Hashish and Hemp: Trade, Faith and Empire

Between 500 and 1800, cannabis lived two lives at once. As hashish, it moved through Muslim cities, Sufi lodges, and the Ethiopian highlands, while judges argued for centuries over whether it was a sin. As hemp, it became the rope, sail, and caulking of every navy, and kings ordered farmers to grow it. The popular tale of “hashish assassins” who killed for a drug is a myth, and it began as an insult.

This chapter follows both lives. They rarely met. A sailor on a hemp line and a Cairo poet praising “the green one” never compared notes. But they used one plant. For the story of the resin itself, from hand-rubbed charas to rosin, read our global history of hash. Here we follow where the plant went and what people said about it.

How did hashish enter the Muslim world?

Late, and with no verse to stop it. The Qur’an bans wine. It does not name cannabis. The physician Gabriel Nahas drew on the Arabic sources, mostly through Franz Rosenthal’s 1971 collection, in a 1982 review. Following Rosenthal, he says people first used hashish as an intoxicant in the late 800s, among religious sects on the eastern edge of the caliphate. They called it hashish, Arabic for “grass,” not the Hindu word bhang.

Late 800s · , Eastern edge of the caliphate (Persia and Iraq)

Hashish surfaces as an intoxicant in the Muslim world

Citing Rosenthal, Nahas reports that hashish first appears as an intoxicant in the late 800s among Persian and Iraqi sects on the caliphate's eastern edge. The Qur'an bans wine but does not name cannabis.

Evidence Written record Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (1)

• Nahas 1982, Hashish in Islam 9th to 18th century, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine

The gap in the Qur’an mattered. Around the year 1000, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim banned alcohol sales across Syria and Egypt, and he left cannabis alone. Many Muslims decided that a drug the Prophet never mentioned was not a sin.

Sufis, the mystical branch of Islam, enter the story in the 1100s. Arabic historians say one faction used hashish and carried it to Syria and Egypt. Nahas adds a warning: the great Sufi saints rejected drugs, and the hashish users were a deviant fringe. One legend credits a sheikh named Haydar, who lived in a mountain monastery around 1200. Walking in the midday heat, he found a plant that eased hunger and thirst and gave joy. Nahas calls the tale apocryphal. Even so, a Syrian poet wrote in 1292: “Give up wine and drink from the wine of Haydar.”

By the mid-1200s hashish was cheap and easy to hide. A Syrian poet wrote: “Tucked in a handkerchief it can be carried. No cup is needed if you wish to use it.” He added: “Hashish involves no sin. You are not punished.”

Rulers disagreed. Before 1250, the governor of Cairo ordered every cannabis plant in the Kafur garden uprooted. Police burned them in huge bonfires. A poet had written that the green plant of that garden “replaces in our hearts the effects of wine, old and generous.” Within a short time, farmers on the city’s outskirts were growing it again.

In 1266, the Mamluk sultan Baybars went further. Nahas says he banned both growing and using hashish. His men burned fields and closed taverns and brothels. Nahas thinks Baybars worried most about his soldiers, who were fighting the Mongols. A judge praised him: “The devil has no desire to stay with us! You have prevented him from obtaining both wine and hashish.” His successor taxed hashish and wine instead, then reversed course when use rose.

1266 · , Cairo, Mamluk Egypt

Sultan Baybars bans hashish and wine

Nahas reports that Baybars banned growing and using hashish in Egypt, burned fields, and closed taverns. His successor taxed hashish and wine, then restored the ban. We rely on Nahas alone for the date.

Evidence Written record Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (1)

• Nahas 1982, Hashish in Islam 9th to 18th century, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine

Did the Assassins really take hashish?

No. The story grew from an insult. The Nizari Ismailis, a branch of Shi’a Islam, founded a mountain-fortress state in Persia in 1090, and by the early 1100s their Syrian branch was meeting the Crusaders. Other Muslims called them hashishiyya. Farhad Daftary of the Institute of Ismaili Studies says the word was abuse, meaning “low-class rabble” or “people of lax morality.” It carried no claim about drugs. Nahas notes that Arabic texts used the word by 1125.

By 1125 · , Syria and Egypt (Arabic texts)

'Hashishiyya' is used as an insult for the Nizari Ismailis

Arabic texts used 'hashishiyya' for the Nizari Ismailis by 1125. Other Muslims meant abuse, 'low-class rabble,' with no claim about drugs. Crusaders later turned the insult into the word assassin.

