Mantineia

Mantineia
Mantinea
ActiveCannabis last recorded here in 2005
The village of Nestani below its limestone crag, on the edge of the Mantineian plain
⛶
Geography
Country	Greece
Province/State	Peloponnese
Coordinates	37.53, 22.35
Landscape
Area	1,500 km²
Terrain	Central Arcadia round Tripoli; approximately Tripoli municipality
Climate
Köppen class (computed)	Csa (temperate, dry summer, hot summer)
Elevation (computed)	864 m (655–1,106 m)
Closest climate matches	Beni Ahmed Imoukzan (appellation) – 80 Targuist – 79 Beni Bounsar (appellation) – 79 Ghomara – 79 Ketama – 79
Computed from CHELSA V2.1 (1981–2010), the Köppen–Geiger map of Beck et al. (1991–2020) and GMTED2010 (1 km) · About these figures
Growing history
Earlier names	province of Mantineia
Dated accessions	2005
Documentation
Appellations	0
Accessions	2
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Year at a glance (computed)

Point

37.53° N, 22.35° E

Elevation used

864 m (655–1,106 m) computed, GMTED2010 (1 km), its whole area

Köppen class

Csa

Clock

UTC+2, UTC+3 Apr–Oct

Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Day and night
First light	07:15	06:54	06:17	06:29	05:52	05:37	05:51	06:18	06:46	07:12	06:42	07:09
Sunrise	07:44	07:21	06:43	06:56	06:21	06:09	06:21	06:46	07:12	07:38	07:10	07:38
Sunset	17:35	18:09	18:37	20:05	20:32	20:53	20:52	20:24	19:40	18:54	17:21	17:14
Last light	18:03	18:36	19:04	20:32	21:01	21:24	21:22	20:52	20:06	19:21	17:49	17:43
Daylighth	9h51	10h48	11h55	13h09	14h10	14h44	14h31	13h38	12h28	11h16	10h10	9h35
Changemin/day	+1.3	+2.2	+2.4	+2.3	+1.7	+0.4	−1.2	−2.1	−2.4	−2.3	−1.8	−0.4
Temperature
Avg daily high°C	7	8	11	15	20	26	28	28	24	19	13	8
Avg daily low°C	−1	−1	1	4	8	13	15	15	12	8	4	1
Swing°C	8	9	10	11	12	13	13	13	12	10	9	8
Water and light
Rainmm	98	84	69	50	34	18	16	18	30	65	121	114
VPDkPa	0.3	0.3	0.4	0.6	0.8	1.2	1.4	1.3	1.0	0.7	0.4	0.3
Sunlightmol/m²/d	17	24	33	43	49	55	54	49	39	28	18	15
Field cycle
Cycle

• Planting
• Growing
• Harvest
• Not recorded / off season

From the one accession in this growing area that records a cycle: harvest early October–mid October. It records no planting.

Day and night computed from the sun's position on the 15th of each month; climate normals 1981–2010 from CHELSA V2.1 · About these figures

Mantineia is a landrace cannabis growing area in Arcadia, in the Peloponnese of Greece, drawn on the municipality of Tripoli. The province of Mantineia was the stronghold of Greek hashish growing until cultivation was banned in 1920: in 1911 it produced more than 90 per cent of the country's crop.^: 366 In October 2024 police found a plantation of 1,253 cannabis plants in a forested farming area of Tripoli municipality.

Hashish growing, 1870s–1920

In 1887 the mayor of Orchomenus reported to the government that hashish growing had reached Orchomenus ten years earlier from the surrounding boroughs of Mantinea. Egyptians, Cypriots and other immigrants from the East had made trial plantings in those boroughs and taught the growing and processing of the crop.^: 313–314 Hashish leaf then sold for 50 to 100 lepta an oka and the powder for 10 to 20 drachmas an oka; abroad it fetched three or four times the price.^: 314

