23-Jan-08

Hash in Afghanistan For centuries, the hash produced in Afghanistan and Turkestan (now Uzbekistan) was considered the best in the world. Over the course of the 16th century, two main factors contributed to a dramatic rise in hashish production over Asia and the Middle East: one being the arrival of tobacco in Europe and Asia, and the other is the emergence of modern dry resin screening techniques. So, on the one hand the worldwide demand for hashish increased drastically, while on the other hand the new developments in processing methods meant that growing demand could be met. The Turkestan hash-producing areas of Bukhara and Samarkand gained a formidable reputation, with a product of such high quality that many of the end users in India (the largest market at that time) considered it the best ever seen. After a series of Russian invasions of the territory, from 1860 onwards much of the population of these two zones moved southwards, towards the northern zone of Afghanistan, or to the east, to the ??Yarkand area. This led to a boom in the cultivation of cannabis and hashish production in this area of ??the Afghan territory, where the locals soon learned the techniques of the Turkestan masters, who most likely brought cannabis seeds with them from the genetics they grew in their own areas. It is estimated that between 80,000 and 90,000 kilos of hashish were legally imported into India every year at the end of the 19th century, almost all from Afghanistan or Yarkand, in Chinese Turkestan.