Evidence Written record Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (2)

• Nahas 1982, Hashish in Islam 9th to 18th century, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
• Daftary, Assassin, Institute of Ismaili Studies (from Medieval Islamic Civilization, Routledge 2006)

Crusaders heard the insult in Syria and kept it. Their legends grew in stages from the time of the Syrian leader Rashid al-Din Sinan (1163 to 1193) through the 1200s. They explained the fighters’ courage with a drug. Daftary writes: “There is no evidence that suggests that hashish or any other drug was used in any systematic fashion to motivate the fida’is.” Hostile Muslim writers, he adds, “remain silent on this subject.”

Marco Polo gave the legend its famous shape. He added a secret “garden of paradise” where recruits supposedly received part of their training. Tradition says Polo dictated his book in a Genoese prison after his capture in 1296, according to the Library of Congress. Nahas points out that Polo names no drug at all. By the 1300s, Europeans and Crusader settlers accepted the tale as fact. The insult became the English word assassin.

After 1296 (late 1200s) · , Europe (Marco Polo's account)

Marco Polo's 'garden of paradise' fixes the hashish legend

Polo's account joined older Crusader rumors with a secret garden of paradise. Ismaili scholar Farhad Daftary finds no evidence that hashish or any drug trained fighters. Nahas notes that Polo names no drug.

Evidence Legend Confidence Myth (no credible source)

Sources (3)

• Daftary, Assassin, Institute of Ismaili Studies (from Medieval Islamic Civilization, Routledge 2006)
• Nahas 1982, Hashish in Islam 9th to 18th century, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
• Library of Congress, The Travels of Marco Polo (manuscript c. 1350), item summary

Myth check False

The claim: “Medieval 'Assassins' killed on command after being drugged with hashish.”

'Hashishi' began as an insult meaning rabble. Crusaders built the drug story, and Marco Polo gave it its final shape. Ismaili scholar Farhad Daftary finds no evidence that any drug trained fighters, and hostile Muslim sources are silent on the subject.

Sources (2)

• Daftary, Assassin, Institute of Ismaili Studies (from Medieval Islamic Civilization, Routledge 2006)
• Nahas 1982, Hashish in Islam 9th to 18th century, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine

Was hashish forbidden in Islam?

Jurists split, and the split lasted centuries. Most Muslim scholars read the ban on wine as a ban on anything that clouds the mind. Nahas says three of the four Sunni schools of law called hashish an intoxicant. The Hanafi school used a narrower definition.

Two thinkers show the range. The Maliki jurist al-Qarafi (died 1285) argued that hashish is mufsid, “corrupting,” but not an intoxicant like wine. In his view, users faced discretionary penalties, not the fixed punishment for drinking wine. Ibn Taymiyya (died 1328) took the hardest line. He said the analogy to wine is total, so hashish carries the same ban whether or not a dose intoxicates. He also blamed the Mongol invasions for its spread, a claim Nahas finds weak, since use came before the Mongols.

Died 1285 · , Egypt (Maliki jurist)

Al-Qarafi calls hashish corrupting, not intoxicating

The Maliki jurist al-Qarafi argued that hashish is mufsid, corrupting, but not an intoxicant like wine. Other jurists disagreed, so the law stayed unsettled for centuries.

Evidence Written record Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (4)

• Atiq, Hashish: intoxicating or just corruptive? A 13th century jurist's distinctions, Islamic Law Blog (on al-Qarafi, Al-Furuq)
• International Journal of Educational Research and Network, Sept 2013, article on drug fatwas (cites Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Fatawa al-kubra, vol. III, p. 424)
• Ismail, Joni and Nordin, The Legality of Medical Cannabis from the Islamic Perspective, Jurnal Undang-Undang dan Masyarakat 32 (2023), DOI 10.17576/juum-2023-32-06 (abstract read; discusses the jurists' split)
• Rosenthal, The Herb: Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society (Brill, 1971), the monograph Nahas and later articles cite; not read

Died 1328 · , Damascus

Ibn Taymiyya treats hashish like wine

Ibn Taymiyya held that hashish carries the same ban as wine, whether or not a dose intoxicates. He also blamed the Mongol invasions for its spread, a claim Nahas finds weak. We did not read the fatwa itself.