The province of Mantineia remained the stronghold of the crop after its introduction in the north-east Peloponnese. The area under hashish in the province rose from 7,400 stremmata in 1887 to 16,500 in 1911, out of almost 19,000 in the whole country. In 1911 Greece produced 1,784 tonnes, more than 90 per cent of it in the province.^: 366 Early in the 20th century there were 150 hashish "factories" round Tripoli, by the count of a British observer.^: 365

In Greece the hashish crop was harvested at the end of summer, and the resin was separated from the dried plants in winter, when the air was cold and dry, by threshing, rubbing, sieving or centrifuging. In some growing districts the stores and "factories" employed 80 to 100 workers through the winter. The powder was packed in cloth sacks and pressed into slabs of one or half an oka (1,282 or 641 grams), which often carried the producer's name and mark.^: 365–366

The 1906 tax

Egypt, which banned hashish, pressed Greece during the negotiation of their trade conventions of 1884, 1895 and 1906 to ban the growing of the crop, offering lower duties on Greek tobacco in return.^{: 363–364, 367–368} In 1906 the government of Georgios Theotokis instead taxed the crop at eight drachmas a stremma and banned its export to Egypt (Law 3123/1906). Growers held a rally in Arcadia on 31 May 1906, and in early June the people of the provinces of Mantineia and Tripoli telegraphed Parliament asking that that year's sowing and the existing stocks of hashish be exempted. The member of Parliament for Mantineia, Ioannis Bakopoulos, argued that the province should not be ruined by the tax. The growers' representatives won one amendment: the revenue from the tax and from forfeited export guarantees was reserved for public works in the hashish-growing districts, such as roads and the draining of marshes.^{: 366, 370–371}

J. Bouquet wrote in the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics in 1951 that until "some thirty years ago" Turkey and Greece had been the main sources of the hashish in the illicit trade. In his account the resin that reached Egypt was Turkish and Greek, with some Indian charas, and the sieved resin that French North Africa called chira^: 111–113 came mainly from Greece.

The end of legal growing

During the First World War growers turned to cereals and exports became difficult. The area under the crop in Greece fell from 18,949 stremmata in 1911 to 3,741 in 1915, and from 1916 the crop no longer appears in the annual agricultural statistics. About 3,000 stremmata were still recorded in 1919.^{: 367, 372–373} Law 2107/1920 banned the growing, trade and use of hashish throughout Greece. The law kept the provision that directed fines to public works in the growing districts, and growers who had sown before Parliament began to debate it could be compensated for their costs. By 1925 tobacco growing in Arcadia had expanded since the ban. Illegal plantings still came to light in the following years, but in general the growers turned to other crops or moved their business to neighbouring countries.^: 373–374

Stefanis, Ballas and Madianou date an earlier prohibition to a circular of the Department of the Interior of 27 March 1890, which banned the import, growing and use of hashish and remained in force until 1920.^: 314 Bouquet dates the prohibition of growing to 1920.

The growers of Tripoli waited years for their compensation. In 1928 they petitioned the League of Nations to press the Greek state to keep its commitments, so that they could hand over their unsold stocks, and in 1929 they asked the President of the Republic, Pavlos Kountouriotis, to allow growing again. Law 5539/1932, on the state monopoly of narcotic drugs, set a fine of 80,000 drachmas for each kilogram of hashish and at least six months' imprisonment for anyone growing the plant. Compensation for the holders of stocks was settled by a law of 1939.^: 374–375

Cultivation since 2000

In October 2024 the Tripoli security police found cannabis growing on 35 stremmata in a hard-to-reach farming and forest area of Tripoli municipality. The 1,253 plants stood up to about 3.5 metres tall.

Seed lots

The Real Seed Company sells Arcadian, a line whose seed, by the company's account, came from Delicorganic and was collected around Mantineia in 2005. The company writes that the line may represent kannàvi, the drug-type cannabis that it says was grown on a large scale around Mantineia for more than 60 years.

Accessions

Accession ID	Name	Collected
DEL-GRC-ARC-0120050001	Arcadian General Population 2005	2005
RSC-GRC-ARC-0120050001	2005 RSC Arcadian IBL	2005

Recent news

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See also

• Argolis
• Greece
• Hashish
• Messenia