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Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt,1880–1939: From Local Ban to Leagueof Nations DiplomacyLiat KozmaPublished online: 19 May 2011.

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Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt,1880–1939: From Local Ban to Leagueof Nations Diplomacy

LIAT KOZMA

German criminologist Sebastian Scheer recently challenged the North Americanfocus of drug policy research. Most US and non-US scholarship, he argued, explainsdrug prohibition, and especially cannabis prohibition, in terms of Americandomestic policy and the 1937 American Marihuana Tax Act. The history ofinternational cannabis prohibition is often narrated as an extension of theprohibition era, of American relations with its southern neighbours and with itsMexican immigrants. International prohibition, however, dates back to 1925 and tothe League of Nations’ Second Opium Convention, in which the US did not play aleading role at all. The role of Italy, South Africa, Egypt and Turkey in internationalcannabis prohibition, he claimed, is largely overlooked.1 Focusing on Egypt, thisarticle thus fills a gap in drug policy literature.

James Mills’ Cannabis Britanica confronted the North American bias of cannabisscholarship by focusing on the Indian case. In one of his chapters, and then in a morerecent article, Mills examined League of Nations debates, and thus Egypt’s role ininternational prohibition. Mills’ argument, in a nutshell, is that the Egyptiandelegation’s uncompromising support of prohibition was a direct consequence ofBritish imperial interests in the 1920s. It was also colonial medical doctors’ reportsregarding the connection between cannabis and insanity that convinced theEgyptians that hashish was indeed dangerous. The Egyptian stand on cannabis, heclaims, had no precedent in Egypt’s international diplomacy in the late nineteenth orearly twentieth centuries.2

Relying, as he does, solely on British and League of Nations’ documentation,Mills presents only a partial picture of how cannabis prohibition was conceived of inEgypt itself, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in dialogue with colonialassumptions and policies. Like Ronen Shamir and Daphna Hacker, in theirdiscussion of the 1894 Indian Hemp Commission, I maintain here that elite notionsof class distinctions and civilizing of the lower classes were at the heart of indigenousdebates on cannabis consumption and prohibition.3 This article, then, queries Mills’conclusions by going back almost five decades and examining policies, elitediscourses and colonial debates within Egypt.

Middle Eastern Studies,Vol. 47, No. 3, 443–460, May 2011

ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/11/030443-18 ª 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2011.553890

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Egypt prides itself on being the first country to ban cannabis cultivation, as earlyas the late 1870s. What followed, however, was decades of illegal traffic, that entailedchanging traffic routes and ever more creative ways of smuggling and of consuming adrug that was still very much in demand. These decades witnessed a colonialtakeover; the Egyptian elite was thus facing colonial officials who doubted theusefulness of the ban, in light of their Indian experience of monopolized cultivationand distribution.

Recently, historians of drugs and empire have begun to challenge oldhistoriographies which portrayed European empires as willing agents of addictionin non-Western societies too naıve to resist. They argue, instead, that localmerchants, indigenous entrepreneurs, and – I would add – local elites, had a crucialrole in the development of drug markets and policies.4 In Egypt, a growingindigenous bureaucracy, an emerging medical profession, educated in Egypt itself,and a growing middle class, the effendiyya, produced its own debates on hashishprohibition. These debates, in turn, would be reflected in Egypt’s position oninternational prohibition. Britain’s unilateral declaration of Egypt’s independence in1922 enabled Egypt to represent itself in an international forum, and the Egyptiandelegation considered itself obliged to make good use of this opportunity.

This article also constitutes a contribution to the history of the League of Nationsand its role in the Middle East, which has been so far studied mainly in relation tothe mandate system and the formation of present-day nation-states. Its involvementin social questions, such as the international traffic in drugs and in women, refugees,and health issues, has been a topic of research only recently, as new archivalcollections were catalogued and opened to the public.5 The current research relies onsuch sources to study both international trade and the role of the League inestablishing international cooperation to curb it.

I am interested here, moreover, in the connection between the global and thelocal – how the Egyptian drug experience affected international drug policies, andhow these, in turn, affected Egyptian realities. This interaction manifested itself ininternational conventions and in international trade routes. On the one hand, it wasthe Egyptian delegation’s initiative to bring hashish to the League of Nation’sinternational agenda, a move which concluded with the inclusion of Indian hemp inthe 1925 Convention. On the other, it was international drug policies that affecteddrug traffic and prohibition policy in Egypt and its neighbours.

Although condemned by most Islamic jurists as an intoxicant, historically Egyptianshave turned to hashish as an alternative to the forbidden wine. Hashish was lessexpensive and much easier to produce and easier to hide. According to FranzRosenthal, occasions when local governments were determined to take drastic stepsagainst hashish were infrequent, and the actions were not very successful. It was alosing battle against a common social practice. According to the fourteenth-centurychronicler Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi, for example, Sultan Najm al-Din Ayyub (d. 1173)banned the cultivation of hashish plants in Cairo, and when he found that they werestill grown there, ordered them to be collected and burned.6

Centuries later, during the short-lived French occupation of Egypt (1798–1801),botanists accompanying Napoleon’s military expedition reported that cannabis was

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cultivated at the edge of fields and supplemented families’ income without taking theplace of legitimate commercial crops.7 During the occupation, hashish preparationand consumption were banned, due to the spread of hashish use among the Frencharmy. Establishments serving hashish were to be walled up, and their proprietorssentenced to three-months’ imprisonment. According to Napoleon’s decree, habitualconsumers tended to ‘lose their reason, suffer from delirium and commit excesses ofall kinds’.8 This ban, temporary as it was, was reiterated more than 70 years later,when an Egyptian one was being considered. In his multivolume al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya, written in the 1870s (but published in the following decade), ‘AliMubarak, Egypt’s minister of Education, Awqaf and Public Works, mentionedNapoleon’s ban to support his argument for banning hashish in Egypt: ‘See hownon-Muslim sects ban it! Should not the Islamic sect be the first to do so?’9

Hashish was banned in Egypt in a series of decrees between 1868 and 1884. Dr. JohnWarnock, the medical director of the Egyptian hospital for the insane in the 1890s and1900s, and Dr. Muhammad El Guindy, who represented the Egyptian government atthe 1924–25 Opium Conference comment on this process. Both note that MuhammadAli Bey, a prominent medical doctor (later to be the head of the medical school and theeditor of Egypt’s first medical journal, Ya‘sub al-Tibb), published a detailed report in1868, which led to a subsequent ban on cultivation, use and importation of hashish. In1874 hashish was permitted to be imported on payment of duty. In November 1877 anorder was received from Constantinople that all hashish brought into Egypt was to beseized and destroyed, and finally, in March 1879, the importation and cultivation ofhashish were prohibited by a Khedivial decree.10

