Did the vikings smoke weed?

[mexcurandero420]

A variety of hemp, intermediate between the fiber-producing and the typical drug-producing types, is cultivated in Asiatic Turkey, especially in the region of Damascus, and to a limited extent in European Turkey. This variety, called Smyrna, is about the poorest variety from which fiber is obtained. It is cultivated chiefly for the narcotic drug, but fiber is also obtained from the stalks. It grows 3 to 6 feet high, with short internodes, numerous ascending branches, densely crowded foliage of small leaves, and abundant seeds maturing early. It seems well suited for the production of birdseed, but its poor type, combined with prolific seed production, makes it a dangerous plant to grow in connection with fiber crops.

 

[therevverend]

Nice Mexcurando that's what I was talking about. It makes you wonder how old the tradition was, growing the plants, harvesting the seed, the fiber, and the resin. Resin sifting probably evolved as part of the process of separating the seeds from the plants.

I've been swapping emails with the Spanish museum about the Nasrid smoking pipes. At first they were giving me the brush off, who's this crazy crackpot American and why is he sending us these crazy emails? I think I've convinced them I know what I'm talking about, I want to find out how they dated the pipes and whether they're interested in testing them for cannabinoids.

I could tell the woman I was talking with wasn't an expert when she told me 'the Muslims who smoked hashish were warriors. They smoked hashish before going into battle.' She got the story about the assassin sect, the hashishins, mixed with the Viking berserkers which is appropriate considering this is a 'Vikings' thread. I gave her a more accurate account of the story and I think it checked out.

Her take on the pipes was 'they're from the 14th century so they have to be hash pipes since tobacco wasn't introduced'. Besides the point about the Arabs not possessing pipe technology until after tobacco was introduced I pointed out that people have smoked dozens if not hundreds of plants. Opium is the first one that comes to mind but I've already mentioned all the stuff Native Americans smoke. Hopefully I got them interested in what the pipe residue might test for.

 

[tobedetermined]

I want to find out how they dated the pipes and whether they're interested in testing them for cannabinoids.

Great work, thereverend! How they dated them is a key question. Do you know where they found them? In Alhambra or down in the town below?

Testing for cannabinoids would be the best result but that takes time & money but let's hope that you kindled their interest to confirm what they have.

 

[therevverend]

Not sure where they found them, it's a good question. I'll take a look when I have time.

Found an article about the 10th century Persian physician Avicenna's canon of medicine. A listing of the known drugs and methods of treatment for different illnesses. Cannabis is talked about quite a bit, Avicenna is always mentioned when talking about early Muslim sources. He was a huge influence on Western medicine, translated into several languages.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469963/

 

[Cvh]

Here is a picture of the trading routes of the Vikings.

As you can see, they must have been in contact with psychoactive cannabis. Also hemp will also not be unknown to them because in Europa there grew the wild European non-psychoactive hemp.

About whether they smoked it or any other persons in the Old World before Columbus came back from America is still open to debate. But it looks like that before Columbus cannabis was either ingested or burned on a brazier and the fumes inhaled.

 

[Mart]

I feel it was normal to use all resources in the past and if it was good for something it was used,like salt,pepper spices in cooking,no prohibition back then,no sensational headlines,really enjoying this thread and thanks for all the research done and time taken to put this up here

 

[Montuno]

Nice Mexcurando that's what I was talking about. It makes you wonder how old the tradition was, growing the plants, harvesting the seed, the fiber, and the resin. Resin sifting probably evolved as part of the process of separating the seeds from the plants.

I've been swapping emails with the Spanish museum about the Nasrid smoking pipes. At first they were giving me the brush off, who's this crazy crackpot American and why is he sending us these crazy emails? I think I've convinced them I know what I'm talking about, I want to find out how they dated the pipes and whether they're interested in testing them for cannabinoids.

I could tell the woman I was talking with wasn't an expert when she told me 'the Muslims who smoked hashish were warriors. They smoked hashish before going into battle.' She got the story about the assassin sect, the hashishins, mixed with the Viking berserkers which is appropriate considering this is a 'Vikings' thread. I gave her a more accurate account of the story and I think it checked out.

