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Concept
Chickpea
Summary
The chickpea or chick pea (Cicer arietinum) is an annual legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. Its different types are variously known as gram or Bengal gram, chhana, chana, or channa, garbanzo or garbanzo bean, or Egyptian pea. Chickpea seeds are high in protein. It is one of the earliest cultivated legumes, and 9,500-year-old remains have been found in the Middle East.
The chickpea is a key ingredient in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines, used in hummus, and, when soaked and coarsely ground with herbs and spices then made into patties and fried, falafel. As an important part of Indian cuisine, it is used in salads, soups and stews, and curry, in chana masala, and in other food products that contain channa (chickpeas). In 2019, India was responsible for 70% of global chickpea production.
The name "chickpea," earlier "chiche pease," is modelled on Middle French pois chiche, where chiche comes from Latin cicer. "Chich" was used by itself in English from the 14th to the 18th centuries. The word garbanzo, from an alteration of Old Spanish arvanço, came first to English as "garvance" in the 17th century, being gradually anglicized to "calavance", though that came to refer to a variety of other beans, including the hyacinth bean. The current form garbanzo comes directly from modern Spanish.
Cicer reticulatum is the wild progenitor of chickpeas. This species currently grows only in southeast Turkey, where it is believed to have been domesticated. The domestication event can be dated to around 7000 BC. Domesticated chickpeas have been found at Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites in Turkey and the Levant, namely at Çayönü, Hacilar, and Tell es-Sultan (Jericho). Chickpeas then spread to the Mediterranean region around 6000 BC and India around 3000 BC.
In southern France, mesolithic layers in a cave at L'Abeurador, Hérault, have yielded chickpeas, carbon-dated to 6790±90 BC. They were found in the late Neolithic (about 3500 BC) sites at Thessaly, Kastanas, Lerna and Dimini, Greece.
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