Daniel sent us this one — he wants to explore the history of za'atar, going all the way back to ancient Israel and tracing how a wild herb became the spice blend you can now find in every Whole Foods in America. And here's the thing that makes this genuinely interesting: za'atar is three things at once. It's a plant. It's a spice blend. And it's a cultural identity marker. Those three meanings don't always agree with each other, and that friction is the story.
Right now, in May, that friction is playing out in real time. You've got za'atar showing up on Michelin-starred menus in New York and Tokyo — chefs treating it like a finishing salt or a secret weapon on roasted vegetables. Meanwhile, the wild populations of the plant those blends are supposed to come from are being overharvested to the point of collapse. The Israeli Nature and Parks Authority put out a report last year that stopped me cold: seventy-three percent of wild za'atar populations in the Jerusalem corridor show signs of serious overharvesting.
The thing everyone wants to sprinkle on their avocado toast is quietly disappearing from the hillsides where it grew for thousands of years. That's the tension we're going to pull apart.
To do that, we have to start with the definitional problem. Because when someone says "za'atar," what are they actually talking about? The answer depends on where you're standing.
What exactly are we talking about when we say za'atar?
Three different things, and they all overlap in confusing ways. The first meaning — the oldest one — is the plant itself: Origanum syriacum, a wild herb in the thyme family that grows across the Levant. This is what the Bible is referring to when it mentions "ezov," which English translations render as "hyssop." The second meaning is the spice blend — dried za'atar leaves mixed with sumac, sesame seeds, and salt. That's what most people outside the Middle East think of when they hear the word. The third meaning is the broader category — za'atar as a term that covers multiple related species across the thyme family, depending on where you are. In Lebanon it's mostly Origanum syriacum. In Egypt it's often Thymus vulgaris, common thyme. In Turkey it's Thymbra spicata. In Jordan it might be Satureja thymbra. All of these get called za'atar.
The Linnaean classification system hits a wall here. The botanists want to say "this is Origanum syriacum and that's the end of it," but on the ground, what counts as za'atar is determined by geography and tradition, not taxonomy.
Not exactly, but that's the dynamic. The taxonomic confusion isn't a bug, it's a feature. It tells you that za'atar was never a single domesticated crop that got standardized. It was always a wild-harvested plant that different communities identified based on what grew on their hillsides. And that wildness is central to the whole story.
Let's go back to the beginning — to the archaeological evidence and the biblical texts that first mention this plant.
The earliest hard evidence we have comes from Tel Batash, which is biblical Timnah, in Israel. Archaeologists found carbonized za'atar seeds there dated to the seventh century BCE. That's the Iron Age, the period of the Judean monarchy. These weren't accidental inclusions — the seeds were found in concentrations that suggest intentional collection and storage. And there's also pollen analysis from the Dead Sea Scrolls caves that shows za'atar pollen in layers associated with human habitation, meaning people were bringing the plant into the caves deliberately.
We know people were gathering and using za'atar twenty-seven hundred years ago. The question is how. Were they treating it as medicine, as food, as something ritual?
All three, based on the texts. The Mishnah, in Shevi'it chapter seven, lists za'atar among the plants subject to sabbatical year laws. That's significant because it means the rabbis considered it an economically important plant — something people harvested and traded. If it were just a random weed nobody cared about, it wouldn't need sabbatical regulation. The Talmud also mentions it being eaten with bread, which tells us it was a food, not just medicine.
Then there's the biblical hyssop problem, which is one of the great botanical mistranslations in history.
This drives me up the wall because it's so persistent. Exodus twelve twenty-two describes the Israelites using "ezov" to dab lamb's blood on their doorposts during the Passover. For centuries, that was translated as "hyssop," and then later scholars identified hyssop with za'atar — specifically Origanum syriacum. The problem is, it's almost certainly wrong. Biblical ezov was probably a different plant entirely. The leading candidates are Capparis spinosa, the caper bush, or possibly Majorana syriacum, which is in the same genus as za'atar but not the same species. The reason the identification doesn't work is that the biblical descriptions of how ezov was used — as a brush for applying liquids — don't match the physical structure of za'atar. Za'atar is a small, delicate herb. You can't use it as a paintbrush. Caper branches, on the other hand, are woody and absorbent.
An entire tradition of identifying za'atar with the Passover ritual is built on a translation error that got locked in and repeated for centuries.
