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, 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.