Hejîr: The Kurdish Fig and the Oldest Cultivated Fruit in Human History

Sherko Sabir
29 minutes ago
6 min read

Hejîr: The Kurdish Fig and the Oldest Cultivated Fruit in Human History

The previous articles in this series established that the olive was first domesticated in the south Taurus mountains of Kurdish Bakur, and that wheat was first cultivated on Karacadağ near Amed. Both are extraordinary claims, and both are peer-reviewed. But there is a fruit whose domestication predates both of them — a fruit that may be the oldest cultivated crop in the entire history of the human species, and whose wild form grows spontaneously in Kurdistan. That fruit is the fig. In Central Kurdish, it is called hejîr (هەنجیری). It is one of the oldest foods on earth, and the place where it grows wild includes the Kurdish mountains. According to Kew Gardens, the world’s foremost botanical authority, the fig — Ficus carica — became what was probably the first cultivated fruit in human history over eleven thousand years ago. Evidence of its domestication predates the domestication of cereal crops by almost a thousand years. The wild fig grows spontaneously across the Near East and into western Asia, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica specifically names Kurdistan among the regions where wild Ficus carica grows in its natural state. Syria and Anatolia — which includes the Kurdish Bakur highlands — are cited as the natural habitats of the fig tree from which it was carried across the ancient world. The fig was already an established crop by the time the first cities rose in Mesopotamia. When the Sumerians were writing their first tablets — in Babylon and Uruk, in the lowlands below the Kurdish mountains — the fig was already an ancient food. This is the one-hundred-and-thirty-second article in the series. The olive and the wheat had their origin articles. Now the fig — which is older than both — has its own.

Key Takeaways

• Hejîr (هەنجیری) is the Central Kurdish name for the fig — one of the oldest and most sacred fruits of the region

• Kew Gardens identifies the fig as probably the first cultivated fruit in human history, over 11,000 years ago

• Wild fig grows spontaneously in Kurdistan (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Syria and Anatolia are its natural original habitat

• Eaten fresh in late summer, dried for winter; named alongside the olive in the Quran as a sacred fruit

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Hejîr / henjîr (هەنجیری in Central Kurdish); incir (Turkish); anjir (انجیر in Persian/Arabic)

Wild Range: Grows spontaneously in Kurdistan, Syria, Anatolia, and the wider Near East and western Asia

Eaten: Fresh in late summer (purple-black or green, intensely sweet); dried for winter; in reçel (fig jam); as a sweet snack

Historical: Probably the world’s first cultivated fruit (Kew); mentioned in Sumerian tablets (2500 BCE) and the Quran (Surah At-Tin)

The Fig in the Kurdish Kitchen

The fig tree arrives at its season in late summer, when the fruit is purple-black or amber-green and heavy on the branch. Eaten fresh, the fig is extraordinary: intensely sweet, with a honeyed depth and a texture that is simultaneously soft and slightly grainy from the seeds inside. The Kurdish kitchen eats fresh figs for the few weeks of their ripeness and then preserves them. Dried figs (hejîr hûr / anjir-e khoshk) are spread on cloth in the sun until the sugars concentrate and the flesh darkens and dries to a dense, chewy sweetness. Stored through the winter in a dry place, they are eaten with tea, with cheese and bread, or simply as they are: one of the sweetest of all dried fruits, naturally sugared without any processing. Fig reçel (jam) is made by cooking fresh figs with sugar or grape molasses until they become a soft, jewelled preserve. In the Kurdish kitchen, dried figs also appear in rice dishes and slow-cooked stews — particularly in Rojhelat (Iranian Kurdistan), where the Persian influence of sweet-and-savoury cooking is present, and where fig-stuffed lamb or rice with dried fruit is a festive tradition. On the mountain, where fig trees grow in the rocky crevices and valley walls at lower elevations, the forager finds them without cultivation: wild figs, smaller and seedier than the cultivated variety, sweet enough to eat straight from the branch.

