A Sweet Reminder Of A Shared Past
Text and photographs by Sonia Sarkar
Abdul Wadood’s Multani sohan halwa
In 2006, one of my paternal aunts living in Kolkata, whom I fondly call Mejo pishiya, asked me to get her halwa sohan from Delhi. Despite being deeply absorbed in the city’s culture for over two years by that point, I must confess that I had never heard of halwa sohan before. When I asked around, my colleagues directed me to Ghantewala, an 18th century confectioner in the city’s Chandni Chowk area, about 200 metres away from the historic Red Fort.
“They make the best sohan halwa,” I remember my colleague saying.
“Halwa sohan is also called sohan halwa [in other places],” said the man behind the counter in Ghantewala, which eventually shut down in 2015 due to poor sales and licensing issues. He handed me a thick, disc-shaped sweetmeat embellished with almonds and pistachios, and laden with ghee.
Fifteen years later, in 2021, I visited Kartarpur Sahib, the gurdwara in the Pakistani province of Punjab, where Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, is said to have lived for nearly two decades until he died in 1539. Here, I chanced upon a confectioner from the city of Multan selling sohan halwa. When I opened the tin box, I found a sticky, dark brown sweet laden with ghee, walnuts and pistachios.
Even though the sweetmeat is considered “shahi” or royal in both India and Pakistan, I discovered that it is quite different in appearance and taste in the two countries.
Even though they are similar in terms of ingredients, there are also distinct differences between sohan halwa in India and Pakistan. At Kallan Sweets, the sohan halwa is disc shaped and studded with dried fruit and nuts.
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In Pakistan, sohan halwa is mainly associated with Multan, the city of saints.
Hafiz ka Multani Sohan Halwa, which specialises in the dessert, has been producing sohan halwa for over 91 years. Here, it is available in several varieties. The akhroti sohan halwa is filled with walnuts and is redolent with the fragrance of cardamom and desi ghee. The mixed dry fruit sohan halwa has the unique taste of pistachios, walnuts and almonds; the badami sohan halwa is filled with almonds, and the zafrani sohan halwa has two thick layers of almonds and pistachios with the musky aroma of saffron.
Khalil Ahmed, CEO of Hafiz Ka Multani Sohan Halwa, who represents the third generation of the family in the business, takes pride in underlining the fact that his confectionery has maintained the same flavour and quality since 1930. He explains that their sohan halwa is made of wheat flour, refined white flour, green flour made of freshly milled wheat, milk, sugar and desi ghee.
At Hafiz Ka Multani Sohan Halwa, 12 people are involved in making approximately 40 kg of halwa in one batch. The process takes six hours per batch. They sell the halwa in different quantities for anything between 900 to 1700 Pakistani rupees (US$3-7). While they sell around 50,000 boxes per month during the rest of the year, the same quantity is sold in just 10 days in the winter, when demand is highest.
According to Ahmed, the process of making sohan halwa is a labour intensive one, which requires patient stirring, mixing and reducing for hours. The resultant mix is poured into round plates, and garnished with walnuts, almonds and pistachios.
“The secret recipe for sohan halwa is patience,” says Ahmed.
Mohammed Shaan, the third-generation proprietor of Kallan Sweets in old Delhi
Even though the versions of sohan halwa that are made in India and Pakistan have the prominent taste of dried fruit and nuts in common, there are also distinct differences. Sohan halwa in India is usually disc-shaped and light golden in colour. It looks hard but melts in the mouth because it is laden with ghee. The same dish in Multan is dark brown in colour, and soft and gooey in texture. (So much so that it is impossible to break into pieces).
In India, sohan halwa is most widely available in old Delhi, Ajmer in Rajasthan—especially near the shrine of the revered Sufi saint, Moinuddin Chishti—and Rampur, a dusty town in Uttar Pradesh.
Waqas Moizuddin Qureshi, co-owner of Sheeren Bhawan, a store located in a narrow lane opposite the Jama Masjid in Delhi, takes me through the painstaking process that goes into making sohan halwa. He says that for 10 kg of sohan halwa, 500 g of wheat is soaked in water for one day. The next day, the germinated wheat is milled into flour and 15 kg of sugar is added to the flour in a dry kadai (or a large metal pot) over a low flame. As the mixture starts to solidify, ghee made of buffalo milk is added.
