Talk:Chitral
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Chitral treats Chitral as a cannabis growing area of the Hindu Kush growing region: its geography, its place on the charas trade routes under British rule, and the local uses of the plant. The valley named for the area's seed collections is treated at Yarkhun Valley (appellation).
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Discussion
How the border is drawn
- Since October 2026 the map line leaves out ground above 4,000 m (SRTM elevation) and land that ESA WorldCover 2021 maps as bare or sparse vegetation, permanent snow and ice, or open water at its outer edge only: land of those kinds that the kept ground encloses is inside, pieces less than 5 km apart are joined, and pieces under 25 km² with no accession in them are left out. About 7,270 km² of the 14,860 km² inside Upper and Lower Chitral districts are inside the line.
Sources
- Geography. Allan's Encyclopaedia Iranica entry (1991) and the 2018 Chitral Today report of the new district.
- History. The 1926 and 1930 figures are India's annual reports as quoted in "The surprising extinction of the charas traffic" (Bulletin on Narcotics, 1953); they concern Chitral as a transit route, not as a place of cultivation. The 1928 military gazetteer lists charas among imports from Badakhshan.
- Uses. Ullah and Badshah (2024) record the name bong and the feeding of dried cannabis to polo horses in Lotkuh.
Other reports
- Kifayatullah and colleagues (2017), on the plants of Mulkhow valley, which records Cannabis sativa under the name bong with its uses. The journal's standing could not be established, so it is left out.
- A reader's comment under a 2015 Dawn article that calls the Yarkhun the source of the best Chitrali hashish is not a source.
Place in the hierarchy
Chitral is a growing area of the Hindu Kush growing region. Erwin Grötzbach (Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2003) counts Chitral in the eastern Hindu Kush, and Nigel Allan (Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1991) describes the Chitral river as draining the eastern Hindu Kush in the north and a spur of the Hindu Raj on the south and east. The area keeps its border, Upper and Lower Chitral districts. The Yarkhun Valley, named for the area's seed collections, is an appellation within it.