Evidence Written record Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (3)

• International Journal of Educational Research and Network, Sept 2013, article on drug fatwas (cites Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Fatawa al-kubra, vol. III, p. 424)
• Nahas 1982, Hashish in Islam 9th to 18th century, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
• Rosenthal, The Herb: Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society (Brill, 1971), the monograph Nahas and later articles cite; not read

The jurists won the argument and lost the street. Nahas writes that the belief that the Prophet banned only alcohol “became ingrained among the people.” Crackdowns came and went. Nahas lists Cairo bans or seizures in 1324 and 1394. Popular lists also credit an emir called Sheikouni with a famous purge in 1378. Nahas, citing the chronicler al-Maqrizi, dates it to 1376, and we have not read the chronicle ourselves. Treat the exact year and the details as unconfirmed.

Where were people smoking cannabis?

In Africa, earlier than most histories admit, though the dates are shaky. Medieval Arabic sources mostly describe hashish as something people ate. Nahas describes tobacco and hashish smoked together in the water pipe once tobacco reached the Ottoman world, around 1600.

Ethiopia tells a different story. In 1971, a Boston University student named J. C. Dombrowski dug in two Ethiopian caves and found eleven pipe bowls or fragments. One looked like a stone drinking cup until his team saw burn marks inside and a tiny hole in the base. It was a bowl for a water pipe. The chemist Nikolaas van der Merwe tested residue from two bowls from Lalibela Cave. This is a cave in Begemder Province (site approximate), not the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela town. Thin-layer chromatography found compounds from cannabis. Smoking heat turns short-lived cannabis compounds into long-lived ones, which chemists can still detect centuries later. Charcoal from the bottom of the same level gave a radiocarbon date of 1320, plus or minus 80 years.

Here is the catch. The date belongs to the level, not to the pipes, and most pipes lay above the charcoal. The historian John Edward Philips reviewed the African pipe finds in 1983. He called Lalibela the “earliest good evidence of cannabis smoking in Africa,” yet he warned there was “no direct correlation between the date and the pipes, and the connexion is conjectural.” Read our history of the bong for the water-pipe side of this find.

Radiocarbon 1320, plus or minus 80 · , Lalibela Cave, Begemder Province, Ethiopia (site approximate; not Lalibela town)

Ethiopian pipe bowls test positive for cannabis

Two ceramic bowls from a cave tested positive for cannabis residue. Charcoal in the same level dated to 1320, plus or minus 80. The date belongs to the level, not the pipes, so the link is conjectural.

Evidence Archaeological Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (2)

• van der Merwe, Cannabis smoking in 13th-14th century Ethiopia: chemical evidence, in Cannabis and Culture (1975), abstract
• Philips, African Smoking and Pipes, Journal of African History (1983)

The geographer Chris Duvall argues that cannabis reached Africa from South Asia about 1,000 years ago and spread fast. He says African smoking cultures, which already existed, turned the plant into a fast-acting drug that was easy to dose. A reviewer adds that Duvall suggests the water pipe first developed in eastern and southern Africa. The written record south of the Sahara stays thin.

Southern Africa shows how careful you must be with a word. The Dutch founded Cape Town in 1652. In Jan van Riebeeck’s journal, the Khoikhoi use “the valuable herb dacha.” South Africans now call cannabis dagga. Yet the historian Simon Pooley writes that the plant was “most likely Wild dagga, Leonotis leonurus, not cannabis.” A word that looks like cannabis can name a different plant.

In India, a Portuguese doctor wrote down what he saw. Garcia de Orta published his Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India at Goa on April 10, 1563. The eighth colloquy covers “Bangue.” He says people ate the seeds or pounded leaves, and made a confection called majum. He quotes Sultan Bahadur, who told Martim Afonso de Sousa that “when, at night, he wanted to go to Portugal, Brazil, Turkey, Arabia, or Persia, he only had to take a little Bangue.” In the 1913 English translation, Orta adds a polite step back: “I have not tried it, nor do I wish to do so.”

April 10, 1563 · , Goa, Portuguese India

Garcia de Orta describes 'bangue' in Goa

Portuguese physician Garcia de Orta gave a colloquy to bangue. He describes eating the leaves and seeds and a confection called majum, and quotes a sultan's travel boast. Orta wrote that he had not tried it.

Evidence Written record Confidence High (3 of 3)

Sources (1)

• Garcia da Orta, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (Goa, 1563), tr. Markham (1913), Eighth Colloquy: Bangue

Why did every navy need hemp?