On 29 March 1879 the Egyptian government banned the cultivation, distributionand importation of hashish in Egypt, and ordered the destruction of hashishconfiscated at customs. A January 1880 decree then ordered the destruction ofhashish fields and stipulated a 1,000 piaster fine for each feddan (about one acre).The rationale for the ban, as phrased in this decree, was as follows: ‘Since it is amongour precious duties to safeguard public health, and since it is no secret thatintoxicating hashish, cultivated in some places, has no other products but onesharmful to bodies and minds, it is the government’s grace to ban the cultivation ofthis plant totally in order to prevent such damages’.11 Beginning from 1895, keepersof public establishments were prohibited from selling hashish.12

The ban of hashish can be seen, first of all, as a response to an image thatEuropean travellers started popularizing at the time: of the Egyptian as a delirioushashish smoker and of Egyptian streets as carrying the sweet smell of hashish smoke.French physiologist Charles Richet, for example, wrote in 1878 that the taking ofhashish was so widespread that in certain cafes in Cairo the visitor ‘smells itspenetrating odor, which attacks the throat and insensibly intoxicates even those whodo not smoke it’.13 Edward William Lane, Theophile Gautier and Gerard de Nerval,to cite but a few examples, included similar descriptions in their accounts of travel tothe East since the beginning of the century.14

The Orient, moreover, figured in literary descriptions of drug-induced hallucina-tions, even by authors who never left Europe. Thomas De Quincey describes theOrient, including Egypt, as part of his hallucinations in his Confessions of an EnglishOpium Eater. In an account from May 1818, Indian and Egyptian gods combine todescribe one opium-induced phantasmagoria:

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From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the samelaw. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, byparroquets, by cockatoos . . . I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done adeed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for athousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrowchambers at the heart of eternal pyramids.15

‘Ali Mubarak’s comment cited above can provide one hint to how the Ottoman-Egyptian elite itself came to see hashish consumption in the later decades of thenineteenth century. For the self-civilizing, self-colonizing elite of which ‘AliMubarak was a part, the ban on hashish was part of a civilizing process.Representative of an emerging Ottoman-Egyptian bureaucratic elite, ‘Ali Mubaraksaw the lower classes as a crowd that should be disciplined into rationality.Consistent with his remark in al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya, he describes Egyptian cafes inhis other work, ‘Alam al-Din, as ‘the source of numerous infections and diseases, anda refuge for the unemployed and the indolent, especially in those places noted for theconsumption of hashish’. Indeed, in comparison to the cafes he saw in France, theEgyptian cafe is described as filthy, crowded, unhealthy and undisciplined.16

‘Alam al-Din is a fictional journey of an Egyptian shaykh to France, accompaniedby an English Orientalist. Throughout his narrative, claims On Barak, theprotagonist positions himself between the European scholar and members of theEgyptian lower classes, dissociating himself from them and associating himself withEurope. Through the imagined dialogue between the two men, the shaykh highlightsthe weaknesses of Egyptian society, while the Englishman offers his suggestions forreform and modernity.17 The example of hashish is no exception. In response to theshaykh’s comments on the Egyptian cafe, the Englishman reassures him thatprogress will transform the Egyptian cafes as it did in Europe – ‘we became richer,expanded and became more civilized, and gradually, as a result, this place became asyou see it today’. He then concludes the chapter by emphasizing to the shaykh that aban on hashish is yet another requirement for national progress: ‘What you need, isto further restrict the consumption of substances harmful to mind and body, such ashashish. Its elimination should be prioritized, and consumption should be severelypunished. I frequently heard that your government banned consumption andcultivation in Egypt, but neither has entirely ceased.’18

The Egyptian elite of the time, argues Timothy Mitchell, came to see social tidinessand physical cleanliness as the country’s fundamental political requirement. AsWestern commentators were describing non-Western societies in terms of indolence,as the Others of Western rationality, ‘Ali Mubarak noted personal discipline and theability to utilize unfilled moments of the day as equivalent with collective progress.Disorder, the inability to discipline time, space and mobility rationally, wasbecoming a political issue.19 In this context, the idleness of the hashish smoker andhis inability to control his mind and his time were emblematic of those traits thatEgyptian society, and particularly its lower orders, needed to abandon to servecollective progress.

One forum for debating hashish consumption was the effendiya press. One can findreferences to hashish consumption in sketches by ‘Abdallah Nadim, a latenineteenth-century intellectual, who used his journal, al-Ustadh, to criticize what

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he saw as the main weaknesses of Egyptian society. ‘Why did they progress while wehave fallen behind?’, as Albert Hourani already noted, was one of Nadim’s mainpreoccupations.20 This was also the way in which he saw (and criticized) hashishconsumption in Egyptian society. In his sketches, he described the harm hashishcaused to individuals, families and the entire nation.

In his colloquial humorous sketches, Nadim criticized the idleness of Egyptianmen, as supposedly seen by Egyptian women and by foreign observers (the former‘dubbed’ by Nadim in colloquial Arabic). In one series of sketches, married womencomplained about their husbands, who spent their time and money in taverns andhashish dens instead of sharing both time and money with their families. Some ofthem sold their property and lands to support their drinking and gambling habits.Hashish consumers are presented as having bad breath, as compulsive eaters, and aswife beaters. Under the influence of the drug, they might divorce their wives 1,000times, and then forget about it, thus pursuing illegal cohabitation.21

Eventually, after Nadim purportedly received many letters of support, he decidedto ‘convene’ the women from his earlier sketches, and they discussed strategies forchanging their husbands’ ways, without hurting the men’s pride and without riskingdivorce. They thus ‘decided’ to contact Nadim and ask him to write a petition, ontheir behalf, to their husbands.22 Here, hashish was secondary to alcohol andgambling, but like them was presented as a symptom of Egypt’s moral degeneration.In a subsequent sketch, two of the women who ‘initiated’ the petition noted itspositive effects on Egyptian men. They had abandoned their old habits, were nowsitting in cafes, eating sweets and looking at drunkards, ‘as one would look at acrowd of monkeys’.23

In a later sketch, this time a dialogue between men, hashish consumption waspresented as impeding national progress. Unlike Europeans, claims one of thespeakers, al-Mu’allim Hanafi, we satisfy ourselves in the narrow existence stretchingbetween our home and our workplace, but never raise our heads beyond it. When thesecond speaker mentions smoking, Hanafi points to drugs, particularly hashish andma‘jun (a paste composed of hashish and opium), as ‘messing with our brains,destroying our minds’. The hashish consumer hallucinates, laughs, weeps and fearswith no apparent reason. Hashish, he argues, ‘blinds our eyes, intoxicates our minds,make us sit idly all day like women’. Hashish, he concludes, broke our hearts and leftus behind, while others progressed – a recurring theme in Nadim’s writing.24

