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 that "some scholars said they were influenced by Mongols or Turks". The only original manuscript of al-Baghdadi's book survives at the Library in Istanbul (Turkey) and according to Charles Perry, "for centuries, it had been the favorite cookbook of the Turks," though Perry also notes that the manuscript has no recipe for baklava. A further 260 recipes had been added to the original by Turkish compilers at an unknown date retitling it as "", and two of its known three copies can be found now at the Topkapı Palace Library in Istanbul. Eventually, Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Shirwani, the physician of