Because every ship ran on rope. Forget the drug for a moment and picture a sailing ship. Every sizable vessel needed lines and sailcloth that could take a storm, and hemp proved the best fit, says Colonial Williamsburg’s study of colonial hemp. One small vessel in the Virginia Navy, the brigantine Liberty, needed more than two miles of cordage. Even the seams used hemp. Merriam-Webster defines oakum as loosely twisted hemp or jute fiber, soaked in tar, “used in caulking seams and packing joints.”

Rope needs farms, so governments gave orders. In 1533, Parliament passed An Act concerning sowing of Flax and Hemp, which told farmers to sow flax and hemp. A standard history says Tudor law also required a quarter acre of flax or hemp for every sixty acres of other crops. Colonial Williamsburg says the rising English navy was the main reason farmers, and later colonists, had to set land aside for hemp. One historian estimates that the fleet that faced the Spanish Armada in 1588 used the hemp of 10,000 acres. That figure is an estimate, not a count.

1533 · , England

Parliament pushes farmers to sow flax and hemp

A 1533 Act concerning sowing of Flax and Hemp told English farmers to sow fiber crops. A standard history says Tudor law also required a quarter acre of flax or hemp per sixty acres of other crops. We have not read the statute text.

Evidence Law or court record Confidence Low (1 of 3)

Sources (3)

• Acts of Parliament, 4th session of the Reformation Parliament (24 Hen. VIII c. 4, An Act concerning sowing of Flax and Hemp), list
• Cheyney, An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England (1901), Project Gutenberg
• Swenson, Hemp and Flax in Colonial America, Colonial Williamsburg Journal (Winter 2015)

Spain made the same move. In June 1545, the Crown first ordered its subjects to sow cannabis in the New World, writes the historian Isaac Campos, who cites the Indies law code. Spaniards called the plant cáñamo. Its fibers made “clothing, rope, and the broad and sturdy sails that powered the greatest sea-borne empire the world had ever known.”

June 1545 · , New Spain (Mexico)

Spain orders its subjects to sow cannabis in the New World

Historian Isaac Campos writes that in June 1545 the Spanish Crown first ordered subjects to sow cannabis in the New World, citing the Indies law code. Spaniards grew it as cáñamo, a fiber for rope and sails.

Evidence Law or court record Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (1)

• Campos, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs (UNC Press, 2012), introduction

Britain could not grow enough. By the 1600s, Russia, Latvia, and other Baltic lands were the major hemp producers, and Britain bought from them. In wartime, the English struggled to buy enough, says Mount Vernon’s history of the crop. Colonial Williamsburg adds that Russian hemp beat the rest in both quantity and quality.

Europe’s other cannabis story is a myth. A claim that circulates online says Pope Innocent VIII declared cannabis an “unholy sacrament” in 1484. The bull is real. Summis desiderantes affectibus, dated December 5, 1484, targets witchcraft in parts of upper Germany. Its full text, in the Fordham sourcebook, names no plant. The closest it comes is a complaint that witches ruin “the grapes of vines, and the fruits of trees.”

December 5, 1484 · , Rome (bull covers Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg, Bremen)

The witchcraft bull does not name cannabis

Summis desiderantes affectibus targets witchcraft in upper Germany. Its full text, in the Fordham translation, names no plant. The claim that it condemned cannabis as an unholy sacrament is not in the document.

Evidence Written record Confidence Myth (no credible source)

Sources (1)

• Innocent VIII, bull Summis desiderantes, 5 Dec 1484 (Fordham Medieval Sourcebook)

Myth check False

The claim: “Pope Innocent VIII's 1484 bull condemned cannabis as an unholy sacrament.”

The bull Summis desiderantes affectibus is real and targets witchcraft in upper Germany. Its full text names no plant, cannabis or hemp included. The closest it comes is damage to 'the grapes of vines, and the fruits of trees.'

Sources (1)

• Innocent VIII, bull Summis desiderantes, 5 Dec 1484 (Fordham Medieval Sourcebook)

Why did American colonies grow hemp?

For the same reason England did: ropes and sails. On August 2 to 4, 1619, Virginia’s first General Assembly met and passed its first laws. They told colonists to plant mulberry trees and vines. On hemp, the text reads: “For hemp also, both English and Indian, and for English flax and aniseeds, we do require and enjoin all householders of this colony, that have any of those seeds, to make trial thereof the next season.” That is a trial order for people who held seed, not a farm quota. Colonial Williamsburg notes that “Indian hemp” is also the name of a native plant, Apocynum cannabinum, which is not cannabis, so the phrase is unclear. A 1632 law went further: “every planter as soone as he may, provide seede of flaxe and hempe and sowe the same.” Virginians were later allowed to pay taxes in hemp. By the mid-1700s, Virginia had 12,000 acres of hemp against 45,000 of tobacco.