Alongside elite perceptions of modernity during the later decades of the nineteenthcentury, the ban on hashish can also be ascribed to the Egyptian authorities’ growinginterest in how the urban landscape looked (and smelled). The decades preceding theBritish occupation of Egypt witnessed a growing interest in public health and inpublic order. Egypt’s rulers built new modern neighbourhoods, featuring broadboulevards, spacious squares, statues of public figures and French-style publicgardens. They introduced gas and electricity services, linked Egypt’s major cities tonew railroads, and installed a water supply system. Concerned with public healthand the spread of epidemics, the Egyptian administration also cleaned Cairo’s streetsand issued regulations with regard to proper discharge of domestic refuse. HistorianKhaled Fahmy notes a clear class bias in the authorities’ interest in smell – as a partof the project of modernity, as understood by Egypt’s upper classes, as a part of acivilizing process, in which the elite was to civilize the lower classes.25 The wording of

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the 1879 decree, moreover, notes a concern with public health that was manifested incontemporaneous decrees regarding the regulation of circumcision, or ones aboutbuilding construction – all stating public wellbeing as one of their main aims.26

Control over hashish cultivation may be connected to increasing control of thecountryside and of peasants’ usage of the land. Since the beginning of the nineteenthcentury the Egyptian government had exercised growing control over what peasantswere growing, how much, for what purposes and to whom they were selling it. Suchinterest manifested itself in government interest in cultivation, and also in its abilityto enforce a ban. Gabriel Nahas, in a short review of Egypt’s hashish history,ascribes the effectiveness of the hashish ban to the limited amount of arable land andto Egyptian centralizing cultivation policies, which go back to Muhammad Ali’smonopoly system. I agree that the enforcement of the ban relied on existing controlmechanisms that had proved their effectiveness throughout the century.27

The enforcement of the ban on the cultivation of hashish was relatively effective.Official decrees from the 1880s indicate several attempts to cultivate cannabis orsimilar plants in Egypt itself, and such crops were occasionally traced and destroyed.In one case, peasants of the Bani Swaif governorate started growing a plant thatunspecified laboratory tests found to be some hybridization of hashish and a similar,legal plant. An official decree then cautioned government agencies of this strategy,and emphasized that such plants should be destroyed and their cultivators punished.Another decree, from the summer of 1881, held shaykhs of villages accountable forhashish cultivation in their villages, a policy which relied on earlier cultivation andjudicial policies of Khedival Egypt.28

The main challenge the Egyptian government was to face in the following decadewas continuous demand, which was met by creative smuggling efforts and amultitude of underground hashish dens. Unable to stop demand, Egypt turned todiplomatic efforts, which culminated in the League of Nations Opium Conferencesand committees, to stop hashish traffic at its source. During the period under review,Egyptian efforts affected international drug-related policies as well as cultivationpatterns and police concerns in neighbouring countries.

When Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, the ban on hashish was already in force. Tomost Europeans, hashish was virtually unknown at the time. As I noted above,travellers described it in their account of travel to the East, medical doctors and ahandful of intellectuals were experimenting with it, but actual use was rather limited.The British officials who had a more direct connection with cannabis and itsintoxicating products were those in India, where cannabis cultivation wasmonopolized and its cultivation and sale were licensed and taxed. The Britishauthorities in Egypt thus adopted the existing local hashish policy, but kept reflectingand debating it in light of their Indian experience.

In 1892, Caillard Pasha, Egypt’s British general director of customs, declared thatdespite all preventive measures, Egypt was obtaining all the hashish it required, asprohibition has only driven the traffic into clandestine channels. An open vice, heclaimed, has been turned into a secret one, with all the attendant evils of illicithouses, smuggling and corruption. The Egyptian government, he concluded, shouldadopt a policy of control and restriction, with the aim of suppressing excessive use

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and restraining moderate consumption within due limits. In India, he argued, therevenue derived from both licences and taxation had continually increased while theconsumption per head had diminished. He recommended similar policies to beadopted in Egypt.29 In a report of 1894, British Consul General Evelyn Baring (laterLord Cromer) similarly noted that hashish was so widely consumed that it would bevery difficult to stop its illicit import to the country.30

Two decades later, Cromer’s predecessor, Lord Kitchener, admitted that due tocontinuous demand, traffic of hashish into Egypt persisted. Habitual moderatehashish consumption, he maintained, was widespread among large sections of thepopulation ‘without any evil effects and probably with considerable benefit’, parallelto moderate alcohol consumption in England. Like Caillard Pasha, he recommendedthe regulation, registration and licensing of manufacturers, sellers and importers.The majority of Egyptians, he claimed, would support such a law.31 A law to thateffect was drafted, but was never promulgated. It was to allow the importation ofhashish, but keep the ban on cultivation in force. It listed the amount allowed forpersonal possession, the taxable amount, the permitted port of entry and similarregulations that would have made the importation and sale of hashish legal inEgypt.32

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the main source of hashish was Greece.Greek farmers only started cultivating large-scale hashish crops in the 1850s, and inthe later decades of the nineteenth century it was openly and systematicallycultivated for local use and for export, mainly to Egypt. The low price of production(about 10–20 francs per kilo in 1913) as opposed to the high cost of hashish in Egypt(as much as 100–120 francs per kilo), made smuggling almost impossible tocontain.33 Two decades earlier, Caillard estimated that continuous demand fuelled65 tons of annual import, a figure reiterated in the 1910s as well. Lord Cromerestimated that less than a third of this amount was seized.34

Egypt’s long northern shore and its huge desert made smugglers almostunstoppable. Arriving from Lebanon, Palestine or Greece, smugglers tookadvantage of Egypt’s long and unpatrolled coastline. Arriving in small vessels,smugglers dropped bags of hashish away from the shore, west of Alexandria or eastof Port Said, and Bedouins picked them up and brought them, on camels, throughthe desert, to Cairo and Alexandria (see Figure 1).35

In addition, customs officials’ overwork, their low wages and the huge profitsencountered in the drug trade made customs a relatively safe and cost-effective venuefor traffickers. According to British reports from the 1910s onwards, the staff atcustoms was more interested in collecting revenue on legitimate merchandise, andtherefore was not looking for illegal drugs. The substantial profits from the tradealso meant that for large traffickers bribes were a minimal expense. Prizes toinformers served as incentives, but paled in comparison to the large profits andbribes of traffickers.36

Medical knowledge, mainly from Egypt’s insane asylum, reinforced prohibitionpolicy, as medical doctors propagated their theories on the adverse affects of hashishon its consumers. Already in the early 1880s, Onforio Abbate, an Italian medicaldoctor working in Egypt, experimented with monkeys to test the effects of hashish.37

