Kashgar
More actions
| Kashgar | |
|---|---|
| Kashi (喀什); Kashghar | |
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Southern Xinjiang |
| Geography | |
| Country | China |
| Province/State | Xinjiang |
| Coordinates | 39.47, 75.99 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 18,600 km² |
| Terrain | Oasis farmland at the western end of the Tarim Basin; approximately Kashgar City and the counties of Shufu, Shule, Yengisar, Peyziwat and Yopurga |
| Climate | |
| Climate Type | Arid |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | Kashghar; Yengi Hissar (Yangi Hissar) |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Kashgar is a cannabis growing area of the oasis round the city of Kashgar, at the western end of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, China. It is part of the Southern Xinjiang growing region, and is drawn on Kashgar City and the counties of Shufu, Shule, Yengisar, Peyziwat and Yopurga. In 1881 the British Joint Commissioner in Ladakh named Kashgar and Yengi Hissar among the places that produced the charas brought into India by the Ladakh road, and judged the charas of Yengi Hissar the best of Eastern Turkestan.[1] The psychiatrists Hu Hongxing, Zhang Guanbai and Hao Wei wrote in 2015 that Yengisar and Yopurga were among the main producing counties of Xinjiang's cannabis smoking-mixture,[2] and in 2015 the police of Kashgar Prefecture found cannabis planted among maize in Peyziwat County.[3]
Charas in the nineteenth century
The Joint Commissioner's letter of 1881, as the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission summarised it, held the charas of Eastern Turkestan inferior to that of Bukhara, which reached India through Kabul. The charas of Yengi Hissar, the best of the kinds produced in Eastern Turkestan, was often sent through Kokand to Bukhara, imported into India with the Bukhara charas and sold under that name.[1] J. E. T. Aitchison, writing in 1874, placed the very finest charas at Karmak, near Yangi Hissar, and wrote that all of it went as balls to Bukhara and Kokand.[4]: 52 Hermann Kreutzmann names Khan-Arik, between Yarkand and Kashgar, as a source of charas of high quality.[5]: 80
H. W. Bellew, who came to Kashgar with the British embassy of 1873–74, wrote that opium and hemp were then under no legal restriction. One of the Turkish officers told him that the people he had met at Kashgar stupefied themselves with these drugs.[6]: 383
The end of the export
Kreutzmann describes Kashgar and Yarkand as the centres of the entrepôt trade with Afghanistan, Kashmir and British India; Kashgar was also the northernmost consulate of British India.[5]: 78–79 The government of India's annual report for 1934 said that the charas smuggled into India across the Peshawar border was obtained by the traffickers from Kashgar, and that the illicit trade was centred in Bajaur, to which it came from Chinese Turkistan through Afghan territory.[7] In January 1936 the head of the Kashgar administration announced in a speech that the sale and export of opium, charas and wine were prohibited from that day. A report of a few days earlier said that proclamations had been posted setting the punishment at three years' imprisonment and a fine of 300 dollars, and death for a second offence. Kreutzmann writes that with these measures the officially sanctioned trade in charas and opium came to an end.[5]: 82–83
Since 1949
Hu, Zhang and Hao write that Kashgar had many smokers of the smoking-mixture máyān (麻烟, "hemp smoke") in the period when cannabis spread through Xinjiang, and that in the 1950s and 1960s cannabis was still planted in large quantities at Kashgar and Yengisar, among other places, where the plant could be seen everywhere. In their account of 2015 Yengisar and Yopurga are among the main producing counties of máyān.[2]
According to the Kashgar police, thirteen people banded together from May 2015 at remote places in Peyziwat County, among them Kizilsu township and the Xikeer farm. Leasing large maize fields as cover, they planted cannabis among the maize and hired workers to carry and process the drug. By late November the police had arrested the thirteen, closed five places where the drug was made, and seized 6.05 tonnes of semi-finished cannabis product and a quantity of plants. China National Radio, reporting the case, added that the police of Xinjiang had several times found large cases of cannabis growing and trafficking in the four prefectures of southern Xinjiang.[3]
Herbarium specimens
The Central Asian mission of Paul Pelliot and Louis Vaillant collected the herbarium sheet Pelliot 121 (1906) at Kashgar in October 1906. Its label gives the date, the place and the flower colour.[8]
Appellations
No appellation pages exist for this growing area yet.
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No news items are recorded for this growing area yet.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. VII, "Trade and movement of the hemp drugs", paras. 293–295, pp. 111–112 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hu, Hongxing; Zhang, Guanbai; Hao, Wei (2015). 中国新疆大麻使用及相关问题的历史与现状 [History and current status of cannabis use and related problems in Xinjiang, China]. 中国药物依赖性杂志 [Chinese Journal of Drug Dependence] (in 中文) (4): 241–243, 287. ISSN 1007-9718. Retrieved 3 October 2026 – via 杜新忠戒毒网.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 张孝成; 崔岱 (27 November 2015). 新疆查获最大大麻制毒案件 交货毒品6吨 [Xinjiang uncovers its largest cannabis drug-making case: six tonnes seized]. 央广网 (in 中文). Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ Aitchison, J. E. T. (1874). Hand-book of the Trade Products of Leh, with the Statistics of the Trade, from 1867 to 1872 Inclusive (PDF). Calcutta: Wyman & Co. – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Kreutzmann, Hermann (2026). "Hashish and opium trade along the roads to Kashgar and Yarkand". In Mirsultan, Aysima; Moll-Murata, Christine (eds.). Transactions in Xinjiang: Cultural, Socio-Economic, and Historical Sources on the Chinese Western Regions (1750–1976). Fachinformationsdienst (FID) Asien. pp. 77–85. doi:10.48796/20260409-006.
- ↑ Bellew, H. W. (1875). Kashmir and Kashghar: A Narrative of the Journey of the Embassy to Kashghar in 1873–74 (PDF). London: Trübner & Co. – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ United Nations Secretariat (1953). "The surprising extinction of the charas traffic". Bulletin on Narcotics (1). United Nations: 1–7.
- ↑ "Occurrence 731738819: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 13 October 2026.