e Beyhaghi.

Central Asian samsa were introduced to the Indian subcontinent in the 13th or 14th century by traders from Central Asia. Amir Khusro (1253–1325), a scholar and the royal poet of the Delhi Sultanate, wrote in around 1300 CE that the princes and nobles enjoyed the "samosa prepared from meat, ghee, onion, and so on". Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century traveler and explorer, describes a meal at the court of Muhammad bin Tughluq, where the samushak or sambusak, a small pie stuffed with minced meat, almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and spices, was served before the third course, of pulao. Nimmatnama-i-Nasiruddin-Shahi, a medieval Indian cookbook started for Ghiyath al -Din Khalji, the ruler of the Malwa Sultanate in central India, mentions the art of making samosa. The Ain-i-Akbari, a 16th-century Mughal document, mentions the recipe for qutab, which it says, "the people of Hindustan call sanbúsah".