In a 1903 article, John Warnock, the director of the hospital for the insane, notedhashish as a prime cause of insanity in Egypt, a conclusion that would have a

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significant impact on Egyptian hashish policy, corroborating what people likeNadim were already thinking about hashish. According to Warnock, hashishcould cause hallucinations of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and sometimes belief inpersecution or possession. Continuous use, moreover, could cause mania,paranoia, delusions and dementia. Habitual users, according to Warnock, aregood-for-nothing, lazy, live by begging and stealing, and are addicted to lying andtheft.38

Warnock estimated that about 27 per cent of insanity cases in his asylum could beattributed to excessive hashish use. Annual reports of the Egyptian GovernmentHospital for the Insane from 1909 to 1913, mention ‘hashish insanity’ as afflicting11–15 per cent of all hospital inmates.39 The causal relations between hashishconsumption and mental illness, however, were presumed rather than proven.Warnock noted that patients were asked about their hashish habits upon admission,but then added ‘we take into consideration that they frequently lie’ – implying thathashish insanity was assumed even when the patient himself denied hashishconsumption.40 Warnock’s conclusions were continuously cited (and even inflated)in Egyptian reports to the League of Nations 20 years later, when the sameconclusions were discredited by Egyptian and British medical doctors. The 1927report of the Khanka Mental Hospital, for example, states that: ‘while it is perfectlytrue that drug-taking per se, does engender acute and even chronic attacks ofinsanity, this is not so frequently the case as supposed.’ It is weak-mindedness ormoral imbecility, states the report, which is often the cause of drug addition, which –in turn – strengthens and reinforces a pre-existing mental condition.41

Figure 1. Smugglers smuggling hashish.Source: al-Dunya al-musawwra, 5 Feb. 1930.

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In the early 1920s, Thomas Russell, who came to be known as Russell Pasha,became Cairo police commander. Russell admittedly saw hashish consumption asharmless habit, in comparison to the ‘plague’ of heroin and cocaine consumption,which became widespread after the First World War. Baron Harry D’Erlanger,Russell’s associate, similarly declared that hashish was no more than a ‘pet failing ofmany members of the poorer classes’.42 According to D’Erlanger, Russell consideredlegalizing hashish, thus turning it into a revenue-producing commodity, andpreserving national funds, which would be spent on home-grown products ratherthan importing from abroad.43 Nahas claims that British officials, and particularlyRussell, did not care enough about hashish because they saw hashish intoxication as‘one expression of oriental languid and dreamy temperament’.44 Although manyBritish officials supported legalization, however, they continued to enforce the banand guarded Egyptian borders, ports and shores, to apprehend only a smallpercentage of the hashish which eventually found its way to Egyptian consumers.

Before moving on to the League of Nations and Egypt’s stance on cannabis inGeneva, I would like to demonstrate how the ban on hashish affected production,transportation and consumption patterns. League of Nations reports reveal that theEgyptian ban on cannabis affected the entire East Mediterranean and beyond, as theban on consumption and import was not nearly as effective as the ban on cultivation.Country reports to the League of Nations Opium Committee indicate that at least inGreece, Cyprus, Turkey, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, cultivation and tradewere targeted, at least in part, to meet the demand of Egyptian consumers. Whatevertheir policy was, local authorities – whether indigenous or colonial – were calledupon, during the early decades of the twentieth century, to assist Egypt’s lawenforcement authorities by restricting cultivation and trade under their jurisdiction.As a result, the price of hashish doubled from 1879 to 1906, and then again by 1913.45

Reading reports from later decades by the League of Nations and Egypt’s CentralNarcotics Intelligence Bureau, one is struck by the incredible amount of human (andanimal) labour invested in cultivating, producing, processing, delivering, concealingand selling cannabis products. To peasants, drivers, sailors, traffickers, cafeowners and waiters, one may also add policemen, border control officers, customsworkers and informers – all of these exchanged drugs, money and information.Those who accumulated huge profits were few, but thousands of men and womenmade their living from this illicit traffic, in the sea, the desert, on board steamship orin back-alley cafes. What comes up in those written reports is a mixture of sweat andpowdered hemp, cheap chocolate and desert sand.

In September 1929, the Egyptian weekly al-Dunya al-Musawwara published anarticle on the traffic sea route from Greece. A shaykh smoking a water pipe in one ofCairo’s neighbourhoods, the article concluded, is unaware of the blood spilled andthe efforts invested in bringing him his drug. A ship arriving under the cover ofdarkness sends an encrypted telegram to collaborators on shore, who then head tosea in their innocent-looking fishing boats to pick up packages thrown into the sea. Ifthe coastguard approached, they would sink the packages in a way that would enabletheir colleagues to find them, should they themselves be arrested. This was adangerous endeavour however, as the coastguard could sometimes be hiding on the

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shore and shoot the men swimming back to shore. For this reason, the reporterexplained, a smuggler often left his family and friends, ‘as if he was departing for thebattlefield’. From the shore, the hashish was taken inland in trucks carryinginnocent-looking merchandise, with a seemingly respectable man or woman sitting inthe front seat to divert suspicion.46

The Egyptian government, for its part, was struggling against an influx of hashishto Egypt by sea and by land, by means of the Egyptian coastguard, border control,customs and the police.47 By 1924, hashish arrived in Egypt from India, Greece,Syria-Lebanon and Turkey: on steamers coming from India and passing through theSuez Canal; on steamships arriving in Alexandria from various ports in the EasternMediterranean; on small sailing boats coming from Greece, Syria or Palestine. Byland, hashish was smuggled by car or railway from Palestine, or by camel riderscrossing the desert – the last chiefly hashish of Turkish or Syro-Lebanese origin (seeFigure 2).48

Police reports and consular court records describe changes in consumptionpatterns following prohibition. Open cafes were replaced by indoor establishments,protected by a guard and a password, and an indoor well to which drugs could bethrown in case of a police raid. One article noted cryptic references to hashish inqur’anic verses decorating a cafe, with words such as ‘kif’ highlighted (‘kif’ is acolloquial word for hashish; ‘kayfa’, written exactly the same, simply means ‘how’,and appears in the qur’an).49 In several cases, a cafe owner or one of his workers metthe police at the door, and stalled them or whistled in order to enable his customersto escape the raid and his staff to get rid of the drugs.50

One of the main challenges in enforcement of the ban on hashish wascapitulations, namely the privileges of foreign nationals on Egyptian soil. Foreignerswere tried in their consular courts, and were thus immune to Egyptian law. Until the1937 abolition of capitulations, moreover, they were subject to relatively minor

Figure 2. Interwar cannabis cultivation sites and trade routes.Source: Map prepared by the cartography department of the Hebrew University.

