A visit to one of the orchards of Ghouta area, Damascus countryside, will give us an idea about the production of Qamar al-Din. It is a food industry that has belonged uniquely to Damascus and its countryside for hundreds of years.
When the Ghouta area is adorned with apricot fruit trees, factories rush to buy the largest amount of apricots for manufacturing Qamr al-Din; the ancient Sham (Levant) fruit industry that Syria has gifted to the world.
Owner of the facility and the apricot orchard, Mohammad Bashar Jaweesh, says, “Since the early morning hours, workers’ hands have embraced the apricot fruits for harvesting, which is the first stage in Qamr al-Din production.” He stresses that harvesting the fruits is a decisive stage in the production process because the harvest season lasts no more than forty-five days, bearing in mind that Qamr al-Din requires the best quality of apricots, called Klabi apricots, which contains a considerable amount of juice, and are perfect for making juice and jam.
With her round hat and a brightly colored shawl, Chief of labor, Fatima Um Mohammad, is waiting for the fruit boxes to arrive to feed them to the machines. She supervises the process of fruit sorting, washing the fruits in the special machines, drying them under pumped air, sterilizing them with sulfur blossom substance, and then putting them in a chrome-made juice extractor. There are two stages, the first of which is de-stoning the fruits, and the second is peeling them and removing the fibers to extract pure juice. The juice is then poured in a special vat and glucose is added until the produce has a soft texture and becomes more consistent, which is a very important process. According to Fatima, failure to add correct measurements of glucose will make the produce hard to touch and pale in color.