Turkish delight form of "lokum" made with starch and sugar. The family business, now in its fifth generation, still operates under the founder's name. Tim Richardson, a historian of sweets, has questioned the popular attribution of Hacı Bekir as the inventor of Turkish Delight, writing that "specific names and dates are often erroneously associated with the invention of particular sweets, not least for commercial reasons". Similar Arab and Persian recipes, including the use of starch and sugar, predate Bekir by several centuries. The Oxford Companion to Food states that although Bekir is often credited with the invention, there is no hard evidence
Bekir Fikri Bekir Fikri Bekir Fikri (1882-1914), (, , ) was an Ottoman revolutionary that participated in the Young Turk Revolution (1908) and fought with distinction during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Bekir Fikri was of Albanian origin. He was born into an Albanian-Turkish family in Çorhlu (modern Agios Georgios) located in the kaza of Grebene, Ottoman Empire in 1882. Fikri ethnically belonged to the Vallahades community (Greek speaking Muslims of the Grebene region). Fikri attended the Monastir Military High School where he was exposed to propaganda that questioned the absolutism of sultan Abdulhamid II and later studied at the Ottoman War Academy