Her take on the pipes was 'they're from the 14th century so they have to be hash pipes since tobacco wasn't introduced'. Besides the point about the Arabs not possessing pipe technology until after tobacco was introduced I pointed out that people have smoked dozens if not hundreds of plants. Opium is the first one that comes to mind but I've already mentioned all the stuff Native Americans smoke. Hopefully I got them interested in what the pipe residue might test for.

What you're saying sounds "very strange"... All references to cannabis use in al-Andalus that I have read refer to the exclusively recreational environment. I don't know who you're talking to, but it sounds very strange...

I will try to leave you links on the subject, but everything I find is in Spanish and Arabic. Not in English...

 

[Montuno]

" The Alhambra of Muhammad V and Ibn al-Khatib :

The Granada publisher Almed publishes Alhambra, the posthumous book of the prestigious Arabist Antonio Fernández Puertas, a canonical book to understand the most fascinating monumental complex in Spain.

Alhambra is the title of the latest book to address the history of one of the world's most fascinating heritage sites. It has a subtitle: Muhammad V, the eleventh sultan of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, perhaps the most intelligent and thoughtful emir who ruled the last Hispano-Muslim flash in the Iberian Peninsula. The book is the posthumous work of Antonio Fernández Puertas (Granada, 1950-London, 2016), one of the most renowned Spanish Arabists of all times. Alhambra is published by the exquisite Almed label and has the collaboration of Fundación Telefónica. The Alhambra Board of Trustees and Generalife also participate.

Alhambra is the title of the latest book to address the history of one of the world's most fascinating heritage sites. It has a subtitle: Muhammad V, the eleventh sultan of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, perhaps the most intelligent and thoughtful emir who ruled the last Hispano-Muslim flash in the Iberian Peninsula. The book is the posthumous work of Antonio Fernández Puertas (Granada, 1950-London, 2016), one of the most renowned Spanish Arabists of all times. Alhambra is published by the exquisite Almed label and has the collaboration of Fundación Telefónica. The Alhambra Board of Trustees and Generalife also participate.

Alhambra is the title of the latest book to address the history of one of the world's most fascinating heritage sites. It has a subtitle: Muhammad V, the eleventh sultan of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, perhaps the most intelligent and thoughtful emir who ruled the last Hispano-Muslim flash in the Iberian Peninsula. The book is the posthumous work of Antonio Fernández Puertas (Granada, 1950-London, 2016), one of the most renowned Spanish Arabists of all times. Alhambra is published by the exquisite Almed label and has the collaboration of Fundación Telefónica. The Alhambra Board of Trustees and Generalife also participate.

The book, published in a luxury format and with a delicate black fabric as cover, is a triple tribute. Firstly to the Alhambra and its inspirers, secondly to Muhammad V and his polygrapher Ibn al-Khatib and finally to Antonio Fernández Puertas who began work on this volume in 2011, when the lawyer and editor Jerónimo Páez showed up at his home in the Albayzín to try to persuade him to translate his famous book The Alhambra. From the Ninth Century to Yusuf I (in Saqi Books), a canonical text that was discontinued many years ago. AFP did not agree to do so. He told him that putting that work on its feet required an enormous effort that would prevent him from undertaking other projects. In return, he promised the publisher three books: The first one about the Nasrid emirate, the second one about the mawlid - the feast of the prophet's birth that took place in December 1362 when Muhammad V was sultan of the Alhambra - and the last one about the horology - a sort of machine to measure the passing of time - that he had placed in the Mexuar. These three books together are today the delicious volume published in Almed.

This has been my last reading of the year. Twelve months ago I remember choosing one of Rob Riemen's essays. But these days I have been walking around the Alhambra again, concentrating on one of the most fascinating stages of its history. There are few places in the world that one loves so much: the distant Alhambra that awakens our courage to study it and understand it; the modern Alhambra that was promoted by its best directors - Leopoldo Torres Balbás and María del Mar Villafranca -; the intimate Alhambra that seems to be ours if we enter it through books like AFP's.

