Unab — the small red jujube that dries to a sweet, date-like fruit — has held a place in every Unani dispensary since the earliest Arabic formularies. It is the physician’s cooling fruit, given when the body’s temperament runs hot. Laraib prepares it as a straightforward sharbat: unab, sugar, water and patience, exactly as the Pakistan Tibbi Pharmacopoeia sets out.
What it is traditionally used for
- Purifying the blood and clearing the heat carried in it
- Relieving the burning sensation felt in the palms and soles
- Bringing an over-heated temperament back towards balance
- Easing the intensity and discomfort of fever
- Cooling the body through the long summer months of the plains
- Settling the skin restlessness that heat in the blood tends to bring
How it is made
Whole dried jujubes are soaked overnight, then simmered as a slow decoction until the fruit gives up its sweetness and body. The liquor is strained through fine cloth and reduced with cane sugar to a clear, garnet-coloured syrup. The unab is single-origin fruit graded by hand, and nothing artificial — colour, flavour, preservative or synthetic sweetener — is added.
How to take it
Two tablespoons, roughly 30 ml, diluted in a tall glass of chilled water, once or twice a day. Take it in the afternoon through the hot months, when the heat is at its worst. It also mixes beautifully with soda water or a squeeze of lemon, and children will happily drink it half-strength.
Good to know
- Available in 240 ml and 800 ml bottles
- DRAP registered under product number 0803812086
- Prepared from pure ingredients to the Pakistan Tibbi Pharmacopoeia; contains cane sugar
- 100% natural, with no artificial colour, flavour or preservative
Kamran Baig (verified owner) –
My hakeem in Lahore recommended unab syrup for heat in the blood and prickly skin. This is the one he named. Six weeks in and the summer rash across my arms has not returned this year.
Saad Zafar (verified owner) –
Does what it says as a cooling drink. I keep it in the fridge in Sukkur and take it after work. Slightly sweeter than I would choose, so I dilute more than the label suggests. No complaints otherwise.
Arsalan Sheikh (verified owner) –
Bought the 800 ml on the strength of the smaller bottle. Taste is clean, not cloying, and you can tell it is real fruit because the colour varies slightly between batches. Good value at the sale price.
Noman Sattar (verified owner) –
June in Multan is unbearable and this is what we drink instead of bottled squashes now. One glass in the afternoon for the whole family. My mother says the burning in her feet has settled noticeably since we started.