Baklava
Baklava is a rich, sweet pastry featured in many cuisines of the Middle East and the Balkans, in other words, in the former Ottoman countries. It is a pastry made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts, usually walnuts or pistachios and sweetened with sugar or honey syrup.

Today, baklava is a popular dessert at Middle Eastern restaurants throughout the Arab world and Israel. After the meal, an assortment of small pastries is typically brought to the table on a brass tray, accompanied by tiny cups of Turkish coffee.
Gaziantep, a city in Turkey, is famous for its baklava.

The word baklava entered English from Turkish. Baklava is found in many cuisines, with minor phonetic variations on the name.

History
The history of baklava is not well-documented; but although it has been claimed by many ethnic groups, the best evidence is that it is of Central Asian Turkic origin, with its current form being developed in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace..

Perry then assembles evidence to show that layered breads were created by Turks in Central Asia and argues that the "missing link" between the Central Asian folded or layered breads (which did not include nuts) and modern phyllo-based pastries like baklava is the Azerbaijani dish Bakı pakhlavası, which involves layers of dough and nuts, but not thin phyllo dough, which probably was developed in the kitchens of the Topkapı Palace. Indeed, the sultan presented trays of baklava to the Janissaries every 15th of Ramadan in a ceremonial procession called the Baklava Alayı.

Other claims about its origins include: that it is of Assyrian origin, dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, and was mentioned in a Mesopotamian cookbook on walnut dishes; that al-Baghdadi describes it in his 13th-century cookbook; and that it was a popular Byzantine dish. But Claudia Roden and Andrew Dalby find no evidence for it in Arab, Greek, or Byzantine sources before the Ottoman period.

The oldest known recipe for a sort of proto-baklava is found in a Chinese cookbook written in 1330 under the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty under the name güllach. A similar dessert called "güllac" is found in modern Turkish cuisine.