Baklava Baklava Baklava (, , or ; ) is a rich, sweet dessert pastry made of layers of filo filled with chopped nuts and sweetened and held together with syrup or honey. It is characteristic of the cuisines of the Levant, the Caucasus, Balkans, Maghreb, and of Central and West Asia. The word "baklava" is first attested in English in 1650, a borrowing from Ottoman Turkish . The name baklava is used in many languages with minor phonetic and spelling variations. Historian Paul D. Buell argues that the word "baklava" may come from the Mongolian root ' 'to tie, wrap up,
Baklava pile up' composed with the Turkic verbal ending "-v"; baγla- itself in Mongolian is a Turkic loanword. Armenian linguist Sevan Nişanyan considers its oldest known forms (pre-1500) to be "baklağı" and "baklağu", and labels it as being of Proto-Turkic origin. Another form of the word is also recorded in Persian, ('). Though the suffix "-vā" might suggest a Persian origin, the "baqla-" part does not appear to be Persian and remains of unknown origin. The Arabic name " likely originates from Turkish, though a folk etymology, unsupported by Wehr's dictionary, connects it to Arabic 'bean'. Although the history of baklava