Hashish and Food Arabic and European Medieval Dreams of Edible Paradises

Hashish and Food Arabic and European Medieval Dreams of Edible Paradises Danilo Marino According to the Egyptian historian al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442), among the first edicts issued by al-Malik ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Aybak (r. 648–655/1250–1257) after his accession to the throne as second Mamlūk sultan of Egypt in 648/1250 was the introduction of a tax on al-munkarāt—reprehensible acts such as the consumption of intoxicants, like wine (khamr), beer (mizr), and hashish (ḥashīsh), as well as prostitution.1This means that, by the mid-seventh/thirteenth century hashish use was widespread enough in society to justify the payment of a tax to the state treasury. Therefore, whenever a Mamlūk ruler issued bans or raised taxes on al-munkarāt, either for moral or for financial purposes, hashish seems to have always been coupled with wine and beer, as well as linked with other immoral conduct, such as prostitution and pederasty.2 What al-Maqrīzī calls ḥashīsh is a preparation of a mix of ground seeds, resinous extracts, or powdered leaves of Cannabis sativa or hemp. Indeed, the Arabic qinnab, apparently an Akkadian calque (qunnabu) from the Greek κάν- ναβις, which might have later been adopted into Aramaic, is a plant that was known in Mesopotamia and Egypt from ancient times.3 This herb was already in use in medicine and well known to the Arabic and Islamic botanists and physicians at least since the second/eighth century. The survey of the medieval books of plants shows that Arab botanists, influenced by the Greek pharma- copeia and especially Galen’s Desempliciummedicamentorum, Dealimentorum 1 Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Al-Maqrīzī, Al-Mawāʿiẓ wa-l-iʿtibār bi-dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-l-āthār (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 1990), 2:90. 2 Bernadette Martel-Thoumian, “Plaisirs illicites et châtiments dans les sources mameloukes,” Annales Islamologiques 39 (2005): 275–323; Bernadette Martel-Thoumian, Délinquance et ordre social: L’État mamelouke syro-égyptien face au crime à la fin du IXe–XVe siècle (Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions, 2012); Paulina B. Lewicka, “Alcohol and Its Consumption in Medieval Cairo: The Story of a Habit,” Studia Arabistyczne i Islamistyczne 12 (2004): 55–97; Paulina B. Lewicka, “Restaurants, Inns and Taverns That Never Were: Some Reflections on Public Con- sumption in Medieval Cairo,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48, no. 1 (2005): 40–91. 3 In the ancient Assyrian clay cuneiform tablets on herbal drugs, it was known as “the drug which takes away the mind,” see Reginald Campbell Thompson, A Dictionary of Assyrian Botany (London: British Academy, 1949), 221. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004409552_011 hashish and food 191 facultatibus and Dioscorides’s Materiamedica, distinguished between a domestic (bustanī) and a wild (barrī) variety of qinnab, the latter also used for the manufacture of fiber and rope (in modern taxonomy this is Cannabis sativa sativa, one of the two species of hemp). In addition to qinnab, the Persian words shāhdānaj or shāhdānaq were also adopted to indicate either the domestic plant and its seed (bizr) or fruit (thamara) and leaf (waraq). Both species were used as a remedy for many diseases, including digestion, earache, and dandruff, and as a carminative and analgesic. However, its seed in particular if consumed in large amounts was believed to cause impotence, mental disorder, amnesia, and even insanity.4 As for the word ḥashīsh, it is an Arabic word meaning “dry grass,” or simply “herb,” and first appeared in reference to a hemp-based product in the mid- seventh/thirteenth century. Ibn al-Bayṭār (d. 646/1248) in his Jāmiʿ says that ḥashīsh is an Egyptian nickname for a third variety of hemp called “the Indian hemp” (al-qinnab al-hindī), the consumption of which was believed to trigger intoxicating and euphoric effects.There is thus no reason to doubt that the Ara- bic ḥashīsh in these sources overlaps with what modern botanists call Cannabis sativa indica, the second variety of cannabis that produces a large amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal constituent of the plant’s psychoac- tive effects. As far as nonmedical or botanical works are concerned, the word ḥashīshiyya and jamāʿat al-ḥashīshiyya first appeared in the “anti-Ismāʿīlī Literary cam- paign,” as Farhad Daftary has called it. In the Īqāʿ ṣawāʿiq al-irghām, written after the al-Hidāya al-Āmiriyya fī ibṭāl daʿwā al-Nizāriyya—both epistles issued by the tenth Fatimid caliph al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām Allāh around 517/1123 to refute 4 Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Aḥmad al-dīn Ibn al-Bayṭār, Al-jāmiʿ li-mufradāt al-adwiya wa-l-aghdiya (Būlāq: Maktabat al-ʿĀmira, 1874), 4:39; Martin Levey, “ḥas̲h̲īs̲h̲,” in The Ency- clopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. H.A.R. Gibb, J.H. Kramers, E. Lévi-Provençal, J. Schacht et al., 3:266; Sami Khalef Hamarneh, “Pharmacy in Medieval Islam and the History of Drug Addic- tion,” Medical History 16 (1972): 226–237; Indalecio Lozano Cámara, “Terminología científica árabe del cáñamo (ss. VII–XVIII),” in Ciencias de la naturaleza en al-Andalus—Textos y estudios, ed. C. Álvarez de Morales (Granada: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Escuela de Estudios Árabes, 1996), 4:147–164; id., “El uso terapéutico del Cannabis sativa L. en la medicina árabe,” Asclepio 49, no. 2 (1997): 199–208; and id., “Acerca de una noticia sobre el qinnab en el Ŷāmiʿ de Ibn al-Bayṭār,” in Ciencias de la naturaleza en al-Andalus—Textos y estudios, ed. E. García Sánchez (Granada: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Escuela de Estudios Árabes, 1990), 1:152. A detailed survey of the botanical and pharmacological description of qinnab and hashish can be found in my unpublished PhD dissertation: Danilo Marino, “Raconter le haschich dans l’époque mamelouke: Étude et édition critique partielle de la Rāḥat al-arwāḥ fī l-ḥašīš wa-l-rāḥ de Badr al-Dīn Abū l-Tuqā al-Badrī (847–894/1443– 1489)” (PhD diss., Inalco, Paris, 2015), 33–51, https://hal.archives‑ouvertes.fr/tel‑01368946..

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