Sicilian scholars have developed the theory that the pistachio tree was cultivated in Palestine in the time of Jacob, a hypothesis with textual support from the Old Testament. Chapter 43 of the book of Genesis speaks of a great famine in the land. The reference is to the seven years of hunger. There was grain in Egypt, where following Joseph’s advice corn had been stored in large quantities to cover the need for food during the seven years of hunger. Jacob then told his sons to go Egypt to buy food and bring it back to Canaan. He also counseled them to take with them, together with the silver, some of their country’s finest products: a little balsam, honey, perfumes and myrrh, walnuts and pistachios (“botnim”). These they were to offer as presents to Joseph.

Until the late 19th century the exact place of origin of pistachios was not known. At the end of the 19th century European botanists on a visit to the Middle East who saw the extensive pistachio plantations put forward the view that they came from Syria, Turkey and/or Mesopotamia. But in 1929-1930 Russian botanists on a visit to Central Asia found pistachio trees growing wild in vast expanses of the mountains and the plains, forming a kind of forested steppe on terrain of poor ecological composition. The region where wild pistachio trees were growing extended over Northern Iran, Northern Afghanistan, Northern Turkmenistan, Eastern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and into Kyrgyzstan. It is to be concluded from this that Central Asia is the place of origin of the wild ancestor of today’s cultivated pistachio.