Where Does The Hash Come From?

2009.04.03

This article is about the regions where cannabis is grown, that gives so many different kinds of hashish, or hash. The plant is cannabis, and the psychoactive chemical in it is called THC. Originally, the plant was grown in parts of India, and migrated with the trade routes.

Because of the hardy nature of the plant, it flourished wherever it’s seeds were taken, and as a result, there are many different kinds of cannabis and therefore many different kinds of hash. Hashish favors the warm conditions that give it the best results, like North Africa, Egypt, North India, and Central Asia.

What we call hash refers to what we have come to know as an assembly line product that involves machines, etc. When the plant is hand rubbed the old-fashioned way, it is called Charas, and it is traditionally hand rubbed right from the cannabis plant that is produced in the Afghanistan and Pakistan area, with the most sought after being from the areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

The way the Charas is produced, according to one observer is that each worker puts his hands and arms inside a fertilizer sack. He then brings up a big handful of leaves and holds them over a large wash- bowl that has a fine screen over it called muslin. He takes the leaves and rubs them over the muslin until the powder produced falls into the bowl. Then the man takes about 100 grams of the powder and wraps it in the muslin, putting it over a heated plate.

Then he rolls it with a bottle until he has a brown sticky rectangular block, about 5 millimeters thick. Then it is wrapped in cellophane, and bundled with others so that10 of them comes to about 1 kilo. It is called zero-zero, after the grade of muslin that was used to rub the leaves over.

However, hash production was “stopped” by the U.S. in the ‘70’s, and Afghanistan got into the heroin business. However, there is another method that is used in Afghanistan that produces a black hash. Cannabis resin is first placed on a large, hot mortar, where the resin is extracted by thrashing it with something heavy until it produces a very sticky black hash.

Hash is also produced in Mexico now but it doesn’t compare with their marijuana trade. One kind of hash that used to be very popular is what used to be called blond Lebanese, and, in the seventies, it was favored and prized above all others. No one is really sure about the reason why it has stopped being produced, but it had a deceptively easy smoke with quite a kick.

There is only a limited space here to go through all of the different areas of the world where hash is produced. I only wanted to indicate how some of it is produced to create the most sought after hash in the world.