August 2-4, 1619 · , Virginia colony (James City area)

Virginia's first Assembly orders a hemp trial

Virginia's first General Assembly told householders who held hemp or flax seed to make trial of it the next season. It was a trial order, not a quota. A 1632 law told every planter to sow flax and hemp.

Evidence Law or court record Confidence High (3 of 3)

Sources (2)

• Laws enacted by the First General Assembly of Virginia, 2-4 Aug 1619 (Journals of the House of Burgesses, vol. 1, 1905), Online Library of Liberty
• Swenson, Hemp and Flax in Colonial America, Colonial Williamsburg Journal (Winter 2015)

The founders grew hemp too. Mount Vernon says Washington’s diaries and farm reports put hemp on all five of his farms. It made rope, thread, canvas, and repairs for the big fishing seines. In the 1760s he weighed hemp as a cash crop to replace tobacco, then chose wheat. At Poplar Forest in 1811, Jefferson ordered that “an acre of the best ground” be kept “for a permanent hemp patch.”

Ask who did the work. Monticello’s records say enslaved laborers grew hemp at Monticello and Poplar Forest. The 1815 farm book lists three hemp spinners in the Monticello textile shop: Aggy, Nanny, and Isabel. Jefferson complained that breaking hemp by hand was “so slow, so laborious, and so much complained of by our laborers.” He then rigged a hemp break to his sawmill and later to a threshing machine.

1760s to 1790s · , Mount Vernon, Virginia

Washington grows hemp on all five Mount Vernon farms

Washington's diaries and farm reports place hemp on all five Mount Vernon farms. It made rope, thread, canvas, and repairs for fishing seines. Mount Vernon says it was the industrial type, not a drug crop.

Evidence Written record Confidence High (3 of 3)

Sources (2)

• George Washington's Mount Vernon, George Washington grew hemp
• Swenson, Hemp and Flax in Colonial America, Colonial Williamsburg Journal (Winter 2015)

1774 to 1819 · , Monticello and Poplar Forest, Virginia

Jefferson's farms grow hemp with enslaved labor

Enslaved laborers grew hemp at Monticello and Poplar Forest, mainly for clothing. The 1815 farm book names three hemp spinners: Aggy, Nanny, and Isabel. Jefferson rigged a hemp break to a sawmill and later a threshing machine.

Evidence Written record Confidence High (3 of 3)

Sources (2)

• Monticello, Hemp (Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia)
• Swenson, Hemp and Flax in Colonial America, Colonial Williamsburg Journal (Winter 2015)

None of this was about getting high. Colonial Williamsburg says no 18th-century American source mentions using hemp that way. Dense planting makes tall plants with few flowers. Even Washington’s famous hemp complaint was a farm complaint.

One last myth belongs here. Some sites claim the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. Monticello’s answer: “As far as we know, this is not true.” The signed copy is on parchment, which is animal skin. Jefferson’s rough draft is on paper that Library of Congress conservators think was probably Dutch, and Dutch makers more often used flax or linen rags.

Myth check False

The claim: “The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.”

Monticello says: 'As far as we know, this is not true.' The signed copy is on parchment, which is animal skin. Jefferson's rough draft is on paper that conservators judged most likely Dutch, and Dutch makers more often used flax or linen rags.

Sources (1)

• Monticello, Declaration of Independence Paper (Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia)

How did cannabis cross the Atlantic?

With people who did not choose the voyage. Portuguese ships carried enslaved Africans, some of them from Angola, across the Atlantic to Brazil. Duvall shows that people on those ships took their knowledge of smoking cannabis with them. A reviewer of his book notes that Portuguese slavers allowed use “to support the strength and condition of slaves.”

In Brazil the plant got names that record where it came from. One was fumo de Angola, “Angola smoke.” Others were fumo de negro and pito do pango. The Brazilian scholars Barros and Peres call the first name proof that the habit came from Africa with the enslaved. The names tied the plant to Black and enslaved people, and the law followed. In 1830, the city council of Rio de Janeiro banned the sale and use of pito do pango. As later authors quote the rule, the seller paid a fine, while slaves and other users got three days in jail. A 2026 study dates Brazil’s criminalization of cannabis to that year and ties it to policing aimed at racialized people.

