Moroccan Hash

This is hash sold as Moroccan hash, one of the regional hash types. Morocco has grown cannabis for centuries, and Wikipedia says hash-making there is widely believed to have arrived at the peak of Western tourist influence.

How Morocco traditionally smokes it

Inside Morocco, hash is usually blended with tobacco before it is smoked, and Sensi Seeds says locals call it chira as well as hashish. The tobacco habit is older than the hash: Wikipedia describes the traditional smoke, kif, as unpollinated female flowers mixed with black tobacco, and notes that kif is also the Moroccan word for cannabis itself.

The classic pipe for either is the sebsi. Sensi Seeds pictures it with a long, slender stem and a bowl made of clay or copper.

Rif fields and beldia plants

Most of the country’s cannabis grows in the Rif, the northern region Sensi Seeds singles out, and Wikipedia calls cultivation there long established. The traditional local plant is beldia, an early type that, in Wikipedia’s description, manages on less water than imported seed and is sown from February.

From garden plots to a 1960s turn

Sensi Seeds passes on a belief that cannabis came with Arab traders, some time from the 7th to the 15th century. By Wikipedia’s account, 16th-century Moroccans kept it in garden plots and orchards for their own use, and two hundred years later the far northwest had become known for producing it.

Kif stayed the main way to use it, Wikipedia says, until a wave of young Western visitors arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. Hash made for export is believed to have gone into large-scale production during the 1960s, according to Wikipedia’s Hashish article.

The dry-sift family

Moroccan hash belongs to the dry-sift family in Sensi Seeds’ classification, which means trichome powder is knocked or sieved out of dried plants and then pressed. Our dry sift hash guide explains how that powder is graded.

Health Canada on hash and new users

On Health Canada‘s list of high-THC extracts, hash appears beside kief, wax and shatter, and its suggestion for new or occasional users is to avoid all four.