A publishing project of this magnitude is only possible for intellectuals like Jerónimo Páez. Days before he died, Miguel de Cervantes wrote a letter to the Count of Lemos where he said he felt happy to see him pointing his finger. Almed is an acrostic that means Atlantic and Mediterranean, an immense area that sometimes fits into a heart. Jerónimo Páez must be pointed at as a polymath and the culprit of some of the best books that have been published in the last ten years in Spain on history, personalities, chronicles and essays. Norwich's book on the history of Venice was followed by dozens of titles that have not only made us happier and more cultured: they have answered, above all, the questions we had been asking ourselves for decades.

With Alhambra, Almed takes a further step in the interpretation of that unique space. Its author has a sober and direct style, much more interested in accuracy than in literature. AFP wrote a dispassionate book, free from the cloying that almost always adorns the texts of the Nazi court poets.

When Ibn al-Khatib writes about his master he does so in these terms: "This sultan was unique among kings in magnificence, bravery and firmness. (...) he established his hierarchies, honoured his heroes, dictated rules for the functioning of his chancellery and increased his revenues, showing in all these things ability, deep knowledge of politics, solid intelligence, rigidity, much cunning, great prudence and full experience". And so on (the text of the polygraph is translated by AFP)...

The book, in good part, is a monograph about that sultan. Today we know that he had a tough competitor. It was his half-brother Ismail, favourite of his father Sultan Yusuf I, son of the intriguing Christian slave Maryam. Muhammad V ascends the throne at the age of sixteen, though he leaves power in the hands of the faithful Ridwan, a Christian convert, and the wise Ibn al-Khatib. He loved horse riding, he elevated to the high positions of the sultanate those who deserved it and the people found him close. The goodness of his soul, his strong conduct, his application in his affairs, his love of duty, were all true. And these considerations are not just another dithyrambo of Ibn al-Khatib, but of the equable Fernandez Puertas.

Then there is his friendship with Pedro I of Castile, only five years older than he. AFP recalls on 23 August 1359 when Muhammad is dethroned by a conspiracy encouraged by Nazi princes and his own half-brother Ismail, incited by Maryam who financed the coup with large sums of money. Muhammad flees to Guadix and after the promise of asylum by the Sultan of Morocco embarks in Marbella to Ceuta. Weeks later he is received in Fez where he is honoured with parties and a throne in front of the sultan of that kingdom. It was a time when the reading of a qasida, the opportunity of some inspired verses, could lead to the success of a diplomatic mission, and his faithful Ibn al-Khatib always kept one among his files.

Ismail would be an illegitimate sultan. He was known to be fat, effeminate, lazy and lacking in character. The affairs of state were assumed from the beginning by his first deputy, Muhammad, who a few months later ordered his assassination. With no enemies nearby, he ascended the throne in the name of Muhammad VI, but he was known to all as 'the red man'. They say he suffered from psychological quirks, was cruel, lacked public speaking skills, dressed dishevelled and was a hashish addict.

With the help of Pedro I, the exiled Muhammad V returns to Granada to regain the throne that was rightfully his. When the armies of the king of Castile and the Nasrid sultan approached Granada, he fled and was so clumsy that after a few days he asked for asylum in the Alcazar of King Pedro in Seville. When the monarch arrived at his palace, he had him tied to a piece of wood and speared him. His call of cruelty made sense when he had the head cut off from the corpse and sent it in a chest to his friend the Sultan of Granada as a desired present.

On Saturday, April 20, 1362, Muhammad recovered the Alhambra floor which he occupied until his death. He was a faithful ally to those who helped him. He refused to establish relations with Aragon and with those who threatened the stability of his territory across the sea. And with the subtlety of the great rulers he prevented the advance of the Christian conquest. In 1372 Ibn al-Khatib deserted Tremecén. Knowing this, Muhammad unleashes his anger and orders him to be pursued wherever he hides. The wise polygrapher travels to the court of Fez, but is imprisoned. In Granada he is condemned in his absence and the sultan sends the courtly poet Ibn Zamrak, Ibn al-Khatib's most beloved and noted disciple, to Morocco. There, in collusion with other emissaries, he finds him in the prison of Fez and orders him to be strangled. It was 1375.