The Oldest Cultivated Fruit

This series has made a series of escalating claims about the role of the Kurdish mountains in the origins of world agriculture. The olive was first domesticated in the south Taurus mountains of Bakur six thousand years ago. The wheat was first cultivated on Karacadağ near Amed ten to eleven thousand years ago, predating the olive by millennia. The fig goes further still. According to the botanical authority of Kew Gardens, the fig became what was probably the first cultivated fruit in human history over eleven thousand years ago — and the evidence for its early cultivation, from a site in the Jordan Valley, predates the domestication of cereal crops by almost a thousand years. The scholarly researcher Ira Condit, the leading authority on fig varieties, identified Syria and Anatolia as the natural habitats of the fig tree — and Anatolia, in this context, includes the Kurdish highlands of Bakur, the same mountains from which the olive and the wheat came. The Encyclopaedia Iranica specifically names Kurdistan as one of the regions where wild Ficus carica grows spontaneously today, in its natural state, alongside western Persia and the Caspian forests. This is not a marginal claim. The fig grew wild in Kurdistan long before it was cultivated anywhere. The honest note: the fig’s domestication is now thought by many researchers to have occurred in the Jordan Valley — south of Kurdistan, in what is now Palestine. The Kurdish mountains are part of the fig’s natural wild range and historical habitat, not necessarily its primary domestication site. But the wild fig is a Kurdish mountain plant, and the same landscape that produced the olive and the wheat also produced this, the oldest cultivated fruit in the world. The Quran names the fig and the olive together in Surah At-Tin, the most sacred pairing in all of Muslim tradition — and now this series has covered both, and traced both to the same mountainous region.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is hejîr in Kurdish culture?

Hejîr (henjîr) is the Central Kurdish name for the fig (Ficus carica), one of the oldest and most widely eaten fruits of the region. It is eaten fresh in late summer, dried for the winter, and preserved as fig jam (reçel). Wild figs grow naturally in the Kurdish mountains; the fig is among the first fruits mentioned in Sumerian texts from ancient Mesopotamia, in the Quran, and in the earliest agricultural records of the Near East.

Is the fig really the world’s oldest cultivated fruit?

According to Kew Gardens, the fig is probably the first fruit to have been cultivated in human history, over eleven thousand years ago. Evidence of its cultivation predates cereal crop domestication by nearly a thousand years. The scholarly consensus places its earliest domestication in the Near East, with wild trees growing across Syria, Anatolia, and Kurdistan. Some researchers place the first cultivation site in the Jordan Valley (Palestine), while others identify Syria and Anatolia (including Kurdish Bakur) as the primary natural habitat from which cultivation spread.

Why are the fig and olive mentioned together in the Quran?

Surah At-Tin (The Fig) opens with an oath sworn by the fig and the olive together, pairing them as two sacred fruits of the highest significance. Both are among the most ancient cultivated plants in the Near East, both have wild forms growing in the Kurdish mountains, and both have been documented in this series as plants whose origins trace to the same mountainous landscape of Bakur and the Fertile Crescent. In Islamic tradition, the fig is described as a perfect fruit — containing no pit of any kind — and the olive as a blessed tree of the mountain.

Conclusion

Hejîr is the one-hundred-and-thirty-second article in the series, and the oldest claim it has ever made. Not the oldest food in the series — rûn is ancient, savar is four thousand years old, keskê goes back further — but the oldest origin claim: over eleven thousand years of cultivation, in a landscape that includes the Kurdish mountains, making the fig possibly the first crop any human being ever deliberately grew. The olive was sacred. The wheat built cities. The fig came before both. One hundred and thirty-two articles in, the Kurdish mountains have given the world its oil, its bread, and its oldest sweetness. The hejîr, eaten fresh from the branch on a late summer afternoon in Kurdistan, is a fruit that has been eaten here longer than anywhere else on earth.