It shaped Jewish and Christian traditions around the plant. In some Jewish communities, za'atar became associated with Passover for symbolic reasons that have no basis in the actual botany of Exodus. The plant got sacralized through a mistake. Which is not uncommon in food history, by the way — a lot of what we think of as "ancient traditions" turn out to be medieval innovations or misunderstandings.
Like adopting a feral cat.
That's actually not a bad analogy. You think you're continuing something ancient, but the thing you're actually holding onto wandered into the house three hundred years ago and you just got attached.
The biblical connection is mostly invented. What about the other ancient sources?
The Greek physician Dioscorides, writing around sixty CE, describes a plant called "sampsuchon" that is almost certainly za'atar. He recommends it for digestive ailments — which is interesting because that's still one of the traditional uses. Palestinian grandmothers will tell you to drink za'atar tea for an upset stomach, and they're not wrong. The essential oils in Origanum syriacum, particularly carvacrol and thymol, have genuine antimicrobial and carminative properties. Dioscorides was onto something real.
Then the Romans show up and things start to change.
By the fourth century CE, we have evidence of the first cultivation attempts. Monastic gardens in the Judean Desert started transplanting wild za'atar into terraced plots. This is a fascinating moment because it's the first time anyone tried to bring za'atar under human control — to domesticate it. And it largely didn't take. Za'atar remained primarily a wild-harvested plant for another fifteen hundred years.
Which raises the question: why was za'atar never domesticated in the ancient Near East? Other herbs from the same region — cumin, coriander, black cumin — were being deliberately cultivated. Isaiah twenty-eight verses twenty-five through twenty-seven describes farmers planting these in rows. But za'atar stayed wild.
I think there are two reasons. The first is biological: Origanum syriacum is adapted to poor, rocky soils and arid conditions. It actually produces more essential oils when it's stressed — the carvacrol and thymol concentrations go up when the plant has to struggle. If you put it in rich, irrigated soil, it grows more biomass but tastes weaker. Ancient farmers may have figured this out and concluded that wild za'atar was simply better than anything they could grow.
The plant punishes domestication by becoming bland.
The second reason is economic: za'atar grew abundantly on hillsides that weren't suitable for anything else. It was free for the taking. Why invest labor in cultivating something that nature was already providing in abundance? The calculus only shifts when demand starts outstripping what the wild populations can sustain — which is exactly what's happening now.
The wildness of za'atar was a feature of the ancient economy, not a limitation. It made sense to leave it alone.
That held true for a very long time. But then the Crusaders showed up in the twelfth century and introduced a new variable: European thyme. They brought Thymus vulgaris from France and Italy and planted it in their settlements. And here's where the story gets interesting from a botanical perspective. In 2023, researchers at Hebrew University did a genetic analysis of wild Origanum syriacum populations across Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. They found distinct genetic clusters that correspond to zones of Crusader-era settlement. The European thyme hybridized with the local za'atar, and you can still see the introgression patterns in the modern plants.
The Crusaders left a genetic signature in the za'atar that's still detectable nine hundred years later. That's remarkable.
And it means that what we think of as "authentic" wild za'atar is actually a hybrid that was shaped by medieval European colonization. There's no pure, unchanged za'atar. The plant has been quietly absorbing influences from every empire that passed through.
Which brings us to the Ottomans, who turned za'atar from a local herb into a commodity.
The Ottoman period is when za'atar becomes a traded good on a meaningful scale. Tax records from 1596 list za'atar as a taxable commodity in the sanjak of Safad, which was the administrative district covering the Galilee. That tells us it was being produced in sufficient quantities to attract the attention of tax collectors — never a good sign, but useful for historians. By the sixteenth century, dried za'atar was being shipped from Damascus to Istanbul, and from there into the broader Ottoman trade networks.
This is also when the blend as we know it — za'atar with sumac and sesame — starts to solidify.
The blend is actually a relatively recent innovation. For most of its history, za'atar was used as a straight herb — fresh or dried leaves, no sumac, no sesame. The combination with sumac and sesame seeds appears to be an Ottoman-era development, probably emerging from the culinary culture of Damascus and Aleppo. Sumac provides acidity, sesame provides richness and texture, and the za'atar provides the aromatic punch. Together they create something that's more than the sum of its parts.
The glockenspiel of Levantine cuisine.
I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I'll allow it.
