Turkish delight and the shop that says it has sold it since 1777

The firm's account: a man called Bekir came from Araç, in Kastamonu, and in 1777 opened a small shop in Bahçekapı, Eminönü, selling lokum and hard candies he made himself.

Notice the name: just Bekir. He became Hacı Bekir only after a pilgrimage to Mecca between 1817 and 1820. The shop is forty years older than its name.

In 1820, the firm says, Sultan Mahmud II made him Chief Confectioner to the palace. The title passed to son Mehmed Muhiddin, then grandson Ali Muhiddin, who died in 1975.

The paper trail starts later. An association of century-old brands cites an 1853 archive record about a palace debt, then trademark registers and fair medals. In 1911 came shops in Cairo and Alexandria, and a second royal client, the Egyptian khedive.

"As far as can be determined", the association says, it's the oldest confectionery still working in Türkiye. Note the hedge: the 1777 date is the firm's own tradition.

Now the invention. Food historians don't buy it. The Oxford Companion to Food finds no real evidence. Persian starch-and-sugar sweets are centuries older, and the Byzantines ate something close: paloudakin, sugar dissolved with rosewater.

The word agrees. Lokum is Arabic luqma, "morsel", and the trade name rahatül-hulkum was known in the 17th century. Bekir came too late to have invented it.

And "Turkish Delight"? Legend says an English customer took lokum home and sold it under that name. Even the firm's page says "it is rumoured".