Beqaa Valley
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| Beqaa Valley | |
|---|---|
| Bekaa Valley, Békaa, al-Biqāʿ | |
| ActiveCannabis last recorded here in 2026 | |
| |
| Harvested fields and grazing sheep on the floor of the Beqaa Valley near Ammiq | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Lebanon |
| Province/State | Baalbek-Hermel Governorate, Beqaa Governorate |
| Districts | Baalbek District, Hermel District, Zahle District, West Beqaa District, Rashaya District |
| Coordinates | 34.00, 36.14 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 4,200 km² |
| Terrain | A broad valley running north-east to south-west between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, drained by the Litani and the Orontes, with fields on the valley floor and in the mountains round it; approximately Baalbek-Hermel and Beqaa governorates |
| Climate | |
| Climate Type | Drier than the coast, with a wider range of temperature |
| Growing history | |
| Dated accessions | 2008 |
| Dated news reports | 2026 |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 1 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Beqaa Valley (also Bekaa Valley; Arabic al-Biqāʿ) is a landrace cannabis growing area in eastern Lebanon, in the valley between the Lebanon Mountains and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.[1] In 1933 cannabis was grown in secret for hashish round Zahle and Ras Baalbek.[2] Kenza Afsahi and Salem Darwich, who have done fieldwork in the valley since 1995, count it among the traditional areas of cannabis cultivation; in the 1960s and 1970s Lebanon became a major producer of hashish for export.[3] In October 2026 the Lebanese Army destroyed about 60 dunums of cannabis at Al-Kanisa, in Baalbek District.[4]
Geography
Zahle and Baalbek lie on the floor of a valley some 120 km long, which follows the Litani and Orontes rivers from south-west to north-east. Nearly half of Lebanon's arable land is in the valley. The valley is farmed less intensively than the coast, being drier and more extreme in temperature. Its crops include grain, fruit and vegetables.[1]
P. Lys found in 1933 that the western face of the Lebanon range suited cannabis less, because of the humid winds from the sea. E. Safi, in a study of Lebanese cannabis published in 1935, found that hemp grown on the plains gradually lost its active resin; R. J. Bouquet, summarising both in the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics in 1950, added that hashish generally needs some altitude.[2] A grower at Yammoune said in 2019 that the village's cannabis was watered once every ten days with the same drinking water as its other crops. The village, he added, is ringed by Lebanon's highest mountains, Sannine, Makmel and Qornet es-Saouda among them.[5]
Hashish in the 1930s
In 1933 cannabis was grown clandestinely in Lebanon, particularly round Zahle and Ras Baalbek and even at Homs in Syria. P. Lys described four grades of Lebanese hashish. The first, Hashish Zahra or Zahret el Kolch, was brown; the second, Zahret el Assa, was light brown. The third and fourth were greenish-yellow or green, less coherent and much more crumbly.[2]
In the Levant hashish was made by threshing the dried plants so that the resin fell as dust onto cloth. In Lebanon, Syria and Asia Minor the powder was packed in cloth or skin bags, steamed over boiling water and pressed into a hard block.[2]
Growing and sieving
During the 2019 harvest at Yammoune, workers picked up buds that had been cut the week before and left to dry in the sun. Many growers at Yammoune had small workshops under their houses, where the dried plants were sifted several times and the resin graded by the size of the sieve; the oilier the resin paste, the better the grade. One grower put the yield at seven to eight kilograms of resin to the dunum, depending on the year. He said that each block sent abroad was stamped with a flower. He called the village's cannabis zahret el-jabal, "flower of the mountain".[5]
Hala Al Ahmadieh interviewed 25 cannabis farmers, most of them small or medium growers, in villages of West Baalbek and the Hermel area, for a thesis at the American University of Beirut in 2022.[6]: 20 The farmers said that the crop, once grown with little more than water, now needed irrigation and fertiliser to keep its yield. For the area's limited water they competed with the growers of legal crops.[6]: 29
Extent and eradication
In April 2015 General Ghassan Chamseddine, head of the narcotics bureau of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces, told L'Orient-Le Jour that about 35,000 dunums (3,500 hectares) of cannabis were planted each year in the middle and northern Bekaa, in Baalbek and Hermel districts and in parts of the Bsharri and Danniyeh districts. He said the crop had not been destroyed since 2012 and put the average harvest at about 100 tonnes. Hassan Makhlouf, an agronomist from Baalbek-Hermel and a former director of the crop-substitution programme, estimated the area planted in 2014 at no less than 10,000 hectares.[7]
Enforced eradication held back cultivation only for a short time, and growing resumed in Lebanon in a time of conflict.[3] By the account of Patricia Khoder of L'Orient-Le Jour, the authorities stopped destroying fields when refugees from Syria began arriving in the valley, so as not to provoke protests in the poor communities hosting them. By 2019 fields were planted and watered openly, beside main roads and near army checkpoints. Growers at Yammoune and Deir el-Ahmar said that prices had fallen to between 80 and 100 US dollars a kilogram.[5] A farmer told Al Ahmadieh that the yearly raids on the valley's fields had ended in 2012.[6]: 32
The army destroyed fields again in October 2026. At Al-Kanisa an army unit destroyed about 60 dunums of cannabis, detained 17 Syrian workers and seized the equipment used to harvest it.[4] At Dar al-Wasaa, also in Baalbek District, the army destroyed 14 tents used to grow cannabis.[8]
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Collected |
|---|---|---|
| RSC-LBN-UNK-0120080001 | Lebanese Reproduction 2008 |
The Real Seed Company sells a Lebanese line which, it says, was collected at source in the valley from the 2008 harvest and is grown for sieved hashish.[9]
Recent news
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Bekaa valley". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Bouquet, R. J. (1950). "Cannabis". Bulletin on Narcotics (4). United Nations: 14–30.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Afsahi, Kenza; Darwich, Salem (May 2016). "Hashish in Morocco and Lebanon: A comparative study". International Journal of Drug Policy. 31: 190–198. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.02.024. PMID 27178873.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "الجيش يتلف حوالي 60 دنمًا من حشيشة الكيف المزروعة في بلدة الكنيسة – بعلبك ويوقف 17 عاملًا فيها" [The army destroys about 60 dunums of cannabis planted in the town of al-Kanisa, Baalbek, and detains 17 workers there] (Press release) (in العربية). Lebanese Army Command, Directorate of Orientation. 10 October 2026. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Khoder, Patricia (29 September 2019). "In Lebanon, producers of hashish are victims… of overproduction". L'Orient Today. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Al Ahmadieh, Hala Amer (September 2022). Negotiating Agrarian Crisis in the Lebanese Margins: The Case of Baalbek-Hermel Farmers (MSc thesis). American University of Beirut. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ El-Hage, Anne-Marie (14 April 2015). "Les superficies plantées : 3 500 à 10 000 hectares". L'Orient-Le Jour (in français). Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ "Lebanese Army Seizes a Quantity of Drugs, Destroys 14 Tents Used for Marijuana Cultivation, and Arrests 136 Syrians" (Press release). Lebanese Army Command, Directorate of Orientation. 13 October 2026. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ "Lebanese". The Real Seed Company. Retrieved 24 September 2026.