“The process continues to ensure the mix never becomes hard,” Qureshi says. “The requirement for ghee is assessed while it is being stirred. [For instance], 500 g of germinated wheat flour may absorb [up to] 15 kg of ghee or even more."
When the quantity of ghee increases, the halwa takes on a yellow hue. When less ghee is used, the mixture retains the original pale colour of the wheat germ.
Once the hot mixture is ready, it is poured into several disc-shaped brass moulds, which are already sprinkled with almonds, pistachios and cashew nuts. The mixture soaks up the dried nuts immediately. The sohan halwa is kept open to dry until it solidifies, and is ready for sale.
“When one bites into it, it melts gradually in the mouth,” says Qureshi.
At Sheeren Bhawan, a kilogram of sohan halwa sells for Rs 800 ($10). This price is more than that of other popular sweets such as gajar ka halwa, a milk-based sweet made of carrots, or gond ka halwa, made of edible gum, ginger powder and nutmeg, which are both sold at Rs 600 (US$7.5) per kg. This difference is because of the price of pure ghee.
According to Mohammad Shaan, the third-generation owner of old Delhi’s Kallan Sweets, the last two hours of the process of making sohan halwa, when ghee is proportionately added to the mix of wheat flour, white flour, sugar and water in the kadai, is extremely crucial.
He says that the cook, whom Shaan refers to as a “karigar” or artist, must keep pouring ghee and stirring the mixture with a “khapcha,” a flat iron stirrer with an elongated wooden handle, to ensure that it doesn’t get stuck to the bottom of the kadai. Gradually, the mixture soaks up the ghee.
“Every time [the mixture] is stirred, a portion of it falls on the inner side of the kadai making the sound of a two-headed hand drum,” says Shaan, who employs a team of six karigars to prepare a batch of 30 kg of sohan halwa.
Under the supervision of the main karigar, who has been in the profession for a few decades, five others take turns to stir the mixture, because it is impossible for anyone to do it single handedly for over eight hours.
Once it is ready, it is poured into separate moulds with the help of a round spoon.
"The moulds are tilted in a way that the excess ghee is deposited in a corner for reuse,” says Shaan.
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The fudgy sohan halwa at Qasar-e-Shereen in Lahore. Photo courtesy: Qasar-e-Shereen
Earlier, sohan halwa used to be available only in winter, between November and March. But giving into popular demand, Shaan now sells it all year round.
“It's kept in the refrigerator in the summer as it tends to melt. Plus, it’s packed in butter paper or plastic to ensure that it doesn’t absorb moisture,” he says.
According to Ahmad from Hafiz ka Multani Sohan Halwa, the standard shelf life of sohan halwa is four weeks.
“But for places with warm weather conditions such as Dubai, we recommend people to consume it within three weeks,” he says.
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Going by local oral history, sohan halwa was most likely brought into India by Rohilla Pashtuns — a community of Pashtun ancestry, who occupied the northern Indian region of Rohilkhand.
“Sohan halwa was first introduced in Rampur, [and] later came to Delhi,” says Delhi-based food writer Sadaf Hussain. “This halwa has its origin in the land of Afghans and Pashtuns, who came to Rampur during Mughal ruler Aurangzeb’s era.”
Hussain clarifies that “halwa sohan”, as it is called in Rampur, is dark brown and fudgy, unlike the dry kind found in Ajmer and old Delhi.
Others point to the possibility that halwa—and by extension sohan halwa—could have its roots in Persian cuisine.
“There is a confectionery from the Iranian city of Qom known as Sohan-e-Qom,” says Sohail Hashmi, a writer and documentary filmmaker who conducts heritage walks in Delhi. “The term halwa, which stands for sweet condiments, is of Arabic origin, so sohan halwa could have an Iranian connection"
Hashmi adds that the sweet or something similar to it could have come to India in 1541 when the Mughal emperor Humayun married Hamida Bano, the daughter of a Persian Sufi mystic.
