Food History

Did Date Trees Grow in Paradise?

Palm dates are one of the oldest cultivated fruit trees on earth. Here is their history, a bit of trivia, and five creative recipes.

Source: Image by Mehdi Seyed Abadi from Pixabay

The date palm is a magnificent tree, a lifeform revered in the Middle East as an “ancient of days.” Food historians believe it has been cultivated for more than 7,000 years in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This place, Phoenicia, gives the fruit its botanical name, phoenix dactylifera. (In the language of the Greeks, dactylifera means “finger bearing,” a nod to the finger-like shape of the dates.)

Babylonian tablets describe the date palm; it appears in drawings that predate the written word. There is evidence that the date palm was also present in the Valley of the Nile — paintings of them can be found in the tombs of the Pharaohs.

Palm trees in Northern Africa (Image by Manuel_Edelmann from Pixabay)

Followers of Islam believe that the angel Gabriel offered dates to Adam to feed and comfort him when he was exiled from the Garden of Eden.

“Thou are created from the same substance as this palm tree which henceforth shall…