Chickpea

The chickpea or chick pea (Cicer arietinum) is an annual legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae, cultivated for its edible seeds. Its different types are variously known as gram, Bengal gram, chana dal, garbanzo, garbanzo bean, or Egyptian pea. It is one of the earliest cultivated legumes, the oldest archaeological evidence of which was found in Syria.

Chickpeas are high in protein. 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, stews, and curries. In 2023, India accounted for 75% of global chickpea production.

Chickpeas have been cultivated for at least ten thousand years. Cultivation spread from the Fertile Crescent eastward toward South Asia and into Europe through the Balkans. Historical linguistics have found ancestral words relating to chickpeas in the prehistoric Proto-Indo-European language family that evolved into the Indo-European languages. The Proto-Indo-European roots *kek- and *k'ik'- that denoted both 'pea' and 'oat' appeared in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe between 4,500 and 2,500 BCE. As speakers of the language became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects diverged due to contact with other languages and dialects, and transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. The Old Prussian word kekêrs, appearing between 1 and 100 CE, retained the 'pea' meaning of the word, but in most cases, the word came to be used to denote chickpeas. In Old Macedonian, the word κίκερροι appeared between 1000 and 400 BCE, and may have evolved from the Proto-Hellenic word *κικριός. In Ancient Rome, the Latin word cicer for chickpeas appeared around 700 BCE, and is probably derived from the word kickere used by the Pelasgians that inhabited north Greece before Greek-speaking tribes took over. The Old Armenian word siseŕn for chickpeas appeared before 400 CE. Over time, linkages between languages led to other descendant words, including the Albanian word qiqër, the Swedish word kikärt, the Slovak word cícer, the Estonian word kikerhernes, the Basque word txitxirio, and the Maltese word cicra.

The Latin word cicer evolved into words for chickpeas in nearly all extinct and living Romance languages, including the Mozarabic word chíchar; the Catalan words ceirons, cigró, cigronera, cigrons and ciurons; the Walloon words poes d' souke; the Old French words ceire and cice; and the Modern French terms cicérole, cicer tete-de-belier, and pois chiche. These words were borrowed by many geographically neighboring languages, such as the French term pois chiche becoming chich-pease in Old English. The word pease, like the modern words for wheat and corn, was both singular and plural, but since it had an "s" sound at the end of it which became associated with the plural form of nouns, English speakers by the end of the 17th century were starting to refer to a single grain of pease as a pea.

Other important Proto-Indo-European roots relating to chickpeas are *erəgw[h]-, *eregw(h)o-, and *erogw(h)o-, which were used to denote both the kernel of a legume and a pea. This root evolved into the Greek word erebinthos, mentioned in The Iliad in around 800 BCE and in Historia Plantarum by Theophrastus, written between 350 and 287 BCE. The Portuguese words ervanço and gravanço; the Asturian word garbanzu; the Galician word garavanzo; the French words garvanche, garvance, and garvane; and the Spanish word garbanzo are all related to the Greek term. In American English, the term garbanzo to refer to the chickpea appeared in writing as early as 1759, and the seed is also referred to as a garbanzo bean.

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is a member of the genus Cicer and the legume family, Fabaceae. Carl Linnaeus described it in the first edition of Species Plantarum in 1753, marking the first use of binomial nomenclature for the plant. Linnaeus classified the plant in the genus Cicer, which was the Latin term for chickpeas, crediting Joseph Pitton de Tournefort's 1694 publication Elemens de botanique, ou Methode pour connoitre les plantes which called it "Cicer arietinum". Tournefort himself repeated the names of the plant that had been used since antiquity.

The specific epithet arietinum is based on the shape of the seed resembling the head of a ram. In Ancient Greece, Theophrastus described one of the varieties of chickpea called "rams" in Historia Plantarum. The Roman writer on agriculture Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella wrote about chickpeas in the second book of De re rustica, published in about 64 CE, and said that the chickpea was called arietillum. Pliny the Elder expanded further in Naturalis Historia that this name was due to the seed's resemblance to the head of a ram.

Cicer arietinum is the type species of the genus. The wild species C. reticulatum is interfertile with C. arietinum and is considered to be the progenitor of the cultivated species. Cicer echinospermum is also closely related and can be hybridized with both C. reticulatum and C. arietinum, but generally produce infertile seeds.