Ramadan 2025: Which countries grow the most dates?
As the sun sets during the holy month of Ramadan, many Muslims break their fast with a sweet, brown dried fruit that has been cherished in the Middle East for centuries.
During the 29 or 30 days of Ramadan, observant and able-bodied Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and sexual relations from dawn to dusk, seeking to deepen their taqwa, or awareness of God.
Breaking one’s fast with dates and water is rooted in the religious teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and is specifically mentioned in the Quran for its nutritional value.
What are the different varieties of dates?
Dates, fresh or dried, contain important vitamins, minerals and fibre. They are also high in antioxidants.
Given their high level of fructose, a natural sugar found in fruit, dates are a great source of energy, especially after a long day’s fast.
There are many different varieties of dates, with different tastes and textures:
Medjool: Known for their large size, sweet taste, amber colour and richness in flavour.
Mabroom: Less sweet than other kinds of dates with an elongated shape, reddish-brown hue and chewiness.
Ajwa: With a soft, fleshy, almost juicy feel, and a very sweet taste, Ajwa dates are valued the most by Muslims because they are grown in Medina, Saudi Arabia.
Deglet Noor: Medium-sized, lighter in colour and ideal for cooking and baking.
Piarom: Darker skin, rich flavour, slightly drier and known for their unique taste.
Interesting facts about dates
Dates have been cultivated for thousands of years. Date palm trees can be either male or female, and only the female plants produce fruit.
A date palm tree can live for more than 100 years if well maintained and a mature date palm can produce more than 100kg (220 pounds) of dates per harvest season – about 10,000 dates.
The Ajwa date is the most expensive in the world.
Top date producers
In 2022, according to Tridge, a food and agriculture database, about 10 million tonnes of dates were produced worldwide.
Date palms tend to thrive in countries with long, hot summers like those in the Middle East and neighbouring regions.
Egypt is the world’s top date producer, producing nearly 18 percent of the world’s dates, according to Tridge.
Saudi Arabia follows closely with about 17 percent of the global yield, with Algeria rounding off the top three at 13 percent.
The infographic below shows where most of the world’s dates come from:
Call to boycott Israeli dates
Israel is one of the world’s largest exporters of dates, selling medjool dates worth $330m abroad in 2022, according to Tridge. During Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 61,000 people, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office, several groups have called for a boycott of Israel-related products.
One such group is the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement (BDS), a Palestinian-led initiative that seeks to challenge international support for what it calls Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. BDS has urged consumers to always check labels and not buy dates that are produced or packaged in Israel or its settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
They recommend avoiding the following brands:
Hadiklaim and its brands: King Solomon, Jordan River and Jordan River Bio-Top
Carmel Agrexco
Source: Alia Chughtai
Georgian court hands former president Saakashvili new prison term
A court in Georgia has handed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili a new nine-year prison sentence after finding him guilty of embezzlement.
The ruling, announced on Wednesday, extends the detention of the pro-Western former leader, who was already serving a six-year sentence. Opposition forces claim it illustrates that the government, which is accused of abusing democracy and pulling Georgia back towards Russia, is scared of Saakashvili.
Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili declared Saakashvili, a controversial reformist who was Georgian president from 2004 to 2012, guilty of misappropriating nine million Georgian laris ($3.2m) in state funds from 2009 to 2012.
He is accused of misspending money on luxury hotels, visits to cosmetic clinics and expensive clothing, among other things.
Former Special State Protection Service head Teimuraz Janashia, also accused, was fined 300,000 laris ($110,000), with the judge saying there was no evidence that Janashia spent any of the funds.
The sentence adds three years to Saakashvili’s imprisonment. Following a spell abroad, he was jailed in 2021 for six years for abuse of power after he returned to Georgia.
‘Very afraid’
Georgian television showed scenes of commotion in the courtroom after the verdict was announced, with Saakashvili supporters calling the judge a “slave” of the Georgian Dream government.
“The regime is very afraid of Mikheil Saakashvili, as the main opposition figure. It does everything to ensure that Mikheil Saakashvili remains behind bars,” said Petre Tsiskarishvili, secretary-general of the United National Movement, which Saakashvili formerly led.
The former president took to social media to extoll his achievements during his time in office and accuse the authorities of engineering the verdict to keep him from mounting a political challenge.
“It was clear from the very beginning that the case was purely political,” he wrote, accusing Georgian Dream founder and de facto leader Bidzina Ivanishvili of ordering his conviction.
I was head of Executive power as president of Georgia for 8 years 2004-2012. In this Period Georgia”s economy grew 4 times, Our State Budget increased 11 times, Pensions were raised 10 times. Georgia was the World”s no 1 economic reformer, according to the World Bank.Georgia had…
— Mikheil Saakashvili (@SaakashviliM) March 12, 2025
A deeply polarising figure, Saakashvili rose to power on a tide of popular acclaim in the 2003 Rose Revolution.
In office, he reoriented Georgia towards the West and embarked on an ambitious public sector reform programme that delivered rapid improvements in the South Caucasus country of 3.7 million.
However, the latter part of his tenure was marked by police brutality and a disastrous 2008 war with Russia.
In 2012, the UNM lost elections to Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream, which has remained in power since.
After leaving office, Saakashvili moved to Ukraine, where he briefly served as governor of the southern Odesa region.
He was charged, in absentia, by a Tbilisi court to six years in prison in 2018 and was arrested on arrival back in Georgia three years later.
Georgian Dream, meanwhile, has tightened its grip on power, brutally putting down large protests and opposition in recent years.
The party’s latest election victory in October 2024 was marred by further accusations of abuse, especially concerning influence operations from Russia. The European Parliament rejected the results.
Protests have continued. Thousands of people demonstrated late last year as the government suspended negotiations to join the European Union.
“I call on the international community to raise voice [sic] against all the injustices taking place in Georgia that includes multiple cases of political imprisonment and a crackdown on peaceful rallies and Opposition media,” Saakashvili said in his post on X.
Source: Al Jazeera