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punishments rather than the more severe ones imposed by Egyptian law.51 Indeed,consular consent was needed to arrest a foreign national. A consular representativewas then needed in order to arrest foreign traffickers, or to raid a hashish den or cafeowned by foreigners.52

In the cities, this meant that cafe owners who were foreign nationals could notbe touched by the local police without the consent of their respective consuls.One Angelo Duclo was arrested ten times in the course of nine months forrunning unlicensed cafes and serving hashish to his clients. The closing of hiscafe, a fine and seven days’ imprisonment, it seems, had little effect, as he waslater caught breaking the seals of a place closed down due to use of hashish.53 Inone case, a cafe keeper, an Egyptian subject, testified that ‘whenever there was anorder for closing the cafe, we hired this man, the accused, to oppose theexecution or the judgment as the owner of the place. . . . After the order forexecution was issued, he remained at the cafe as its owner and I was his servant.The lease was in the name of the accused.’54 In another case, the MaltesePasquale Magri was accused of ‘lending his name’, for a daily fee, to a hashishden in Alexandria in order to protect it from police raids.55

Two further developments may be noted here, leading to the International OpiumConference. Firstly, cocaine and heroin were introduced to Egypt during and shortlyafter the First World War. Initially, they were not legally restricted, and were openlysold in Egyptian pharmacies. In early 1925, these drugs were finally declared illegaland marked customs and police war on drugs in the late 1920s throughout the1930s.56

Secondly, prohibition efforts on the part of the Greek government, whichcomplied with the Egyptian government’s request, led to the proliferation of hashishcultivation in Syria and Lebanon (particularly Zahle, Baalbek and Kesruan), and itsimport through the Sinai desert or by sea, to Egypt. Cyrus Schayegh demonstrateshow the lives of Lebanese peasants changed following the First World War and thedemarcation of a border with Palestine: a combination of economic hardship,internal Lebanese politics and its relations with the French mandate authoritiesaffected Lebanese hashish production from that period onwards.57 In the 1920s,cultivation in the Lebanon increased enormously, reaching first an annualproduction of 1.5–2 tons, and later, from 1922 to 1925, 30–40 tons. In 1925 thecultivation of hashish was banned, but the ban was never effectively enforced on theentire mandate territory, so that it was to reach an annual production of 50–60 tonsby the end of the decade.58

These related developments, of a changing geography of cultivation and foreign-owned hashish dens, forced Egyptian authorities, from at least the 1880s, to keepclose contact with foreign governments in order to enforce the ban: with the Greekgovernment and with the French authorities in Lebanon to have them enforce a banon cultivation; and with the capitulatory powers and their consulates, on aneveryday basis, to perform arrests, to carry out raids, and to bring criminals tojustice. Affecting a legal change that would enforce some deterring punishment onforeign nationals involved in the drug traffic was yet another diplomatic venue. Ontheir arrival at the League of Nations, then, the Egyptian delegation already had acouple of decades of ongoing attempts to enlist international cooperation around thequestion of the ban on hashish.

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The Egyptian delegation reached the League of Nations opium conference in 1924divided between an Egyptian prohibitionist stance, British reservations and medicalevidence. This was the third in a series of international conferences which aimed atestablishing international cooperation to curb international drug traffic. At the firstconference, convened in Shanghai in 1909, several nations reached the conclusion thatcurbing opium addiction, which by then plagued a quarter of China’s population,would be possible only through the combined efforts of producing and consumingnations.59 The issue of cannabis was first brought to the international diplomaticarena in the 1912 Opium conference in The Hague, by the Italian delegation, but wasnot seriously discussed. In 1923, it was the South African delegation to the League ofNations which suggested that the issue of cannabis be discussed at the opiumconference that was to convene in Geneva the following year.60

The 1924 conference was the first in which an Egyptian delegation wasrepresented. Putting cannabis on the table, alongside opium and coca-basedmanufactured drugs, had both practical and symbolic dimensions. A mere fiveyears after the British had prevented the participation of an Egyptian delegation inthe post-First World War Versailles conference to present its demand forindependence, a purely Egyptian delegation of diplomats and medical doctorspresented an Egyptian agenda in an international forum. The Egyptian delegationwas well aware of the significance of the moment. Dr. Mohamed El Guindy, the headof the Egyptian delegation and the permanent Egyptian representative in Paris andBrussels, opened his declaration stating that independent Egypt was ‘conscious ofher duty toward the whole human race’.61

In his speech to the general assembly, El Guindy presented Egypt as a pioneer inbanning cannabis cultivation and abuse. He told fellow diplomats that a ban oncannabis would contain a threat which was currently plaguing mainly Easterncountries, but would eventually reach Europe as well. He claimed that the effects ofhashish addiction and consumption were comparable to, if not worse than, theeffects of opium consumption, and cited figures, increasingly controversial in Egyptitself and somewhat exaggerated, of 30–60 per cent of insanity cases that could beascribed to hashish consumption. ‘I know the mentality of Oriental peoples’, ElGuindy said toward the conclusion of his speech, ‘and I am afraid that it will be saidthat the question was not dealt with because it did not affect the safety ofEuropeans’.62

Sub-Committee F was then commissioned, alongside its other assignments, todiscuss the possibility of adding cannabis to the list of drugs whose traffic wasregulated by international law. The committee’s main duty was to define what wouldbe illegal, in a way that would not criminalize the cultivation and traffic in legitimateproducts of cannabis, such as fibres and medicine. The purpose of the discussion wasto minimize the economic damage of cannabis restriction. Sub-Committee F endedup accepting the medical assumptions of the Egyptian delegation. It concluded thatcannabis addiction led to problems ‘at least as serious as those caused in similarconditions by the use of opium and their derivatives’, and that the campaign againstthese narcotics must be organized on international lines. The main reservations camefrom the Indian delegation, because of ‘social and religious customs which naturallyhave to be considered’. The Indian delegation concluded, however, that ‘thegovernment of India promises to cooperate in limiting the export of Indian hemp to

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the needs of the importing countries, but cannot promise to restrict the use of hempinside India’.63

The actual convention, which was formulated in February 1925 and went intoeffect in September 1928, reflected some sort of compromise between Egypt’sposition and Indian reservations. The 1925 Opium Convention prohibited the exportof hemp resins to countries which have prohibited its use – thus refraining frombanning all hemp products and from banning the trade altogether:

The use of Indian hemp and the preparations derived therefrom may only beauthorized for medical and scientific purposes. The raw resin (charas), however,which is extracted from the female tops of the cannabis sativa L, together withthe various preparations (hashish, chira, esrar, diamba, etc.) of which it formsthe basis, not being at present utilized for medical purposes and only beingsusceptible of utilization for harmful purposes, in the same manner as othernarcotics, may not be produced, sold, traded in, etc., under any circumstanceswhatsoever.64

As James Milles rightly observes, most of the delegates who supported the banraised their hands without knowing what cannabis actually was, and openlyadmitted this to be the case.65 The Egyptian argument that hashish equalled orparalleled the opium threat was convincing.

