From Gujranwala to Multan, in the center of Punjab, Pakistan, there is a sweetness that has spread throughout the world. Made from sugar, jaggery, and sesame seeds, rewri is a traditional dry sweet that tells a tale of trade, community, and craftsmanship. These workshops come to life each winter. The smell of toasted sesame and caramelized jaggery fills the air. The core of Rewri-making has been refined over many generations. Pehlwan Rewri, born in the Punjabi market town of Chakwal in the early 1950s, was introduced by the late Haji Muhammad Nazeer, commonly referred to as “Pehlwan” due to his strength and reputation in the community. Starting with basic roasted sesame sweets, he improved the recipe over time by adding jaggery and desi ghee until his creation came to represent Pakistan’s winter. In its early years, the brand produced a meager 15 kg per day. Today, during peak season, it produces over 1,000 kilograms. In addition to being a popular national treat, Pehlwan Rewri is a confection that can be exported, bringing Punjab’s legacy to the Pakistani diaspora worldwide.
How Rewri Is Made
Sesame seeds, referred to locally as “til,” are first roasted to start the process. Rewri’s distinctive crunch comes from the seeds, which are gently roasted until golden brown. After that, sugar syrup and jaggery are boiled together until they have a deep amber color. If you are a second too late, the mixture will solidify; if you are a second too early, it will not bind. When the temperature is just right, thick sheets of the mixture are formed by folding in the sesame seeds. Each piece of Rewri is then hand-rolled by the artisans and allowed to cool on large steel trays before being dried and packed. It’s a process that requires passion and accuracy. Rewri is more than just a company to many people here, it’s a legacy. A worker at the factory, Azeem Pehlwan, added, “Rewri and I have been co-workers here for twenty-eight years. The respect is the best thing about this place. We take pride in every piece we create because the owners treat each employee like family. We are the first in this field, and the production of this dry fruit requires careful attention to detail. Rewri is made entirely of natural and pure ingredients.”
Rewri has expanded from being a local delicacy to a multi-million-dollar exporting product. Pakistan has been exporting Rewri and sesame-based products worth close to $4 million every year, and these products are in demand by 8–10 percent year by year. Whether it is the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia or the United Kingdom, Canada, and the US, this winter confection is now sweetening much more than Pakistani homes. These figures are backed by a community of thousands of farmers, traders, packers, and transporters who are all members of an industry that helps empower the SME economy in Pakistan and boosts employment in rural areas. With the world turning towards traditional and organic food, Rewri signifies the possibility of Pakistan to unite the traditional and the opportunity, as even the simplest sweet can become the carrier of the name of a nation worldwide.
Pehlwan Rewri, a product that used to be produced in a modest-looking home-based facility in the early 1990s, has risen to national prominence and is sold in Pakistan’s cities, as well as online to be dispatched nationally and internationally. What started as a small group of sesame-jaggery bites has now become a popular snack that everyone is happy to enjoy in the winter, with guests offering it in small gifts in modest homes, or companies departing Pakistani expatriates with a good package of sesame-jaggery products. It is a cheap dry fruit, but its flavor and its cultural connection make the experience worthwhile instead of a substitute. Most local sweets have been transformed into a Pakistani icon of the Pak-Punjabi food culture. The approximate number of kilograms of daily production during the peak season has become thousands, a feat in itself in terms of demand and coverage. In Rawalpindi, a retired trader, Hamza, added, “I have sold Rewri here in Rawalpindi for more than twenty years. This has been in our family for a long time.”
Rewri is not just a sweet but a fiction of a long-standing artisanship in Pakistan. It is simple, and it is natural, and Rewri holds together the nation, from the silent workshops of Punjab to the crowded streets of Karachi and Lahore. Its economic presence is still growing with this humble sweet being used as an identity symbol of Pakistani identity outside the country by the diaspora to bring home with them and traded as a niche product in the ethnic stores of the Middle East, Europe, and North America. Nevertheless, with quick industrialization, the spirit of Rewri has been retained in the form of hand-grain-roasted sesame seeds covered with golden syrup, which the generations have preserved, maintaining patience and pride in each bite. Pehlwan Rewri can be viewed as the jubilant story of what persistence can lead to, which was initially a home-based business in the 1990s, has now become a nationwide and global brand, feeding families, conserving tradition, and being the sweetest manifestation of soft-power economy in Pakistan. A customer, Laiq Khan, added, “During winters, we use Rewri to keep us warm; that is why we have been using it since we are Pakistanis, and whenever we have guests, we give them a pack of Rewri as a token. It is not only a sweet, it is a part of who we are.”