The equipment, and why it is small
A description of something people do now, compiled from published accounts rather than from practice.
A small brazier of charcoal or a gas ring; two small metal teapots; a tray with a set of small glasses; a block or bag of sugar; gunpowder green tea; and fresh mint where it is available, which in the deep desert it often is not. Everything is small and portable because the whole assembly travels — the service is made on the ground, in a tent, at a roadside, at a rest stop on a journey, and it is set up and packed away routinely. The two pots matter: one is used to brew and the other to hold and combine, and the tea moves between them. The scale of the operation is the opposite of the Moroccan silver service that outside readers associate with North African mint tea. This is a floor-level, working, everyday arrangement, and the elaborate urban Moroccan version is a related but distinct practice with different equipment and a different setting.
How the foam is made
A description of something people do now, compiled from published accounts rather than from practice.
The characteristic step is that tea is poured repeatedly between the pot and the glasses, and between glass and glass, from a height, to build and hold a head of foam. A well-made glass has a dense pale head on it, and the head is the visible standard by which the maker is judged. The pouring is done over and over: liquid is poured out, returned, poured again, until the foam is right, and the process is unhurried by design. Sugar is added in quantity and the tea is boiled with it rather than sweetened at the end, which is a different operation from stirring sugar into a made cup. The result is very sweet, very strong, and served in a small glass — perhaps two mouthfuls. The sweetness and the strength are inseparable from the format: this is a concentrated small serving repeated three times over a long period, not a drink taken by the cup.
Three glasses, and the time they take
A description of something people do now, compiled from published accounts rather than from practice.
Three rounds are made from the same leaf in sequence, each requiring its own boiling, sweetening and pouring, and each recognisably different from the last — the first strongest and most bitter, the third weakest and sweetest. The whole sequence commonly takes an hour or two, and that duration is the point rather than a side effect: the service is what a visit consists of, and leaving before the third glass is a departure from the occasion rather than from the drink. A widely quoted saying comparing the three glasses to life, love and death circulates in this region as it does across the Maghreb. It is a real saying, quoted by practitioners and by visitors alike, and it is not a rule that governs how anybody makes tea. TeaHQ records it as a formula attached to the practice rather than as its explanation, which is the same treatment it gives the Bai three-course gloss and the Uzbek three-pour formula.
Who makes it, and what that means
TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
The making is a role. One person runs the fire and the pots for the whole gathering, often the same person every time, and doing it well is a recognised competence that is remarked on and taught. In many accounts the maker is a younger man, and in others it is the host or a particular member of the household; the pattern varies by community and this record does not fix it. What is consistent is that the making is performed in front of everybody, occupies the maker for the duration, and is watched. That structure — one person visibly working, everyone else waiting, for a long time, over an object of very small volume — is what makes the service a social form rather than a refreshment. It is worth comparing with the East Frisian three cups, the Chaozhou three cups and the Kazakh half-full bowl: four unrelated traditions that all solve the problem of keeping a host attentive to a guest by making the serving slow, repetitive and small.