Asnoted above, JamesMills argues thatEgypt’s standon cannabiswasmotivated byBritish interests. It was mainly British attempts to ward off international criticism ofBritain’s uncooperative position on opium in East and South East Asia, he argues, thatmade the Egyptian stand on cannabis a ‘rare opportunity to appear constructive’.Thus, a meeting that was supposed to discuss limits on the amounts of morphine,heroine and cocaine that could be legally manufactured on an international scale was‘ambushed’ or ‘hijacked’, and its agenda ‘diverted’, according to Mills, by Egypt’sinsistence on discussing hashish.66 My argument here, instead, was about the deeproots of hashish prohibition as far as the Egyptian authorities and the Egyptian elitewere concerned: it was a public health concern, it was a religious concern, it was alsoEgypt’s image abroad thatwas on the line here.Allwere backedby a strong centralizingstate (since the 1870s), a nationalist agenda and a civilizing process.

One of the principal outcomes of the inclusion of Indian hemp in the OpiumConvention was that traffic in hashish was now mentioned in country reports to theLeague of Nations. We learn from them that as Greece was taking more seriousmeasures against the cultivation and export of hashish, smugglers were turning toneighbouring countries, which consequently banned hashish cultivation and trade.Following the Greek government’s measures, traffickers attempted to introduce thecultivation of cannabis for the production of resin into other countries of EasternEurope, such as Romania, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania. Hashishcultivation was formally banned in Bulgaria in 1925, in Yugoslavia in 1929 and inTurkey in 1933.67

Egyptian reports from the 1930s noted a lack of cooperation from the Frenchauthorities, while the French reported increasing efforts to curtail the drug trade. A1930 report noted that some hashish was secretly cultivated in the Beka Valley andthat most of it was exported to Egypt and Sudan.68 The long frontier through the

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desert, noted French reports, made it very difficult to stop the trade: the largenumber of people crossing the border with ‘huge flocks of sheep and herds’ from onecountry to another, the numerous small harbours and the considerable number ofcoasting vessels, made borders permeable. Reports from 1934 onwards report thedestruction of fields and hemp plants.69 In the 1930s, notorious trafficker HenriMonfried (who trafficked in any revenue-yielding merchandise, including slaves,arms and drugs) managed to cultivate cannabis around the Ethiopian city of Hararon the Red Sea shore for export north, mainly to Egypt.70

From the north-east, Lebanese cannabis arrived through the Sinai desert. In the1920s and 1930s, police and press reports note well-armed gangs, who carried theirmerchandise across the Sinai desert undeterred by law-enforcement personnel.71 Thefirst Egyptian-speaking film ever produced (but eventually never distributed), al-Mukhaddirat (The Drugs), directed by Hassan al-Halbawi, featured the bravery ofthe camel-riding corps of the Egyptian desert patrol in chasing hapless Bedouinsmugglers (see Figure 3). The American Movietone Film Company, which hadstarted producing newsreel reports only a year before, sponsored this project,sending its own sound and camera men.72

The Egyptian press also published occasional reports on successful raids onhashish smugglers, alongside more frequent reports on heroin traffic. Indeed, it wasnow cocaine and heroin which dominated public concern.

From the late nineteenth century, hashish was banned as a result of a combination ofhealth and hygiene concerns, prior religious debates, and a growing civilizing driveof the Egyptian elite. At the same time, hashish consumption was also con-

Figure 3. One of the desert patrol personnel walking in front of a camera and a microphoneduring the production of the talking film, taken on the set of al-Mukhaddirat.

Source: al-Dunya al-musawwra, 1 Jan. 1930.

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ceptualized in medical terms: it was not merely a social deviation or a moral lapse,but a cause of illness, and, later, an illness in its own right. It came to symbolize thenation’s weakness and was considered one of the reasons for its decline, and thus oneof the ways in which the Egyptian elite looked at the lower classes. Abstinence cameto be viewed as a sign of modernity among the elite. The continuous consumption ofhashish can be seen, in part, as a form of resistance to the elite vision of nationalmodernity.

Historians of drugs in non-Western societies have usually described the history ofconsumption and prohibition as initiated mainly from outside. Mills’ work, thoughimportantly challenging the North American focus of drug prohibition research, stilldescribes the Egyptian stand on cannabis as derivative of colonial interests. The localelite, colonial officials and medical doctors separately debated a hashish ban withconflicting conclusions. Although the outcome of the Opium Conference was notoriginally foreseen by its initiators, this was a point in which non-Western nationswere demanding to have their agendas noted in international arenas. El Guindy’sspeeches at the conferences were as much an outcome of elite concerns with nationalmodernity, as they are reiterations of colonial law enforcement and medical data.

Notes

This article is based on a research project funded by the Israeli Science Foundation (grant no. 1409/08). I

thank Tamar Sofer from the Cartography Department of the Hebrew University for preparing the map. I

thank Deborah Bernstein, Leigh Chipman, Valeska Huber, Jonathan Lewy and Cyrus Schayegh, for their

comments on an earlier draft of this article, and take responsibility for all errors.

1. S. Scheerer, ‘North-American Bias and Non-American Roots of Cannabis Prohibition’, http://www.

bisdro.uni-bremen.de/boellinger/cannabis/04-schee.pdf.

2. J. Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition 1800–1928 (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2003), pp.166–80; J.H. Mills, ‘Colonial Africa and the International Politics of Cannabis:

Egypt, South Africa and the Origins of Global Control’, in J. Mills and P. Barton (eds.), Drugs and

Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication 1500–1930 (London: Macmillan, 2007),

pp.165–84.

3. R. Shamir and D. Hacker, ‘Colonialism’s Civilizing Mission: The Case of the Indian Hemp

Commission’, Law and Society Inquiry, Vol.26 (2001), pp.435–61.

4. J. Mills and P. Barton, ‘Introduction’, in Mills and Barton (eds.), Drugs and Empires, pp.11–12.

5. See, for example, I. Borowy, Coming to Terms With World Health: The League of Nations Health

Organisation 1921–1946 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2009); S. Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The

First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press, 2010); J,-M, Chaumont, Le Mythe de la Traite des Blanches: Enquete sur la

Fabrication d’un Fleau (Paris: Decouverte, 2009); K.D. Watenpaugh, ‘‘‘A Pious Wish Devoid of All

Practicability’’: Interwar Humanitarianism, The League of Nations’ Rescue of American Survivors

and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927, American Historical Review, Vol.115, No.5

(2010), pp.1315–39.

6. F. Rosenthal, The Herb: Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp.132–5;

A.M. Khalifa, ‘Traditional Patterns of Hashish Use in Egypt’, in V. Rubin (ed.), Cannabis and Culture

(The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp.198–9.