1500s to 1800s · , Brazil, linked to Angola

Cannabis reaches Brazil with enslaved Africans as 'fumo de Angola'

Scholars link cannabis in Brazil to enslaved Africans. One common name was 'fumo de Angola,' Angola smoke. Duvall shows that smoking knowledge crossed the Atlantic on slave ships. The timing is broad and the numbers are unsourced.

Evidence Written record Confidence Medium (2 of 3)

Sources (4)

• Hoelscher, review of Duvall, The African Roots of Marijuana, World History Connected 18.1 (2021)
• Elias Junior et al., Anseios e devaneios, Perspectivas em Ciencia da Informacao (2020), quoting Barros and Peres (2012)
• Villela and dos Reis Pereira, Colonial Legacies of Drug Policing in Brazil, The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 40(1), 2026, abstract
• Costa Netto, A criminalizacao da maconha no Brasil (ANPUH-Rio 2019 paper), quoting Henman and Pessoa Junior (1986)

Put the routes on the map. Press Play to watch the segments appear in date order. Straight lines show direction, not roads, and some segments rest on thin evidence. Each one carries its own confidence.

▶PlayYear

1800

1. 850 CE to 900 CE. Hashish use surfaces on the caliphate's eastern edge
2. 1000 to 1300. Indian Ocean trade brings cannabis to East Africa (endpoint and dates approximate)
3. 1150 to 1200. Sufi networks carry hashish west to Syria and Egypt
4. 1250 to 1300. Kif probably reaches Morocco in the late 1200s
5. 1545 to 1800. Spain orders hemp sown in the New World
6. 1550 to 1800. Cannabis crosses the Atlantic with enslaved Africans (dates approximate)
7. 1600 to 1800. Baltic hemp feeds Britain's navy
8. 1619 to 1775. England pushes its colonies to grow hemp

Check your understanding

3 questions. Pick an answer in your head, then open the question to check it.

1 What do historians of the Nizari Ismailis say about the 'hashish assassins' story?

1. AHostile Muslim writers of the time described drugged recruits
2. BNo evidence shows that a drug was used in any systematic way to train fighters
3. CMarco Polo named hashish as the potion in the secret garden

Answer: B. No evidence shows that a drug was used in any systematic way to train fighters

'Hashishi' meant rabble. Daftary finds no evidence of systematic drug use, hostile sources are silent, and Marco Polo names no drug.

2 What did Virginia's 1619 General Assembly require for hemp?

1. AEvery farmer had to plant an acre of hemp
2. BColonists had to pay all taxes in hemp
3. CHouseholders who held hemp seed had to make a trial planting the next season

Answer: C. Householders who held hemp seed had to make a trial planting the next season

The 1619 text asks householders who have the seed to 'make trial thereof.' Virginians were later allowed to pay taxes in hemp.

3 Why do researchers add a caveat to the Ethiopian Lalibela pipes?

1. AThe radiocarbon date came from charcoal in the same level, not from the pipes
2. BThe pipes tested negative for cannabis
3. CCannabis was never smoked anywhere before 1600

Answer: A. The radiocarbon date came from charcoal in the same level, not from the pipes

Philips noted no direct tie between the 1320 date and the pipes, and most pipes lay above the charcoal.

1. 1What do historians of the Nizari Ismailis say about the 'hashish assassins' story?

   AHostile Muslim writers of the time described drugged recruitsBNo evidence shows that a drug was used in any systematic way to train fightersCMarco Polo named hashish as the potion in the secret garden
2. 2What did Virginia's 1619 General Assembly require for hemp?

   AEvery farmer had to plant an acre of hempBColonists had to pay all taxes in hempCHouseholders who held hemp seed had to make a trial planting the next season
3. 3Why do researchers add a caveat to the Ethiopian Lalibela pipes?

   AThe radiocarbon date came from charcoal in the same level, not from the pipesBThe pipes tested negative for cannabisCCannabis was never smoked anywhere before 1600

0 of 3 answered

By 1800, cannabis had two reputations. Rope makers and kings valued it as a crop that built empires. Cairo’s jurists and poets argued about it as a drug. Both stories were about to collide. In 1798, a French army landed in Egypt, and the modern West met hashish at close range. Chapter 5, The Medicine Cabinet, picks up there.