Chorba (/ˈtʃɔːrbə/ CHOR-bə; Turkish: [tʃɔɾˈba])[a] or shorba (/ˈʃɔːrbə/ SHOR-bə; Azerbaijani: [ʃoɾˈbɑ])[b] is a broad class of stews or rich soups found in national cuisines across the Middle East , Algeria, Maghreb, Iran, Turkey, Southeast Europe, Central Asia, East Africa and South Asia.

The spelling shorba could be a direct loan into English from Persian or through a Central or South Asian intermediary.

The dialectal Arabic word شوربة šūrba or شربة šurba is also a loan from Persian and cannot be etymologically tied to شرب šariba meaning 'to drink'.

Chorba is also called shorba (Amharic: ሾርባ), sho'rva (Uzbek: шўрва), shorwa (Pashto: شوروا), chorba (Bulgarian: чорба), čorba (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: чорба), shurbad (Somali), ciorbă (Romanian), shurpa (Russian: шурпа), shorpa (Uyghur: شورپا / шорпа), çorba (Turkish), shorpo (Kyrgyz: шорпо) and sorpa (Kazakh: сорпа).

[citation needed] In the Indian subcontinent, the term shorbā in Urdu-Hindi (شوربہ / शोरबा) simply means gravy.