This article is the first of a new series focused on the most important landraces of cannabis. All the thousands of strains of cannabis we use today are derived from a relatively limited number of landraces, which have been used for medicinal, religious and recreational purposes during centuries. Cannabis originated in central Asia, and from there it has spread to all corners of the world. Sometimes helped by nature, sometimes by man, cannabis seeds have conquered inimmaginable distances, spreading their genetics, adapting to new environments, changing their carachteristics, and therefore resulting in countless combinations. Some of these combinations stabilized themselves through imbreeding in particular environments, and resulted in landraces. Some of these landraces have preserved themselves, isolated in remote areas of the planet with no contact with other cannabis strains for long periods of time.
My name is Franco, my passion is cannabis, and my work is strain-hunting for Green House Seed Company.
And this month I will tell you the history of:
Moroccan Kif
It is very difficult to identify the period when cannabis first made its appearance in Nort Africa and in the present region of Morocco. Sure fact is that starting 8000 BC the region was inhabited by Berbers, divided in several ethnic groups. The area was much more fertile and green compared to the present, especially in the mountain ranges closer to the Mediterranean sea, and the Berbers developed a very advanced agricultural society. One of the Berbers groups, called Riffians, established the center of their civilization in the mountains of the present Rif, in Northern Morocco. There are no references to the cannabis plant in the early Berber civilization, at least not that we know of.
But around 1000 BC the Phoenicians started to found trading posts and cities along the coast. One of the theories about the arrival of the cannabis plant in the Rif mountains of Morocco is that the Phoenicians introduced the seeds, brought from central Asia during the travels on the way to European ports. The Phoenicians were experienced sailors and cunny traders; they dominated the Mediterranean for centuries, until they were defeated by the Romans in 146 BC. During both the Phoenician and the Roman colonization, the Berbers of the Rif were relatively free because no army dared to try defeating them in their own rugged mountains. They cultivated the cannabis plant for medicinal purposes, and they developed several ways to extract the resin of the plant transforming it into hashish. It is extremely difficult to give dates to this process, but by the time the Roman empire was defeated by the barbaric tribe of the Vandals the production and use of hashish in the Rif region were already known throughout North Africa, parts of Asia and Europe. The domination of the Vandals lasted short: the region passed under Byzantine control in the 6th century AD, and then under Arab domination, which extended until well into the middle ages. The Arabs rapidly and brutally converted most of the Rif population to Islam, but they could not eradicate the cannabis cultivation or the hashish making. As a matter of facts, they started allowing it, because they wanted to trade it back to Asia as a medicine and a recreational drug.
In the 15th century many Moors, exhiled from Spain, moved into the Rif region, and a terrible period of war between Spain, Portugal and Morocco begun for the domination of the area. The conflict between Spain and Morocco lasted well into the 20th century. In the 1920s a strong guerrilla movement developed in the Rif, under leader Abd El Krim, defeated the Spanish Army under general Silvestre, and proclaimed the Independent Republic of the Rif. By then, an large section of the European high society already was using Moroccan hashish on a regular basis, more as a pharmaceutical product than a recreational drug. In 1926 joint Spanish and French troops attacked the rebels of the Rif, and that was the end of the Rif Republic. It has been speculated that one of the reasons why the Spanish and French troops invaded the Rif in the first place was to control the profits from the hashish trade.
In 1956 Morocco became an independent country and the Rif was annexed as a region, under the kingdom of Mohammed V. What happened next, is visible now: Moroccan hashish is exported to a large number of countries worldwide, and the production is estimated at 700.000 tons per year, or half of the entire world’s production.
There are different versions of how this happened, and it is virtually impossible to trace back the truth. According to some of the tales one can hear in the Rif, the first ruler of the independent Morocco, King Mohammed V, secretly allowed the people of the Rif to grow cannabis and to produce hashish. This was a sort of tribute paid in exchange for their help fighting for Morocco’s independence from France and Spain. According to others it was his son, Hassan II, who first came to an agreement with the tribsmen and later on formalized it on a secret official paper.
In any case, until the rule of the present king Mohammed VI the production of hashish was tolerated and practically legal. In the 1980s and mostly in the 1990s, when the hashish trade reached the previously unseen levels of over 1.000.000 tons produced per year, the United States and the European Union started funding government repression and eradication programs. This effort to try to contain the amount of hashish being produced and exported partially succeeded, restricting the area of production to some extent, and pushing farmers to grow deeper into the inhabited valleys and higher up the mountains.
At the source of all this hashish there is a very special cannabis plant: the Kif, or “Kifiâ€, as it is often called in the Rif.
When cannabis was first introduced in Morocco, it must have been a very different plant than the one now used to produce the famous Moroccan hashish. But over the centuries, the plant had to adapt to a very particular climate, and to a very specific desertification process that affected the region and that continues today. For centuries the plants had to cope with a very dry summer, and extremely hot temperatures (over 40 degrees Celsius) in the months of July, August and September. In the spring months this region was extremely fertile, only to see drought set inb every summer. This particularly hostile environment pushed the plants to become smaller, shorter, and to start flowering earlier, regardless of the hours of photoperiod.
Over 2000 years and more, the plant has slowly but steadily adapted to earlier flowering, and today it starts as early as end May or beginning of June. The buds start forming during the weeks in which the hours of light are growing towards the summer solstice of 21 June. Then they keep flowering faster and faster as the hours of light start falling again, and by mid July they are ready to harvest. This is a genetic evolution that confirms the extremely versatile carachter of the cannabis plant. The most interesting part of the evolution process is not the morphology steps towards a shorter stalk or a smaller leaf surface, but the end of the normally indivisible link between light period and flowering. The plants adapted to a short season by inducing flowering earlier than they should have done, a process requiring complex production and interaction of several hormones.
The result of all this work of man and nature that lasted for 2000 years is the Kif plant, a short autoflowering landrace, used to produce some of the finest hashish in the world. The leaves are very small, with short and thin leaflets, non overlapping or slightly overlapping in certain individuals. The branching is very limited, also due to the planting techniques adopted in the area.
Today the entire Rif is dotted with large cannabis plantations, but only one area of the mountain range preserves the original Kif genetics. In several other areas seeds from other parts of the world have been purposely imported to improve the quality and quantity of the hashish, and to add new flavors and textures. During the 1980s several cannabis tourists brought seeds during their travels, and in the early 1990s the people of the Rif themselves traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan with the intention to bring back seeds from indica genetics, worldwide renowed for their hashish-making properties. So starting in 1995-1996 the production of the Moroccan hashish has been split into the so calld “Pakiâ€, coming from crossed genetics and imported plants mixed with the local Kif, and the “Polm†made from the pure original Moroccan autoflowering landrace. On the international markets the “Paki†hashish has higher prices, because it’s stronger and creamier. Because of this, the regions where the original landrace is preserved are becoming smaller and smaller, as more farmers every year chose for more profitable crops. But on the other side, nature is fighting to keep the landrace going: every year, in the “Paki†fields mixed with local landrace the pollen from the Kif landrace flyes over the “intruding†females, and the autoflowering trait seems to be extremely dominant. Looking around in many of the “Paki†fields it is very clear that all the imported genetics tend to become autoflowering over a period of a few years. The explanation to the strenght of the autoflowering trait is probably in the effort made by the genetics during the adaptation process that lasted centuries.
Moroccan Kif is a very special landrace, a unique development of the cannabis plant that produces connoisseur quality hashish, and is itself a very mild but pleasant smoke. One to be preserved with great care.
Next month we will travel South on the African continent, and explore the history behind one of the most famous sativas: the Malawi Gold.
Franco – Green House Seed Co.
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