Muhammad V died on January 15, 1391 at the age of fifty-two. It is a pity that Ibn al-Khatib was killed years earlier. If he had survived, he would surely have written a beautiful funeral for the most intelligent of the thirty-four sultans that Granada had.

Antonio Fernández Puertas places Muhammad V in an elevated position among the emirs who ruled the Nasrid kingdom. When he rebuilt the palace area he ordered the celebration of mawlid, the feast of the birth of the prophet. Ibn al-Khatib details the celebration on 31 December 1362 in great detail. And in his texts, preserved in the library of Rabat, is the explanation with which many historians have reconstructed the disordered pieces of the Alhambra's chronicle. Fernández Puertas translated the text with exquisite mastery, ignoring the cloying tone that other authors have given to the already somewhat relamed Nasrid poet. AFP did not just make a translation. He did something else: an interpretation of the architecture, customs, protocol, gastronomy and aesthetics of power that constitutes one of the most remarkable parts of the book.

Between 1370 and 1380, in that decade, Muhammad V promotes the construction of a new palace. The courtly poet Ibn Zamrak, the disciple of Ibn al-Khatib whose hand did not tremble at the time of his strangulation in Fez, will call it the fort of the happy garden. But it has gone down in history as the palace of the Lions because of the fountain in its centre. In fact, in it, are inscribed those famous verses that in the translation of Emilio García Gómez, begin like this: "Garden I am that beauty adorns / you will know my being if you look at my beauty". By then, the sultan had already consolidated the fortifications of the Alhambra, had concluded the works in the palace of Comares that his father began, the area of the Mexuar was reconstructed and after the conquest of Algeciras, in July of 1369, he ordered to raise the great facade of Comares, inaugurated with all pomp on Friday October 4, 1370 as an exquisite panegyric written in plaster and wood."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.elmundo.es/andalucia/2018/12/31/5c2a05ac21efa003388b4602.html

 

[Montuno]

As for the Hispano-Muslim cannabis smoking pipes, those of the Sultanate of Granada (1238 - 1492 BC) I think are the most abundant and famous, but they exist, at least, from the time of the Emirate or/and the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba ( 756 - 1031 BC ); from the Caliphate period it was the first pipe I showed:

The following pipe is located in the Santa Clara la Real Museum, Murcia, Spain.
It is dated between the 12th and 13th centuries BC, probably from the time of the Hispano-Muslim Taifa Kingdom of Murcia and Valencia:


Edited: photo deleted by mistake. Thax, @tobedeterminated

In the link there is an explanation of the piece:

@thereverend , in the link there is also more bibliography on the consumption of marijuana and hashish in al-Andalus .

https://m.facebook.com/guerrerosdet...0662195703/1679607842254651/?type=3&source=57

 

[tobedetermined]

Montuno

Note the last sentence of that FB post:

Fotografia: Pipa del siglo XVIII, que no es la descrita anteriormente

It would seem that they described one pipe & posted an image of a much later one.

 

[Montuno]

Montuno

Note the last sentence of that FB post:

Fotografia: Pipa del siglo XVIII, que no es la descrita anteriormente

It would seem that they described one pipe & posted an image of a much later one.

You're right!
Anyway, I leave the link for the bibliography

 

[Montuno]

I can't open this one because it's a PDF:

F. Valdés Fernández :"Mas hachís "

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw3iueZS9K-4eWigljw2UZQC

 

[tobedetermined]

The pdf is a discussion about the pipes & their relative dating in respect to the controversy over the date smoking started etc. While many of the examples were found in locations that could easily have been tainted by later post-Reconquista occupation, several pipes cannot be as easily explained away.

In other words, they don’t know the exact dates either but they are attributed to the 11th, 12th & 13th Centuries.

 

[Betterhaff]

I know a few from Minnesota that did.

