Chorba (/ˈtʃɔːrbə/ CHOR-bə; Turkish: [tʃɔɾˈba])^[a] or shorba (/ˈʃɔːrbə/ SHOR-bə; Azerbaijani: [ʃoɾˈbɑ])^[b] is a broad class of stews or rich soups found in national cuisines across the Middle East, Algeria, Maghreb, Iran, Turkey, Southeast Europe, Central Asia, East Africa and South Asia. It is often prepared with added ingredients but is also served alone^[1] as a broth or with bread.^[2]

The word chorba in English and in many Balkan languages is a loan from the Ottoman Turkish چوربا

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

, which itself is a loan from Persian شوربا

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

. The spelling shorba could be a direct loan into English from Persian or through a Central or South Asian intermediary.

The word is ultimately a compound of شور

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

meaning 'salty, brackish' and با 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

meaning 'stew, gruel, spoon-meat'.[3] The former is from Parthian 𐫢𐫇𐫡 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

meaning 'salty', and the latter from Middle Persian *-bāg meaning 'gruel, spoon-meat'.

The etymology can be definitively tied to Persian through the cognate شورباج

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

in modern Persian, while شوربا

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

evolved to mean 'broth, stew', شورباج 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

simply means 'soup'.[4] It is typical for Middle Persian word-final 𐭪 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

to either change to ج 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

or to be dropped altogether in Modern Persian.

The dialectal Arabic word شوربة

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

or شربة 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

is also a loan from Persian and cannot be etymologically tied to شرب 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

meaning 'to drink'. That said, it is highly likely that phono-semantic matching occurred during the loaning of the word into Arabic, which would explain the orthographical difference.

Chorba is also called

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Amharic: ሾርባ), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Uzbek: шўрва), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Pashto: شوروا), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Bulgarian: чорба), čorba (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: чорба), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Somali), ciorbă (Romanian), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Russian: шурпа), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Uyghur: شورپا / шорпа), çorba (Turkish), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Kyrgyz: шорпо), 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

(Kazakh: сорпа)[citation needed] and shorba in (Hindustani: شوربہ / शोरबा). In the Indian subcontinent, the term 

1. REDIRECT Template:Transliteration

 is commonly used to mean gravy. It is a Mughlai dish and it also has vegetarian forms..

Shorwa is a traditional Afghan dish which is a simple dish which is usually mixed with bread on the dastarkhān.^[5] It is a long process and a pressure-cooker is usually used, as it reduces the process to 2 hours. The main ingredients for shorwa are potatoes, beans and meat.^[6] It is commonly served with Afghan bread.^[7]

Ciorbă, as called in Moldova and Romania, consists of various vegetables, meat and herbs. Borș is a sour soup that is used in the Moldova region.^[8] There are several types of this dish, such as ciorbă de perișoare, leek soup, Romanian borscht, and borș de burechiușe.

• 
  Traditional Afghan shorwa
• 
  Algerian chorba
• 
  Bosnian begova čorba and somun bread
• 
  Bulgarian Kurban chorba
• 
  Kyrgyz shorpo
• 
  Serbian chicken čorba
• 
  Romanian ciorbă
• 
  Algerian chorba frik

• List of soups
• List of stews