تنور

Tandoori comes from tandoor (तन्दूर / تندور), the cylindrical clay oven used across South and Central Asia. The word traces to Persian tanūr (تنور), which itself comes from Akkadian tinūru — the oven of ancient Mesopotamia. Archaeological digs at Harappan sites in the Indus Valley have uncovered clay ovens from around 3000 BCE that are structurally identical to modern tandoors. The technology predates the word by millennia.

The Persian tanūr spread with Islam across Central Asia and into the Indian subcontinent. In Mughal India (1526-1857), the tandoor became central to court cuisine. Naan bread, already ancient, became the iconic tandoor product — slapped onto the oven's inner wall, baked by radiant heat in minutes. But the tandoor cooked everything: meats, kebabs, breads, even desserts.

Tandoori chicken — chicken marinated in yogurt and spices, then cooked in a tandoor — was popularized in its modern form by Kundan Lal Gujral at his restaurant Moti Mahal in Peshawar in the 1930s. After Partition in 1947, Gujral moved to Delhi and reopened Moti Mahal, where tandoori chicken became the restaurant's signature. Jawaharlal Nehru served it to visiting dignitaries. The dish went national, then global.

The '-i' suffix in 'tandoori' is a Hindustani adjective marker meaning 'of the tandoor' or 'cooked in a tandoor.' English borrowed the word in the 1950s as Indian restaurants opened in London's Brick Lane and New York's Lexington Avenue. A five-thousand-year-old Mesopotamian oven, a Mughal cooking tradition, a Peshawar restaurateur's innovation, and a Partition refugee's resilience — all compressed into one menu item.