 

[mexcurandero420]

Cannabis and tobacco have longstanding roles in African societies. Despite botanical and pharmacological dissimilarities, it is worthwhile to consider tobacco and cannabis together because they have been for centuries the most commonly and widely smoked drug plants. Cannabis, the source of marijuana and hashish, was introduced to eastern Africa from southern Asia, and dispersed widely within Africa mostly after 1500. In sub-Saharan Africa, cannabis was taken into ethnobotanies that included pipe smoking, a practice invented in Africa; in Asia, it had been consumed orally. Smoking significantly changes the drug pharmacologically, and the African innovation of smoking cannabis initiated the now-global practice. Africans developed diverse cultures of cannabis use, including Central African practices that circulated widely in the Atlantic world via slave trading. Tobacco was introduced to Africa from the Americas in the late 1500s. It gained rapid, widespread popularity, and Africans developed distinctive modes of tobacco production and use. Primary sources on these plants are predominantly from European observers, which limits historical knowledge because Europeans strongly favored tobacco and were mostly ignorant or disdainful of African cannabis uses. Both plants have for centuries been important subsistence crops. Tobacco was traded across the continent beginning in the 1600s; cannabis was less valuable but widely exchanged by the same century, and probably earlier. Both plants became cash crops under colonial regimes. Tobacco helped sustain mercantilist and slave-trade economies, became a focus of colonial and postcolonial economic development efforts, and remains economically important. Cannabis was outlawed across most of the continent by 1920. Africans resisted its prohibition, and cannabis production remains economically significant despite its continued illegality.

Chris S. Duvall
Department of Geography, University of New Mexico

 

[therevverend]

Nice map Mexcurandero, one of the ones I was looking for. I've heard that cannabis reached west Africa at a surprisingly late date, in some areas not until after WW2. If the pipes discovered in Sub-Saharan East Africa that have been dated to the pre-Columbian era prove authentic it wouldn't be that surprising it's went unnoticed. Considering how little interest and $ has been spent exploring the history of that part of the world. Here's a link to a bit in the Canna Chronicles about African earth pipes and smoking. It could be that earth bongs are a truly ancient way of smoking, considering all you need is a hole to burn the cannabis in and a hole to suck it out of. Very simple. The problem as always is lack of ancient documentation.

https://www.thecannachronicles.com/drinking-smoke-1921/

Those latest links from Montuno clear up quite a bit about cannabis in the Muslim period in Spain. It looks like the pipes come from the Calle Plateria in Murica.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calle_Platería_(Murcia)

They found the pipes digging through rubble under the streets and dredging the harbor, the same way this early collection of tobacco pipes I posted about earlier was found in Venice. The simplest and most likely solution was that they came from a later time then they estimated, since dating a pipe you pulled up from the bottom of a bay isn't easy. You get more interest and $ the older you can claim something is.

The bit about Muhammed IV is great, it's certainly 20th century drug war hyperbole.

Even Ibn Jatib tells an anecdote of the Nasrid period. 'In it Sahib al-Surta, a police lieutenant of Muhammad IV, boasted of having extirpated the vices of the capital before the sovereign, before which he indicated all precision the places and times in which the smokers of hashish, because he went every night to smoke with them.

Apparently there was a Drug War in medieval Spain. The evil cannabis users were smoked out by the Muslim version of the DEA, the cops following their villainous ruler and boss as he spent his nights travelling around the secret places the nefarious drug addicts gathered. It sounds like modern drug war propaganda, were there really laws against hashish in medieval Spain? It shows that cannabis users were looked down on by the average Spanish Moor, much like they've been looked down on throughout history. They're using it to smear a hated ruler, whether he really was a hashish eater is probably debatable. It's like saying Trump's a cokehead. There's also sources that say he was crazy, dressed poorly.

The poet mentioned, Ibn Jatid, is the most famous poet to come out of Al Andalus. His poetry was full of satire, verging on the licentious, aimed at religious experts and it looks like people in power. I'm thinking the original toned down the drug war stuff, was more about what a stoned incompetent loser the king was.