7. M. Rouyer, ‘Notice sur les Medicamens Usuel des Egyptiens’, Description de l’Egypte, ou, recueil des

observations et des recherches qui ont ete faites en Egypte pendant l’expedition de l’armee francaise

(Paris: Panckoucke, C.L.F., 1821–29), Vol.5, p.226; M.M. du Bois-Ayme et Jollois, ‘Voyage dans

l’Interieur du Delta’, Description de l’Egypte, Vol.6, pp.96–7; M.P.S. Girard, ‘Memoire sur

l’Agriculture, Industrie et le Commerce de l’Egypte’, Description de l’Egypte, Vol.6, p.542. On

hashish consumption see M. Rouyer, ‘Notice sur les Medicamens usuel des Egyptiens’, Description de

l’Egypte, Vol.5, pp.231–2; M. de Charbol, ‘Essai sur les Mœurs des Habitants Modernes de l’Egypt’,

Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt, 1880–1939 457

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Description de l’Egypte, Vol.7, pp.418, 516; M. Jomard, ‘Description Abregee de la Ville et la Citadelle

du Kaire’, Description de l’Egypte, Vol.7, p.586.

8. E.L. Abel, Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years (New York: Plenum Press, 1980), pp.149–50;

‘Ali Mubarak, al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al-Jadida li-Misr al-Qahira wa-Muduniha wa-Biladiha al-

Qadima wa-al-Shahira (Bulaq: al-Matba‘a al-Kubra al-Amiriyya, 1304–06/1886–89), Vol.8, p.20; G.G.

Nahas, ‘Hashish and Drug Abuse in Egypt During the 19th and 20th Centuries’, Bulletin of the New

York Academy of Medicine, Vol.61 (1985), p.428.

9. ‘A. Mubarak, Al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya, Vol.8, p.20.

10. J. Warnock, ‘Insanity from Hasheesh’, Journal of Mental Science, Vol.49 (Jan. 1903), p.100; League of

Nations, Second Opium Conference, Records of the Second Opium Conference, C. 760. M. 260 1924

XI.

11. ‘Hashish’, in F. Jallad, Qamus al-Idara wa-l-Qada’ (Alexandria: Al-Matba‘a al-Bukhariyya, 1892),

Vol.2, p.422; ‘A. al-Wahab Bakr, Al-Jarima fi Misr fi al-Nisf al-Awwal min al-Qarn al-‘Ishrin (Cairo:

Dar al-Kuttub wa-l-Watha’iq, 2005), pp.197–8.

12. Government of India, Indian Hemp Commission Report, http://www.drugtext.org/index.php?

option¼com_content&view¼category&id¼42:indian-hemp-commision-report&Itemid¼36; Warnock,

‘Insanity from Hasheesh’, p.104; see also Abel, Marihuana, p.133.

13. C. Richet, ‘Poisons of the Intelligence – Hasheesh’, The Popular Science Monthly (Aug. 1878), p. 486.

14. See, for example, G. de Nerval, Voyage en Orient (Paris: Le Divan, 1927); T. Gautier, Orient (Paris: G.

Charpentier, 1884), pp.331–8; B, Taylor, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain (New

York: G.P. Putnam, 1856), pp.133–48.

15. T. de Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (London: Dent, 1960), p.241.

16. ‘A. Mubarak, ‘Alam al-Din (Alexandria: Matba‘at Jaridat al-Mahrusa, 1882), pp.453–4; quoted in T.

Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.117.

17. O. Barak, ‘Egyptian Times: Temporality, Personhood and the Technopolitical Making of Modern

Egypt, 1830–1930’ (PhD Dissertation, New York University, 2009), pp.322–3. See also W.-C. Ouyang,

‘Fictive Mode, ‘‘Journey to the West’’, and Transformation of Space: ‘Ali Mubarak’s Discourses of

Modernization’, Comparative Critical Studies, Vol.4 (2007), pp.331–58.

18. Mubarak, ‘Alam al-Din, pp.454–5.

19. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p.63.

20. A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962),

pp.196–7.

21. ‘Hanifa wa-Latifa’, al-Ustadh 1 (27 Sept. 1892), pp.132–40; ‘Latifa wa-Dimyana’, Al-Ustadh 1 (4 Oct.

1892), pp.149–57; ‘Zubayda wa-Nabawiya’, Al-Ustadh 1 (18 Oct. 1892), pp.210–13.

22. ‘‘Aqd Itifaq’, Al-Ustadh 1 (25 Oct. 1892), pp.225–31.

23. ‘Hanifa wa-Latifa’, Al-Ustadh 1 (8 Nov. 1892), pp.268–72.

24. ‘Al-Mu‘allim Hanafi wa-l-Sayyid ‘Afifi’, al-Ustadh 1 (27 Dec. 1892), pp.444–9. About a decade later,

‘The Present State of the Egyptians and the Causes of their Retrogation’ by Muhammad ‘Umar

similarly described Egyptians as indolent, alcoholic, and drug addicts. Alcohol and drug consumption

among the poor, claimed ‘Umar, was part of a general weakness of the will, that was causing more

damage than poverty itself. M. ‘Umar, Hadir al-Misriyyin aw Sirr Ta’akhurihim (Cairo: Al-Maktam

Al-Misri li-Tawzi‘ al-Matba‘at, 1998), pp.267–9; quoted in Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p.118.

25. K. Fahmy, ‘An Olfactory Tale of Two Cities: Cairo in the Nineteenth Century’, in J. Edwards (ed.),

Historians in Cairo: Essays in Honor of George Scanlon (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press,

2002), pp.164, 181; A. Raymond, Le Caire ([Paris]: Fayard, 1993), pp.308–13; J. Abu Lughod,

Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp.95–7,

103–17.

26. See, for example, ‘Khitan’, in Jallad, Qamus al-Idara, Vol.2, pp.462–4.

27. Nahas, ‘Hashish in Egypt’, p.430.

28. ‘Hashish’, in Jallad, Qamus al-Idara, Vol.2, p.423.

29. Nahas, ‘Hashish in Egypt’, p.429; Smuggling of narcotics (hashish) from Greece, Syria and Turkey

into Port Said and Alexandria, FO 141/470/3, ‘Observations on Hunter Pacha’s remarks concerning

the difficulty of preventing the introduction of hashish into Egypt’, King Lewis, 12 Dec. 1913.

30. Mills, Cannabis Britannica, p.179.

31. ‘Viscount Kitchener to Sir Edward Grey’, FO 141/470/3, 3 Jan. 1914.

32. A letter by Lewis King, general director of customs, Alexandria, FO/141/470/3, 16 Jan. 1914.

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33. ‘A memorandum on the difficulty experienced in preventing the introduction of hasheesh to Egypt’,

FO 141/470/3, 29 Dec. 1913.

