Kalat

Kalat
ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later
⛶
Geography
Country	Pakistan
Province/State	Balochistan
District	Kalat District
Coordinates	29.03, 66.59
Landscape
Area	1,400 km²
Terrain	Upland valleys of Kalat and Mangochar tehsils; approximately Kalat District, less its bare and sparsely vegetated ground
Growing history
Documentation
Appellations	0
Accessions	0
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Kalat is a landrace cannabis growing area in Kalat District, in central Balochistan, Pakistan. In 1894 the head clerk of the political agent at Kalat told the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission that a little hemp was grown in Kalat territory. The Kalat State gazetteer of 1907 records bhang grown on irrigated land at Kalat and at the nearby village of Iskalku, with charas made from it.^{: 91, 201} In 2023 and 2025 the district administration, the Levies, the Frontier Corps and the Anti-Narcotics Force destroyed standing crops of bhang (cannabis) at Pandran, Khadi and in the Mangochar sub-division.

Hemp in the Kalat State

Answering the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission in 1894, Babu Kedar Nath, head clerk to the political agent at Kalat, said the plant did not grow wild in the Bolan Pass and was not known to grow wild in Baluchistan. None was cultivated in the Bolan Pass, he said, "but a little in Kalat territory". The Commission's report summarised the political agent's statement that the plant was not cultivated on land under his administration but that "an insignificant amount is grown in the territory of the Khan of Kalat".

In the Sarawan volume of the Baluchistan District Gazetteer, one of three on the Kalat State, bhang is an autumn crop grown on irrigated land at Kalat, Iskalku and Mastung. The volume calls the cultivation small, except at Pringabad in Mastung, "the only place at which it is grown otherwise than for domestic use". The land was ploughed twice and watered before the seed was sown broadcast in February and March. Male plants were taken out when the crop was about waist high, since the gazetteer holds that the female flowers and twigs would otherwise fail to become charged with the narcotic. The crop was reaped in June and July, when the female plants began to lose their leaves, dried for four or five days and beaten with a stick. Charas was made from the leaves and fruit.^: 91 In Kalat the revenue on bhang was a special rate of one quarter of the crop, levied even where it was grown on revenue-free land.^: 184

The same volume, in its account of the excise, says that bhang and charas were local products, the plant "being cultivated and the latter manufactured in fairly large quantities" at Kalat, Iskalku and Mastung. The charas of Iskalku had a great local reputation. Charas and bhang were exported by individuals in small quantities to Quetta-Pishin, Jhalawan and Kachhi.^: 201 The reaped female plants were rubbed between two goat-hair carpets and the dust shaken off: the first dust gave the best charas, called rup, the second tahgalim and the third an inferior grade the gazetteer calls ganja. The dust was melted in a copper vessel and made into small balls. At Iskalku, "where the bhang plants make very strong growth", a fourth shaking gave a very inferior grade, khaka; the leaves and seed left over were drunk under the name bhang. Only very wealthy people used majun, made from hemp leaves boiled with ghi, pistachios, almonds, coconut, cardamoms and other spices.^: 202

Iskalku lies about 7 miles (11 km) east of Kalat, at the foot of the Harboi hills. In the gazetteer's account its springs and karez water terraced fields and orchards, its soil yields good crops including tobacco and hemp. The charas prepared from hemp grown there "is considered especially good".^: 225

Reports of cultivation since 2023

In September 2023 the Kalat Levies destroyed standing crops of bhang on several acres in the Pandran area. Early in October the in-charge of the Levies post at Pandran destroyed a ready crop of bhang at Khadi. In the middle of the month the Frontier Corps, the Levies and the Anti-Narcotics Force, under the deputy commissioner, Hafiz Muhammad Qasim Kakar, destroyed a crop of bhang spread over several acres in the Mangochar area.

On 1 September 2025 Express Urdu reported that the district administration, on the orders of the commissioner of the Kalat Division, Tufail Baloch, and the deputy commissioner, Jameel Baloch, had destroyed bhang grown on more than 32 acres at Zard Ghulam Jan, Zard Abdullah and other places in the Mangochar sub-division. The crop was destroyed with heavy machinery, mechanical and chemical spraying and local methods, by a force that included the Frontier Corps, the excise department, the Anti-Narcotics Force and the Mangochar Levies.

Accessions

No accessions documented yet.

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See also

• Charas
• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission
• Loralai
• Pakistan