The History of Hash
Hash has been consumed for centuries
The Early Days of Hashish
Hashish, often known as hash, has a complex history that includes periods when it was considered an illicit substance, a valuable medication, or a form of amusement. Nonetheless, despite the lack of strong proof for its very first appearance due to the scarcity of artifacts indicating its usage, hash has been consumed for thousands of years. It first appeared in writing in Cairo, Egypt, in 1123 CE, accusing a group of Muslims of being hashish eaters. Hash was mostly used as food up until the invention of tobacco around the year 1500. Hash’s history can be traced back to Egypt, Turkey, India, and Nepal.
According to a literature written by a westerner about his travels in the east, Egyptian hash eaters would consume five pieces of hash the size of chestnuts for entertainment. This may seem excessive, but it’s important to keep in mind that naturally grown cannabis back in the day contained little THC. That was most likely 4%, and earlier processes for creating hash used a lot more plant material. In contrast to the extremely potent marijuana hash concentrates of today, CBD hash is more akin to the hash that was used historically.
Hash comes to the West
During the 18th century, hash was introduced to Europe and was researched as a treatment. There have been accounts of cultures in Nepal utilizing hashish to treat cramps and to make some signs of diseases including rabies, cholera, and tetanus vanish. So, this peaked the curiosity of European scientists who investigated its impact.
Moreover, hashish was investigated for its potential mental advantages around 1840, and its heyday for the use of hash as a medicine was between 1880 and 1900. It was used in medicine up until 1961, when the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Substances was adopted and it was no longer allowed.
The “misuse” of hashish and cannabis was not acknowledged in the west until 1900, but it gained momentum after the UN Single Convention of 1961, which had an impact on national legislation all over the world.
The Underground Trade of Hashish
The majority of hashish consumed in Europe at the turn of the 20th century originated in Kashmir and other regions of India and Afghanistan, as well as in Greece, Syria, Nepal, Lebanon, and Turkey. Europe consumes the most hash globally; this is measured by the number of seizures at the border, and 70% of all hash seizures worldwide occur in Europe.
From the middle of the 20th century until the beginning of the 21st, when more cannabis was grown locally, Morocco was the world’s leading producer of hashish. Due to its improved quality, Afghanistan began to produce much more hashish than it did in the past. Although Afghanistan is still the world’s largest supplier of hashish, new laws governing its legal cultivation and distribution have begun to further restrict the market for local economies.
Different methods of Creating hash around the world
Hash is easily made; all that is required is the separation of the resin from the cannabis plant. The trichomes are where the plant’s cannabinoids are found in the maximum quantity. Hash is produced using a variety of techniques, all of which involve solventless extraction concentrate.
Just rubbing the cannabis plant between your hands—the resin will stick to your hands and can be scraped off—was one of the early methods used to make hashish. In India and Nepal, this is known as Charas and has long been a popular dish. Because making Charas wasn’t as taxing as other tasks, a village’s women and kids generated a lot of it. Yet, this has been prohibited for the past 200 years, and people are still detained today for the manufacture and sale of charas.
Dry shifting hash requires a fine screen, so it is a little less primitive but still amazingly simple. To make dry sifted hash you take the dried cannabis flower and agitated by hand or rudimentary machines breaking off the trichomes. These trichomes fall off onto a screen that has small holes only allowing the trichomes to go through in a powder form. This powder is called keif it is then pressed by hand or mechanical press to flat bricks. The heat generated from the pressure melt the resin enough to make it stick together and
Bubble Hash uses water and ice to freeze the cannabis which makes the trichomes break off and fall through submersed screens.
Dry ice hash is made by sticking dry ice into dry hemp freezing and then agitating it to get trichomes to fall through a micron screen, this way can be done in a dry environment since dry ice just evaporates.
Other methods that use solvents some people call hash oil but these are not true to the history of hash really being a solventless extract which makes it desirable because lower end extraction facilities can have trace solvents in their products