Sebsi
More actions
Sebsi is the pipe in which kif, chopped cannabis usually mixed with tobacco, is smoked in Morocco: a long, thin wooden stem with a small bowl of fired clay at one end.[1]: 187[2]: 102 Smokers carried their kif in a leather pouch and took a series of small pipes at a sitting, often in company.[2]: 102[3] The geographer Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy traces the word to Turkish.[4] From the 1960s the pipe gave way to the joint.[5]: 56
The word
Harrell's dictionary of Moroccan Arabic (1966) has sebsi, plural sbasa, for a "kind of long Moroccan hashish pipe with a clay bowl".[6]: 134 The spelling varies. Budgett Meakin printed sibsi in 1902,[7]: 109 the anthropologist Roger Joseph sibsa in the Rif in the 1960s,[1]: 187 and Kenza Afsahi sebti.[2]: 102 Meakin called the bowl shkaf.[7]: 109 In Moroccan Arabic the word for the bowl of a pipe, usually a clay one, also means a fragment or broken piece of glass or pottery.[6]: 156
Chouvy counts sebsi among the Moroccan words for cannabis and its implements that come from Turkish and do not exist in classical Arabic, with tbisla, the plate on which a prized hashish of the same name was made. He suggests that both probably came to Morocco after Fez was taken by a Turkish and Wattasid force in 1554.[4]
Form
The stem is a thin rod of hard wood bored through its length. Joseph saw walnut stems in the Rif, made in two parts that fitted together, which he thought made the pipe easier to hide and gave a cooler smoke; a simple pipe cost 3 dirhams in the local markets, and tourists paid more.[1]: 187 One of the smokers Afsahi interviewed named olive or apricot wood, hard woods whose branches have a soft pith that can be pushed out with a spit.[2]: 102 Jamal Bellakhdar names the straight shoots of Jasminum fruticans, oleander and laurustinus, and calls the stems decorated.[8]: 113 Meakin's plate of 1902 shows two stems, one carved and filled with wax of different colours, the other cut in outline and stained green and yellow.[7]: 109
The bowl is small and made of fired clay. Smokers chose their pipes with care and ordered them from potters.[2]: 102 In Bellakhdar's account the tube should be neither too long nor too short, so that the smoke leaves its tar in it without cooling completely, and the bowl of good refractory clay, so that it can reach 800 to 1,000 °C.[8]: 113[2]: 102 The pipes were about 80 centimetres long at first and were later shortened for convenience and discretion.[2]: 102 In the Souss, people Afsahi interviewed remembered kif smoked in tiny pipes.[2]: 103
Smoking
Kif was smoked mixed with tobacco, hemp, in Meakin's words, "being seldom consumed alone".[7]: 109 Smokers kept it in a leather pouch, the metoui, and passed their pouches round so that others could taste their kif.[2]: 102 Water pipes were, Meakin wrote, "practically unknown" in Morocco;[7]: 109 Afsahi found the rgila used for kif more rarely, in closed and more select circles.[2]: 102
A pipe holds little. J. Bouquet, who wrote on North Africa for the United Nations in 1951, described moderate smokers content with a few pipes in the evening over coffee or tea before going to bed, and found that eight or ten pipes of takrouri (chopped tops) had to be smoked over one or two hours before euphoria set in.[3] The physician Ahmed Benabud reported in 1957 that the hospital patients he studied smoked twenty to thirty pipes a day on average, and forty to fifty was not unusual. He described smoking parties of five or six men in a closed room at the back of a café, a tailor's shop or a barber's.[9] Craftsmen such as tailors, bakers and cabinet-makers, day labourers and former soldiers smoked daily, as a stimulant for work.[2]: 102
The Sufi order of the Heddawa kept among the relics of its founder, Sidi Heddi, who died in 1805, a rosary and a great pipe called the dwaya: a wooden tube nearly two metres long with a fired clay bowl that held a pound of kif.[8]: 125
History
In 1866 Isidore Dukerley described the kif of Algeria, whose flowering tops, he wrote, were smoked "dans des pipes ad hoc", in pipes made for the purpose.[10]: 401 Under the protectorate the tobacco and kif monopoly sold kif ready mixed with tobacco. Smokers found it weak, and Guichard wrote in 1919 that it took 30 to 40 pipes, a whole 10-gram packet of the monopoly's kif costing 0.75 francs, to reach the effect a few pipes had given.[2]: 107