A small, bright accent that makes everything around it work better.
Okay, that tracks. And the blend traveled. As Ottoman trade networks expanded, za'atar spread across the empire and beyond. By the nineteenth century, you could find it in markets from Cairo to Sarajevo.
That ancient history sets the stage for the dramatic transformation za'atar underwent in the twentieth century — from wild herb to national symbol to global commodity.
The twentieth century is when za'atar becomes political. Between 1948 and 1967, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took shape, za'atar became a marker of Palestinian identity. The phrase "za'atar is our land" emerged during this period — the idea being that za'atar is a plant that grows wild on Palestinian hillsides, that it represents connection to the land, that it's something you can't take with you if you're displaced. The plant became a symbol of rootedness and belonging.
At the same time, Israeli agricultural researchers were starting to take a serious interest in domesticating it.
In the 1970s, Israeli agricultural research stations began developing cultivated varieties of za'atar. The breakthrough came in 1985 when Dr. Nativ Dudai at the Volcani Institute successfully domesticated Origanum syriacum for commercial production. He selected for higher essential oil content and uniform germination — two traits that wild za'atar is terrible at. Wild za'atar has notoriously uneven germination; the seeds can take weeks to sprout and they don't all come up at the same time. Dudai solved that. His work was published in Economic Botany in 1988, and it effectively created the modern za'atar farming industry.
By the late eighties, you have parallel za'atar realities: the wild plant as a symbol of Palestinian identity, and the domesticated plant as an Israeli agricultural product. Two different relationships to the same species.
Both are real and both are valid, but they're in tension. The political dimension is unavoidable here. In 1977, Israel classified wild za'atar as a protected species, making it illegal to harvest from public lands. The law was updated in 1998 and again in 2005. The stated purpose was conservation, which was needed — wild populations were declining. But the law also created a conflict with traditional foraging practices. Palestinian communities that had harvested wild za'atar for generations suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of the law. The enforcement of these regulations has been uneven and politically charged.
A conservation measure becomes another front in a territorial conflict.
It's not just Israel. In Lebanon, wild za'atar harvesting is also regulated, though enforcement is spotty at best. In Jordan, overharvesting has been severe enough that several regions have seen local extinctions of wild Origanum syriacum. The plant is under pressure across its entire range.
Let's talk about the sumac side of this, because that's a story that doesn't get enough attention.
Sumac is the other half of the za'atar blend, and it has its own supply chain problems. The sumac used in za'atar is Rhus coriaria, which produces those deep red berries that are dried and ground into the tangy powder that gives za'atar its sour note. Historically, most sumac came from Sicily and Anatolia. In 2021, a severe drought in Turkey caused sumac production to collapse. The following year, prices spiked three hundred percent.
Three hundred percent. That's not a supply hiccup; that's a crisis.
It triggered something that most consumers never noticed: a quiet adulteration wave. Za'atar blenders, facing impossible sumac costs, started substituting tamarind powder and citric acid for sumac. Tamarind provides a similar sourness, and citric acid gives you the tart punch without the fruit. But it's not sumac. Sumac has a complex flavor — it's sour but also a little fruity, a little astringent. Tamarind and citric acid are one-note. And the worst part is, most of these blends didn't relabel. They just changed the ingredients and kept selling the same product in the same packaging.
People were buying what they thought was traditional za'atar and getting something that was quietly reformulated to protect profit margins.
And this happens all the time in the spice industry, but za'atar is especially vulnerable because it's a blend. If you're buying pure oregano and someone substitutes thyme, you'll probably notice. But za'atar is already a mixture — the exact proportions vary by brand and region anyway — so a substitution is much harder to detect.
The adulteration crisis is basically the spice equivalent of "we updated our recipe" but without telling anyone.
It connects to a larger problem with za'atar in the global market. The 2023 FDA import data shows that about twelve hundred metric tons of dried za'atar entered the United States that year. But only fifteen percent of it was labeled as Origanum syriacum. The other eighty-five percent was common thyme — Thymus vulgaris — blended with sumac and sesame and sold as "za'atar style" seasoning or, in many cases, just labeled "za'atar" with no botanical specification.
Most of the za'atar being sold in America isn't za'atar at all. It's thyme wearing a za'atar costume.
