Shams Al-Qassabi

Shams Bashi Al-Qassabi, widely known as Al-Shamoos, is a Qatari entrepreneur and author in culinary heritage, and the first Qatari woman to operate a restaurant in Souq Waqif.

A cultural centre honoured her work with a heritage serving dish more than two hundred years old.

She grew up in a prosperous, conservative merchant family with deep roots in Souq Waqif. Although she did not attend school, she was inventive and skilled with her hands, making dolls, toys and hair ornaments from magazine paper and simple materials and selling them for modest amounts. She also mastered sewing and embroidery, crafts inherited from a grandmother renowned in the neighbourhood, and later earned a diploma in which she ranked first in her class.

The neighbourhood of her childhood was defined by visits, mutual care and close companionship. Girls seldom attended school and learned responsibility by helping at home. She acquired cooking from her mother, grandmothers and the women of the family. Her father owned spice shops and a home-based sweets business whose products were prepared before dawn and placed outside shops in Souq Waqif. Proud of the diligence, energy and devotion she inherited from him, he would tell her that she was ‘worth a hundred men’.

When her husband retired as Director of Public Services at a Qatar Petroleum site in Dukhan, the household income fell. She looked to her existing abilities for a new source of support. Her first venture was sewing and hand-embroidering clothes for sale through Hasnaa Al Khaleej on Abdullah Bin Thani Street. At the same time, she prepared spices at home and gave them to neighbours, who eventually asked to buy them rather than continue accepting her generosity.

In 2001, she heard about the Modern Family Exhibition and approached a delegation from the former Family Development House at her daughters’ school. With less than two weeks before the event and no ready-made clothing to display, she proposed selling spices instead. Two lemons and a box of tomatoes in her kitchen became the beginning of the idea. Sales to parents at Al Ma’amoura school produced QAR500 in capital, which she spent on spices that she washed, dried and ground by hand. She studied the varieties at a nearby spice shop, tested every blend herself and prepared the products without telling relatives who would have opposed her participation.

She entered the exhibition with that QAR500 and left with QAR32,000. The result persuaded her to continue. She converted the driver’s room beside her home into a small shop and worked day and night without assistance, initially pounding every spice by hand. Customers came from across Qatar and included residents and Gulf ambassadors buying substantial quantities. A grinder and a pick-up truck later allowed her to expand, deliver to Al Khor and Al Shamal, create new mixtures and build a broad, loyal customer base.

The exhibition also led her to publish ‘Alf Ya’a Al-Shamoos’ and then ‘Wala’em Al-Shamoos’. Both became widely used cookbooks among household and professional cooks. Throughout the early years, thrift protected the growing capital: she wrote on the reverse of invoices instead of buying notebooks, stored products in empty dried-milk tins, used equipment from her own kitchen and reinvested every sale in new materials.

She declined family help despite their means and took neither loans nor financial assistance. Labels were handwritten, an accountant was unnecessary, and the products carried no logo until an official suggested printed stickers two years later, by which time her name was already familiar to customers.

At the end of 2014, she acquired the premises of the celebrated Shay Al Shamoos shop in Souq Waqif and opened it officially at the beginning of 2015. She became the first Qatari woman to open and personally operate a business among the souq’s merchants, and remained one of the few women present in her enterprise every day rather than managing it at a distance.

Production eventually reached 450 varieties of spice. In early 2020, she opened the first food factory dedicated to pickles and spices. A process that began with twelve kilograms ground by hand developed into the preparation of thousands of kilograms with advanced machinery. Products travelled from Qatar to Gulf, American and European markets, while hotels and diet restaurants collaborated with her and leading Indian restaurants in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain ordered her distinctive tandoori mixtures.

Her restaurant, opened in 2014, became another laboratory for invention. She developed twenty-five forms of regag bread, adding new ingredients while retaining its heritage character. Every new bread or spice mixture went directly to the kitchen for testing and naming, and experience gave her the confidence to move from trial quantities to large batches.

A three-day British Council field study in 2006 followed every stage of her work. The researcher said that extensive travel had never brought her into contact with such industry and energy, and a cultural centre honoured the entrepreneur with a heritage dish more than two centuries old. Her work also received dozens of local and Gulf awards and recognition from His Highness the Father Amir.

The reputation of her cooking drew visitors to Qatar specifically for her restaurant and spices. American and Brazilian newspapers carried articles about the work, while pupils and university students prepared reports and research on her as an example of women’s achievement in commerce. Coverage in India, Türkiye, France, Germany, Japan and Russia helped challenge stereotyped ideas about Qatari women and presented a self-made businesswoman to international audiences.

Despite becoming a leading businesswoman with projects, property and numerous honours, she continued to cook, mix spices and work beside her employees. She travelled with them on their bus rather than using a private car and did not reduce their salaries when the Covid-19 pandemic damaged the restaurant business.

The route carried personal and commercial costs. Relatives living next door initially rejected her work, so she closed the door to keep it from them. Years of physical effort caused problems in her neck and hands, while the pandemic brought substantial losses and delayed the formal launch of the factory. She nevertheless continued to meet each difficulty through work and invention.

Her advice to Qatari entrepreneurs is to supervise their own projects, invest in fields they understand and avoid entering unfamiliar sectors merely to imitate others. Direct knowledge, she argues, protects owners from exploitation and prevents an enterprise from depending entirely on a single employee.