From the 7,000-year-old Persian tanūr to India’s tandoor, Armenia’s tonir, and Japan’s kamado, the clay oven has baked bread, roasted meat, bound communities, and carried food traditions across time and geography
It started, as many of humanity’s greatest stories do, with clay and fire. Long before convection ovens came into play, our ancestors turned to the earth itself, hollowing clay and stone to trap the heat of fire. From Persia to Armenia, and the valleys of India to the islands of Japan, one humble, elemental invention eventually became the lifeline: the clay oven, the tandoor, or its cousins by other names, like the Persian tanūr, which owes its origin to the ancient word for oven, tinūru, from Akkadian, the earliest documented Semitic language of the first known empire.
Archaeologists chart its footprints as far back as 7,000 years, with tanūr ovens scattered through Persia, and tandoors dating to the third millennium BCE found in the Indus Valley. They have also uncovered pit ovens in the Armenian highlands, and even kamado hearths in Japan, each bearing the same principle that transformed a dough into bread, and meat into something deliciously smoky.
In his book, Indian Food: The Historical Companion (1994), food historian K.T. Achaya notes, “Smaller mud-plastered ovens with a side opening are in evidence at Kalibangan (in Rajasthan), very closely resembling the present-day tandoors.” Elena Rova, Professor at University of Venice, notes in her research paper, “These clay ovens were less about cooking alone, and more about establishing a continuity.” In Syria, during the third millennium BC, Rova found evidence that bread was not mass-produced in a central location by the state; instead, bread was baked in homes and communally.
“It was by the different production sectors of the public complex (a temple or a building with a ceremonial function) each had their own bread ovens. In Egypt, Samuel found that individual households at Amarna in Egypt had ovens and baked their own bread; at the same time he interpreted large numbers of temple rooms with ovens as evidence that the state supplied a large quantity of bread to the workers,” she writes.
The first tanūr
Ancient Mesopotamian and Persian texts describe cylindrical clay ovens sunk into the earth, which makes the Persian tanūr the most direct ancestor of the Indian tandoor. Much like today’s clay ovens, these 7,000-year-old tanūrs, too, were heated by burning wood or dung. Bread dough was slapped onto its heated walls, a method so ingenious that it still thrives today, unchanged. The Persian word tanūr itself — root of today’s tandoor — became a linguistic passport, carried westward into Arabic as tannūr, eastward into Central Asia as tandir, and southward into India. However, the tanūr was not just for bread, it also roasted meats and warmed homes.
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Thousands of miles away, Japan cultivated its own clay-hearth tradition, kamado (“place for the cauldron”) and while it wasn’t identical to the tandoor, their principles resonate. The excavated proto-kamado ovens date back to as early as the Kofun period from 3rd-6th century CE. Kamados were earthen structures, feeding villages and anchoring family life. Then they evolved into the portable mushikamado, the inspiration behind the modern ceramic ‘kamado grill,’ which is now exported worldwide as a high-end barbecue tool. It was through Central Asian migrations that the tandoor reached India.
Freshly baked lavash.
As cookbook author Julie Sahni notes in a research paper, “This kind of cooking is synonymous with a nomadic lifestyle.” Soldiers and shepherds needed a reliable way to cook bread and meat in harsh conditions. The tandir — rudimentary yet efficient — fit the bill. During the time of the Delhi Sultanate, in royal encampments, tandoors produced bread for warriors. In palaces, they rose to refinement, yielding sheermal and kulcha under Mughal patronage. The 16th-century court of Akbar knew its worth; thus the golden naan brushed with ghee and saffron perfumed the emperor’s feasts.
“We still use original, royal methods to prepare khadgosht, one of our specialties. It’s a goat meat dish, cooked in an underground pit for 5-6 hours, or sometimes overnight, depending on whether you are cooking chicken or mutton,” notes Yugdeep Singh, General Manager, Samode Haveli, Jaipur, Rajasthan. He adds, “Khadgosht, which is derived from khad (earthen pot) and gosht (meat), was once a hunter’s delight.” Apparently, the rulers, whether Mughal or Rajput, would often travel with large armies, and instruct their chefs to cook underground, to avoid large amounts of smoke that would otherwise caution the rivals.