Thyme is cheaper to grow, easier to cultivate at scale, and has a longer shelf life. From a commercial perspective, it's the rational choice. But the flavor is different. Origanum syriacum has a particular balance of carvacrol and thymol that gives it a more complex, almost minty-oregano character. Common thyme is dominated by thymol alone, which makes it sharper and more one-dimensional. The difference is real, and most American consumers have never tasted the real thing.
Which is a strange kind of cultural loss. Za'atar becomes globally popular, but the global version isn't actually za'atar.
The global market for za'atar was estimated at about a hundred and eighty million dollars in 2025, according to Grand View Research. Sixty percent of production still comes from wild harvesting in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. That's the number that keeps me up at night. A hundred and eighty million dollar market, and the majority of the supply is still being pulled out of hillsides by people with sickles. That's not sustainable.
The 2024 Nature and Parks Authority report you mentioned — seventy-three percent overharvesting in the Jerusalem corridor — that's what happens when a wild plant becomes a global commodity without any meaningful cultivation infrastructure.
The ecological math is brutal. A mature Origanum syriacum plant takes about three years to reach full productivity. If you harvest it aggressively — cutting more than about a third of the plant — it can take two or three years to recover. But commercial harvesters, especially those supplying export markets, often take the whole plant. They pull it up by the roots. And once that happens, that plant is gone. It won't come back. The seed bank in the soil might produce new plants eventually, but the cycle of overharvesting means they get taken before they can mature.
We're eating the seed bank. We're consuming the future of the plant to satisfy present demand.
There's a climate dimension too. The Levant is getting hotter and drier. The 2022 sumac crisis in Turkey was driven by drought, and similar conditions are affecting za'atar populations across the region. The wild plants are stressed by climate change at the same time they're being overharvested. It's a double squeeze.
Let's pivot to something more hopeful. What about cultivation? Dudai cracked domestication in the eighties. Has that led to a meaningful cultivated supply?
It has, but not at the scale needed. The Volcani Institute varieties are being grown commercially in Israel, and there are similar programs in Jordan and the West Bank. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees started a cultivated za'atar program in 2020, working with smallholder farmers to establish za'atar plots as an alternative to wild harvesting. The Israeli Plant Breeders' Association has a certification program for cultivated-source za'atar. These are real, functional programs.
If I'm a consumer standing in front of a shelf of za'atar jars, how do I know which ones are supporting cultivation versus wild depletion?
This is where labels matter. Look for botanical sourcing on the label. If it says Origanum syriacum or "za'atar hyssop," you're getting the traditional species. If it just says "thyme," it's the substitute. The cultivated-source certifications from the Israeli Plant Breeders' Association or the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees are the gold standard — those tell you the za'atar was farmed, not foraged from depleted wild populations.
For the home gardener who wants to opt out of the supply chain entirely?
Za'atar is surprisingly easy to grow if you're in the right climate. Origanum syriacum does well in USDA zones eight through ten — so Mediterranean climates, parts of California, the Southwest. Seeds are available from specialty nurseries. Richter's Herbs in Canada carries them. The plant wants poor soil, good drainage, and full sun. It's drought-tolerant once established. And here's the bonus: stressed plants produce more essential oils, so neglect actually improves the flavor. It's the ideal herb for lazy gardeners.
Finally, a plant that rewards my entire approach to life.
I knew you'd connect with this part.
Given all this — the history, the politics, the ecology — what should you actually do the next time you reach for a jar of za'atar?
First, check the source. Look for Origanum syriacum on the label, not just "thyme." The flavor difference is real — the carvacrol-thymol ratio in the genuine species gives you that complex, slightly minty, warming character that common thyme can't replicate. Second, support cultivated za'atar over wild-harvested. The certification programs from the Israeli Plant Breeders' Association and the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees are your best guide. Both have been operating since 2020 and both are legitimate. Third, grow it yourself if you can. Origanum syriacum is a Mediterranean plant that thrives on neglect. It wants what your garden probably already has if you live in a dry-summer climate. Every plant in a home garden is one less plant pulled from a stressed wild population.
If you're buying the blend rather than the pure herb, pay attention to the sumac. Real sumac is deep red and has a complex, fruity sourness. If your za'atar blend is pale and the sourness hits you as pure citric acid sharpness, you're probably getting the adulterated version.
The sumac tells you a lot about the quality of the blend. Real Rhus coriaria isn't cheap, and if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.