The dahir of 24 April 1954 prohibited kif in the French zone of Morocco, and with it all operations relating to the utensils and objects intended specially for its preparation and consumption.[11] During the 1960s and 1970s the sebsi gradually gave way to joints.[5]: 56
Law
Under the dahir of 21 May 1974 on drug addiction, the unlawful use of the substances and plants it covers is punishable by two months to one year in prison, a fine of 500 to 50,000 dirhams, or both; prosecution is not begun against a user who agrees to treatment.[12] Law no. 13-21 of 2021 allows the cultivation, processing, manufacture, trade, export and import of cannabis under licence, for medical, pharmaceutical and industrial purposes.[13] Tinasti, Afsahi and Mouna wrote in 2025 that the law "fails to address cannabis consumers".[5]: 53 In the north of Morocco, AFP reported in 2017, smoking kif is seen as part of local culture and is largely tolerated by the authorities.[14]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Joseph, Roger (1975). "Economic significance of Cannabis sativa in the Moroccan Rif". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 185–194. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.185.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Afsahi, Kenza (2017). "La construction socio-économique du cannabis au Maroc : le kif comme produit traditionnel, produit manufacturé et produit de contrebande". Tempo Social (in français). 29 (2): 99–114. doi:10.11606/0103-2070.ts.2017.125668.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bouquet, J. (1951). "Cannabis (concluded)". Bulletin on Narcotics (1). United Nations: 22–45.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud (2022). "Moroccan hashish as an example of a cannabis terroir product". GeoJournal. 88 (4): 3833–3850. doi:10.1007/s10708-022-10791-5.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Tinasti, Khalid; Afsahi, Kenza; Mouna, Khalid (2025). "Navigating cannabis regulation in Morocco: historical context, socio-economic impact, and policy gaps". Journal of Illicit Economies and Development. 7 (2): 53–60. doi:10.31389/jied.276.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Harrell, Richard S., ed. (1966). A Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic: Moroccan–English. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Meakin, Budgett (1902). The Moors: A Comprehensive Description. London: Swan Sonnenschein – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Bellakhdar, Jamal (2013). "L'histoire du chanvre au Maghreb". Hespéris-Tamuda. XLVIII: 107–141. ISSN 0018-1005.
- ↑ Benabud, Ahmed (1957). "Psycho-pathological aspects of the cannabis situation in Monaco [sic]: statistical data for 1956". Bulletin on Narcotics (4): 1–16.
- ↑ Dukerley, Isidore (1866). "Note sur les différences que présente avec le chanvre ordinaire la variété de cette espèce connue en Algérie sous les noms de Kif et de Tekrouri". Bulletin de la Société botanique de France (in français). 13: 401–405.
- ↑ "Dahir du 24 avril 1954 (20 chaabane 1373) portant prohibition du chanvre à kif" [Dahir of 24 April 1954 prohibiting kif hemp] (PDF). Bulletin Officiel (in français) (2167). Rabat: 640. 7 May 1954. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ Dahir portant loi no 1-73-282 du 21 mai 1974 (28 rebia II 1394) relatif à la répression de la toxicomanie et la prévention des toxicomanes et modifiant le dahir du 2 décembre 1922 [Dahir of 21 May 1974 on the repression of drug addiction and the prevention of addiction] (PDF) (Report) (in français). United Nations. 16 October 1975. E/NL.1975/32.
- ↑ "Loi n° 13-21 relative aux usages licites du cannabis" [Law no. 13-21 on the licit uses of cannabis] (PDF). Bulletin Officiel (in français) (7010) (Édition de traduction officielle ed.). Rabat. 5 August 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ "Lawlessness on cannabis attracts more tourists in Morocco". Africanews. Agence France-Presse. 4 December 2017.