Translations:Naan/9/en

Indian subcontinent

Naan spread to the Indian subcontinent during the Islamic Delhi Sultanate period. The earliest mention of naan in the region comes from the memoirs of Indo-Persian Sufi poet Amir Khusrau living in India during the 1300s AD. Khusrau mentions two kinds of naan eaten by Muslim nobles; Naan-e-Tunuk and Naan-e-Tanuri. Naan-e-Tunuk was a light or thin bread, while Naan-e-Tanuri was a heavy bread and was baked in the tandoor. During India’s Mughal era in the 1520s, naan was a delicacy that only nobles and royal families enjoyed because of the lengthy process of making leavened bread and because the art of making naan was a revered skill known by few. The Ain-i-Akbari, a record of the third Mughal emperor’s reign, refers to naan being eaten with kebabs or kheema in it. By the 1700s, naan had reached the masses in Mughal cultural centers in South Asia.