The story doesn't end with your shopping choices. There are bigger questions about where za'atar is headed.
The question I keep coming back to is whether za'atar is going to follow the path of frankincense. Frankincense was another culturally vital plant from the same broad region — a tree resin that was literally worth more than gold in the ancient world. And it nearly collapsed. Overharvesting, habitat loss, and climate change pushed wild frankincense populations to the brink. The trees are still in trouble. The parallels with za'atar are uncomfortable.
We covered frankincense in an earlier episode, and what struck me then was how long it took for anyone to take the problem seriously. The warning signs were there for decades, and the market just kept consuming.
The same thing is happening with za'atar. The 2024 report showing seventy-three percent overharvesting in the Jerusalem corridor — that's a warning sign. The 2022 sumac price spike — that's another one. The fact that eighty-five percent of za'atar sold in the US is actually thyme — that's a market telling you that the real thing is getting scarce.
There's a difference. Frankincense was never successfully domesticated at scale. Za'atar has been. Dudai's work in the eighties proved it can be done. The question is whether cultivation can scale fast enough to take pressure off the wild populations before they collapse.
There's an interesting development on the horizon that might accelerate that. The European Union is working on a regulation for geographical indications on herbs, and there's discussion about creating a Protected Designation of Origin for Palestinian za'atar — similar to what happened with feta cheese, where only cheese made in specific regions of Greece can legally be called feta. If that goes through, it would fundamentally reshape the global market. A PDO would require that za'atar labeled as such actually comes from the Levant and is made from Origanum syriacum. The thyme-based substitutes couldn't use the name.
That would create a massive incentive for cultivation. If you can't just relabel cheap thyme as za'atar, the price of the real thing goes up, and farming it becomes economically attractive.
It would also create a legal framework for protecting wild populations, because the PDO could include sustainability requirements. You could say: to be labeled as za'atar, the product must come from a cultivated source or from a certified sustainable wild harvest. That would be a game-changer.
Of course, geographical indication laws are also political. A PDO for Palestinian za'atar would be a form of international recognition, and that doesn't happen in a vacuum.
It doesn't. And we should be clear-eyed about that. The EU hasn't made a decision yet — this is still in the discussion phase. But the fact that it's being discussed at all tells you something about how za'atar has become more than a food. It's a cultural artifact that carries legal and political weight.
The future of za'atar might be determined not by botanists or chefs or even farmers, but by trade lawyers in Brussels.
Which feels absurd until you remember that this is how it's always worked. The Ottoman tax collectors in Safad in 1596 were making decisions that shaped the za'atar trade. The Crusaders bringing European thyme in the twelfth century were reshaping the plant's genetics without knowing it. The rabbis writing the Mishnah were deciding which plants mattered enough to regulate. Za'atar has always been shaped by institutions and power as much as by soil and rain.
The plant doesn't care about any of this, of course. It just grows where it grows. But we've wrapped so many layers of meaning around it — religious, political, economic, culinary — that the plant itself almost becomes secondary.
Yet the plant is the thing that's actually at risk. The meanings will survive; cultures adapt, symbols evolve. But if Origanum syriacum disappears from the wild hillsides of the Levant, something irreplaceable is lost. Not just the flavor — the genetic diversity, the ecological role, the living connection to thousands of years of history.
The most important thing a za'atar lover can do right now is also the simplest: care about where it comes from.
That's not nothing. Consumer awareness has shifted agricultural practices before. The demand for shade-grown coffee changed how coffee is farmed. The demand for sustainably caught tuna changed fishing practices. Za'atar is a smaller market, but the same dynamic applies. If enough people start asking whether their za'atar is cultivated or wild-harvested, the supply chain will respond.
We've covered three thousand years of history, a botanical identity crisis, a sumac scandal, and the potential salvation of a species through European trade law. I think we've earned a break.
And now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
Hilbert: During the Cold War, American intelligence analysts studying satellite imagery of the Ténéré desert in Niger were briefly baffled by what appeared to be a vast, perfectly flat mirror — until they realized they were looking at the salt flats of the Ténéré, whose name derives from the Tuareg word for "desert," but which French colonial cartographers etymologically linked to the Arabic "tannur," meaning oven, reflecting the salt pan's blinding, heat-shimmering surface.
The French looked at a salt flat and named it "oven." That's the most French thing I've ever heard.
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Until next time.
We'll be here.