“The other possibility is that sohan halwa as we know it today arrived in India when Humayun returned to India [in 1555] from exile in Iran with a large number of Iranian soldiers, writers and craftspersons,” says Hashmi. “It was the time when the king of Persia, Tahmasp I, had decided to support Humayun in his attempt at taking back Delhi from the son of Pashtun leader, Sher Shah Suri, who had earlier defeated Humayun.”
After Akbar moved the capital of the Mughal empire to Agra in 1526, sohan halwa could have travelled there and onwards to other cities.
“It is possible that it reached Lahore and Multan before it reached Delhi or later, because both Multan and Lahore were important Mughal cities as was Ajmer, where also the sweet is [popular],” Hashmi says.
At old Delhi’s Sheeren Bhawan, sohan halwa is more expensive than other sweets because of the amount of ghee used to make it.
According to Nilofer Afridi Qazi, an Islamabad-based filmmaker and producer of a documentary series called Pakistan on a Plate on YouTube, Multani halwa may also have a connection with Iran.
“Qom, which is a seat of religious spiritualism, and Multan, which is also a city of saints, share this halwa,” says Qazi. “The Pakistani version is dense and sticky while the Iranian one is a flat, dry disc. But the base ingredients suggest it travelled from one city to the other.”
Qazi suggests that the shape of the halwa reveals further connections.
“The circular shape may subliminally or overtly represent the spiritual circle or the zikr of the Sufis, whirling with no beginning or end. These subtle markers, in my opinion, suggest that the origin of this halwa is from Iran. [It was] brought to Multan by travellers and settlers to this city of the saints,” she says.
Qazi adds that the royal court of Bahawalpur, which was located 100 km from Multan, may have had a taste of sohan halwa much before the Mughals. It is possible that the saints, who settled in the neighbouring city of Uch Sharif, could have brought it with them.
Another legend is that a Hindu confectioner named Sohan Ram in Multan prepared sohan halwa for the first time, thereby lending his name to the dish. The story goes that Ram had bought some milk for his sweets, which turned stale. Instead of throwing it away, he decided to experiment with it instead. He heated it up and made it thicker, and added some wheat flour to make it denser, thus creating a new sweet.
Khalil Ahmed of Hafiz ka Multani Sohan Halwa claims that in 1750, the then Governor of Multan, Dewan Sawan, invented the delicacy. While there is little historical evidence to back this claim, Ahmed traced his family’s personal connection to sohan halwa.
“After more than a century of its invention, in 1930, my grandfather Hafiz Ahmed Din, a religious teacher, began preparing a daily serving of halwa for his students to attract them to the holy Quran,” Ahmed says. “Later, when the family of these children also tasted it, they pressed him to sell it. Hafiz Ahmed Din then started his confectionery, which later became famous as Hafiz ka Multani Sohan Halwa.”
Multan-based food historian Shakir Hussain Shakir says sohan halwa became associated with the city because of the popularity of Hafiz ka Multani Sohan Halwa.
“Traditionally, every winter, families in Multan used to send boxes of sohan halwa to their relatives living outside,” Shakir says.
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Back in India, Abu Sufiyan, who runs Purani Dilli Walo Ki Baatein, an archival website dedicated to old Delhi's cuisine, culture and heritage, says that people traditionally carried sohan halwa as an energy snack when they travelled long distances.
“But sohan halwa is primarily associated with two occasions – weddings and Urs at Ajmer Sharif, the annual festival held to commemorate the death anniversary of Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti,” Sufiyan said.
During the Urs, it is a common practice to distribute sohan halwa as “niyaaz” or an offering to close friends and relatives.
Although sohan halwa takes on different forms in India and Pakistan, it is interesting that this dessert with a shared history remains popular on both sides. At a time when the political relationship between the two countries remains strained, sohan halwa is deeply linked to Multan on one side of the border and Ajmer Sharif on the other — two cities that are considered the abode of saints. In a way, it reminds people on both sides that no matter how sour political relationships may get, this royal sweetmeat still binds them together.