34. Quoted in Nahas, ‘Hashish in Egypt’, p.432; Indian Hemp Commission.

35. ‘Viscount Kitchener to Sir Edward Grey’, 3 Jan. 1914, FO 141/470/3; C. Stefanis, C. Ballas and D.

Madianou, ‘Sociocultural and Epidemiological Aspects of Hashish Use in Greece’, in Rubin (ed.),

Cannabis and Culture, pp.311–15; ‘Viscount Kitchener to Sir Edward Grey’, 3 Jan. 1914, FO 141/470/

3; ‘A memorandum on the difficulty experienced in preventing the introduction of hasheesh to Egypt’,

FO 141/470/3, 29 Dec. 1913.

36. FO 141/470/3, ‘Observations on Hunter Pasha’s remarks concerning the difficulty of preventing the

introduction of hashish into Egypt’, 11 Dec.1914.

37. O. Abbate, ‘Note sur le haschich’, in his Aegyptiaca (Cairo: Votta, 1909), pp.165–70.

38. Warnock, ‘Insanity from Hasheesh’, pp.101–3.

39. See, for example, Ministry of Public Health, Lunacy Section, Seventeenth Annual Report of the Egyptian

Government Hospital for the Insane at Abbassia for the Year 1911 (Cairo: Government Press, 1914), p.19.

40. Warnock, ‘Insanity from Hasheesh’, p.100; Mills, Cannabis Britannica, pp.182–7; Nahas, ‘Hashish in

Egypt’, p.430.

41. Ministry of Interior, Egypt, Department of Public Health, Lunacy Division Report for the Year 1927

(Cairo: Government Press, 1929), p.22.

42. B.H. D’Erlanger, The Last Plague of Egypt (London: L. Dickson & Thompson, 1936), p.12.

43. Ibid., p.83; quoted in Nahas, ‘Hashish in Egypt’, p.434.

44. Nahas, ‘Hashish in Egypt’, p.432.

45. Smuggling of narcotics (hashish) from Greece, Syria and Turkey into Port Said and Alexandria, FO

141/470/3, a note by Hunter Pasha, 29 Dec. 1913.

46. ‘Kayfa yuharab al-hashish’, Al-Dunya al-Musawwara, 11 Sept. 1929, pp.6, 22.

47. Quoted in Nahas, ‘Hashish in Egypt’, p.432; Indian Hemp Commission.

48. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs: Sub

Committee on Cannabis, ‘Inquiry Regarding the Determination of the Resin Content of Indian Hemp

Grown in Different Countries’, 14 April 1939, O.C./Cannabis/4, pp.87–9.

49. ‘Hawanit al-sumum al-‘alaniyya’, Al-Dunya al-Musawwara, 8 Jan. 1930, p.6.

50. H.B.M. Provincial Court Cairo, Criminal Jurisdiction, ‘Egyptian Police vs. Pasquale Magri’, FO 841/

104, case no. 21 of 1909.

51. T. Russell Pasha, Egyptian Service, 1902–1946 (London: Murray, 1949), pp.228–9.

52. Ibid.

53. H.B.M. Provincial Court Cairo, Criminal Jurisdiction, ‘Local Police at Mansourah vs. Angelo Duclo’,

FO 841/134, case no. 43 of 1913.

54. H.B.M. Provincial Court Cairo, Criminal Jurisdiction, ‘Rex vs. Alex. Tanti for permitting the use and

smoking of hashish’, FO 847/39, case no. 41 of 1914.

55. H.B.M. Provincial Court Alexandria, ‘Rex vs. P. Magri’, FO 847/43, case no. 18 of 1909.

56. ‘Report on Hashish Traffic in Egypt: compiled in the European Department, Ministry of Interior,

February 1924’, FO 141/470/3; Nahas, ‘Hashish in Egypt’, p.434.

57. C. Schayegh, ‘A Regional History: Drug Smuggling across the Mandatory Levant’, Middle East

Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, Nov. 2009.

58. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, ‘The

cultivation of Indian Hemp for the production of Hashish: Communication from the Egyptian and

French governments’, O.C. 1094, 13 June 1929.

59. W. B. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An International History (London:

Routledge, 2000), pp.9–40.

60. Mills, Cannabis Britannica, pp.154–60; Mills, ‘Colonial Africa’.

61. League of Nations, Second Opium Conference, Records of the Second Opium Conference, C. 760. M.

260 1924 XI.

62. League of Nations, Second Opium Conference, Records of the Second Opium Conference, C. 760. M.

260 1924 XI, 1; League on Nations, Second Opium Conference, O.D.C. 55, memorandum submitted

by Dr. A.H. Mahfooz Bey, Delegate of Egypt, with reference to Haschische as it concerns Egypt,

Geneva, 5 Dec. 1924.

63. League of Nations, Second Opium Conference, Sub committee F, Report concerning Indian Hemp,

Reporter: Prof. Perrot, O.D.C/72(1); Annex to Report concerning Indian Hemp (O.D.C. 72), Indian

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Hemp: Note by Indian Delegation, 23 Jan. 1925; O.D.C./S.C.F/17, League of Nations, Second Opium

Conference, sub-committee F, reports: Prof. Perrot.

64. International Opium Convention.

65. Mills, Cannabis Britannica, p.171.

66. Ibid.,pp.165, 168.

67. League of Nations, Summary of Annual Reports of Governments on the Traffic in Opium and Other

Dangerous Drugs for the Year 1932, C.312.M.139; O.C. 1542, 23 May 1934, p.5.

68. League of Nations, Advisory Committeeon Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, Summary

of Annual Reports, O.C. 107, C.329.M.200.1932, p.59; Bakr, Al-Jarima fi Misr, p.203.

69. Advisory Committee, Summary of Annual Report, C. 299, M. 182, 131–132; Advisory Committee,

Annual Reports, C. 241. M. 140, 1938, XI, 17.

70. See, for example, a letter to Sir Austen Chamberlain [Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs] from G.T.

Maclean [British Embassy, Ethiopia], FO/141/470/3, 23 Oct. 1926; Henri de Monfreid, Hashish, trans.

Helen Buchanan (Harmondsworth, Middlesex : Penguin Books, 1946).

71. See, for example, Al-Dunya al-Musawwarah, 5 Feb. 1930, p.8; Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau

Annual Report 1934, p.42; League of Nations, Advisory Committee, ‘Extracts from the Report of the

Cairo City Police for 1926’, O.C. 991, 26 March 1928.

72. ‘Ma‘raka damawiyya bayna rijal al-hajjana wa-muharibi al-hashish’, al-Dunya al-Musawwara, 1 Jan.

1930, pp.8, 14.

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