It's interesting to contrast the two differing viewpoints throughout history, the sketchy narcotic and the common friendly hemp. As I mentioned earlier hemp was a huge crop in medieval Spain, of huge economic importance. The earliest evidence of hemp cultivation in Spain comes from 3000-2200 BCE, supported by textile remains from Murcia at Abrigo de los Carboneros or 'shelter of the coal miners'. As well as deposits in the ancient necropolis site of Coll del Moro, about 6 km west of Tarragona in NE Spain dated to the Iberian Iron Age. (800 BCE-50 CE) In the case of the textiles from the coal miners' site, it is described as an elaborate bandage of woven 'canamo' (cannabis hemp) wrapped around the head of a female corpse found laid on planks of walnut wood and a mat of esparto grass. The strongest archeobotanial evidence of cannabis in ancient Iberia from northern Spain where a recent multidisciplinary study of aquatic sediments was undertaken at Lake Estanya and two other nearby lakes in the external range of the Mediterranean pre-Pyrenees. This research provides evidence of ancient hemp retting to extract fibers and indicates hemp cultivation started in this region in the 5th and lasted until the 9th century CE.

I got another message from the museum. It's good news, they want to help me.

Good Morning,

Don't worry, as I consider this to be a very interesting topic, so I'm happy to help you.

I inform you that I have transferred the information from your last email to the competent personnel. Once said staff provide me with an answer, I will write to you again.

I'll check out your link later Montuno it looks like interesting stuff. I've seen that title in most of the bibliographies so it's nice to finally have the source. The problem with much of what we're discussing is that it's conjecture, the actual records are quite slim. It's a big problem with cannabis history in general, the people who write the books have never been cannabis users and they rarely mention it unless it's for titillation, humor, or fear. It's colored by the expectations that the author's audience will have. The bit about the King and his drug czar is typical, I'm guessing the original poem is only a line or two.

At least hemp wasn't censored from the books until recently, but it was so common in ancient times as to be invisible. Still, for every reference to drug cannabis you get a hundred references to hemp cultivation. I don't hold out much hope for evidence of a drug crop of any great size materializing for medieval Spain, it would likely be like it is today. Individuals or small groups cultivating along with an import trade from Africa. Real history is made up of people doing stuff and it usually doesn't get recorded, how many Sufis grew how many plants in what years doesn't make a best-seller or good propaganda.

 

[Green Squall]

Not sure how historically correct History Channels "Vikings" show is, but in Season 1 Episode 8, they all get shitfaced on ale and eat shrooms, most like Psilocybe Semilanceata aka liberty caps.

 

[tobedetermined]

While not weed related, some interesting new science about Vikings . . .

"Now cutting-edge DNA sequencing of more than 400 Viking skeletons from archaeological sites scattered across Europe and Greenland will rewrite the history books as it has shown:

• Skeletons from famous Viking burial sites in Scotland were actually local people who could have taken on Viking identities and were buried as Vikings.
• Many Vikings actually had brown hair not blonde hair.
• Viking identity was not limited to people with Scandinavian genetic ancestry. The study shows the genetic history of Scandinavia was influenced by foreign genes from Asia and Southern Europe before the Viking Age.
• Early Viking Age raiding parties were an activity for locals and included close family members.
• The genetic legacy in the UK has left the population with up to six percent Viking DNA."

Source: phys.org World's largest DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren't all Scandinavian

 

[MangoMaitreya]

In my opinion, the modern distinction between hemp and drug variety cannabis may have been less pronounced in early periods. Many modern hemp strains have been selected to purposely exclude any psychoactive plants due to the modern stigma, but they would not have tried to intentionally eliminate the psychoactive population in the past, which could have resulted in some plants from the ancients' hemp crop being quite sticky...

 

[OilGuy]

I'm not totally sure but it wouldn't surprise me. An old high school buddy once told me that Vikings used to use psilocybin to improve their pain tolerance and higher-level reasoning skills before battle. I haven't researched it myself, but he swore he did the same before a football game and played better than ever. Felt the pain the next day though, haha.