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Yet, the tandoor never belonged solely to emperors. In rural India, the tandoor, in fact, became a communal oven. “Tandoori cooking and dining connects us to the same fire and clay used by our ancestors thousands of years ago at Kalibangan. More than smoky flavour, it preserves nutrition and brings out the purity of ingredients. At Cheetah Garh, our laal maas skewers, jungli kebabs, mutton butha and paneer tikka are marinated with Mathania red chilli, Nagaur kasturi methi, Sambhar lake salt, and mustard oil made in tribal villages the traditional way. The curd — our main base — comes from local cow’s milk, set in clay pots, while the masalas are hand-blended by village women in their households. Each tandoori dish is truly a living expression of Rajasthan’s land, people, and timeless food wisdom,” notes Bhawar Singh Rathore, Executive Chef, WelcomHeritage Cheetahgarh Resort & Spa.
Lavash and tonirs
Today, no Indian restaurant menu (outside India) is complete without tandoori offerings. But, unlike in India, where the oven became largely a communal village tool, Armenia wove the tondir into its spiritual fabric. “In pagan times, the tonir was seen as an earthly reflection of the sun, glowing beneath the soil. Families who could not afford animal sacrifices offered lavash bread instead,” notes Tatevik Arshakyan, a local guide. Christianity, adopted in the 4th century, reinterpreted but did not erase this symbolism: the bread of the tonir became sacramental, linking daily sustenance to the holy communion.
Excavations even reveal tonirs beneath ancient churches, proof that worship and nourishment once shared the same fire. By the 18th century, the tonir was quite literally at the centre of Armenian homes. By the 20th century, many tonirs lay dormant, replaced by stoves. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) announced Armenian lavash-making in the tonir as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014.
Tatevik shares, “In the glkhatun — a large room carved into hillsides and resembling a tent structure — families of thirty or more lived under one roof, alongside livestock, huddled against brutal winters. The tonir, dug into the floor, was the home’s pulse. Bread, especially lavash, was its lifeblood.” Women stretched dough across their palms with the chant, “Lavkash, lavkash” — from “love” and kashel, to stretch — before slapping it against the oven’s walls. One such glkhatun is owned by Hrachya Aghajanyan in Tsaghkunk village in the Sevan Municipality of the Gegharkunik Province. Ex-diplomat Aghajanyan accidentally discovered it in the next door breadhouse, bought it and now runs a restaurant next to it that was once a Soviet-era canteen. Aghajanyan recalls, “We played around those tonirs, when we were young, but we didn’t know their archaeological worth.”
Now Aghajanyan preserves the two original, 11th-century tonirs much like a museum display. Right next to them, is a new tonir, where bakers Gohar Gareginyan and Anna Yesayant demonstrate the traditional methods of baking lavash. This Armenian bread shares an uncanny resemblance in taste and texture, with the Indian naan, though its long, outstretched shape can remind one of a Rumali Roti.
The universal bread language
Flatbreads have existed forever in India, especially the plain wheat, Tandoori Roti that gets slapped into a hot tandoor for a slightly charred, chewy smoky flavour. Naan as a word and concept, however, comes from Persian (nān means bread). The earliest documented reference comes from Amir Khusrau, the 13th-century Sufi poet, who wrote about naan-e-tunuk (light bread) and naan-e-tanuri (cooked in a tandoor).
It was the Delhi Sultanate that introduced the naan to North India; the Mughals popularised it and it went on to become a court staple. What unites here is not merely the oven, but the philosophy. Be it naan in India, lavash in Armenia, or flatbread in Persia, baking bread in clay and fire transcended necessity and became a ritual, and a metaphor. In India, the first roti was often given to the gods or to cows.
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In Armenia, lavash once replaced animal sacrifice. In both, bread was sacred. The architecture reinforces this: Indian village tandoors often open to the sky, aligning with cosmic rhythms, while Armenian homes use the yerdik, a roof opening that channels sunlight directly into the hearth. Both point upward, linking daily sustenance to the divine. Even their foods echo each other. The lavash and roti are cousins — thin, quick, unadorned, yet indispensable. Both carried families through scarcity once, and yet today, they have travelled the globe, as lavash wrapped around kebabs in Yerevan cafés, and naan buttered and charred in London curry houses. In an era of molecular gastronomy, the persistence of the tandoor is almost defiant. They remind us that not all progress lies in reinvention.
Some technologies were perfected thousands of years ago and need no upgrade. The clay oven is one such invention. It delivers flavours that no steel contraption can replicate. As Sahni observed of nomadic cooks, this form of cooking is “synonymous with lifestyle.” More than that, it is synonymous with permanence. It underlines humanity’s enduring bond with fire — and with one another.
