Majoun
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| Kind | Sweet Traditional medicine |
|---|---|
| Part of the plant | Leaf Flower Resin |
| Also called | majum majun majoon maagoon ma'agun ma'jun maajoun madjoen madjun magoon maju |
| Country | India Egypt Morocco Indonesia |
|---|---|
| Recorded in | Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563) Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Over het voorkomen en het gebruik van Indische hennep in Ned.-Indië (Boorsma 1918) |
| First recorded | 1563[1]: 55–56 |
| Still made | Yes |
Majoun is a confection of cannabis cooked with sugar or honey, fat and spices and eaten as small cakes, pellets or a powder. Under the names maju, majum, maagoon, ma'agun, madjoen and ma'jûn it is recorded in India from the 16th century, in Egypt from the 1830s, in the Netherlands Indies in the 1910s and in Morocco. In India the drug in it was usually bhang or ganja; in Egypt and Morocco it was hashish. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission wrote in 1894 that majum was the commonest of the hemp sweetmeats and "known by that name from one end of India to the other".[2]: 158
Name
The ethnopharmacologist Jamal Bellakhdar glosses the Moroccan ma'jûn as "pâte, confiture" (paste, jam) and calls it an electuary.[3]: 112 The word was not reserved for cannabis. In the Netherlands Indies the pharmacologist Willem Boorsma noted in 1918 that madjoen was a name given in general to supposed aphrodisiacs.[4]: 330
Writing for the UN's Bulletin on Narcotics in 1950, R. J. Bouquet grouped the cannabis electuaries of the illicit trade by type. He gave magoon (India), majun (Turkey) and madjun (North Africa) as synonyms of the Egyptian ma'agun, and placed the Tunisian majun and the Turkish or Syrian majun in the same type, though their spices and condiments differed. Out of every ten samples of "Egyptian ma'agun", he wrote, no two would have the same resin content, taste, colour or consistency, so the name described a type of electuary rather than one recipe.[5]
India
At Goa in 1563 Garcia da Orta wrote of bangue that it "was made up into an electuary with sugar and spices, and was called Maju".[1]: 55–56
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission described the hemp sweetmeats of the 1890s as made with ganja or bhang, "or even sometimes charas". Their base was sugar and milk, and the essence of the drug was drawn out by heat and worked in with other drugs, spices or perfumes. Majum was "largely used at certain Hindu feasts" and credited with aphrodisiac qualities. Many people ate it habitually, some all year, others only in the cold season, turning to the drinks in the hot weather. The commission named yakuti, purnathi, gulkhand, shrikhand and halwa as similar preparations.[2]: 158
The provincial memoranda printed with the commission's report give the method in several places:
- In Bijapur, in the Bombay Presidency, the deputy collector reported in 1893 that majun, "commonly called 'majum'", was made in small cakes. Ghee was boiled in water for three days, then boiled again with bhang powder and more ghee. While it was lukewarm, cardamoms, saffron, dried ginger and sugar or jaggery went in, and the mass was poured into a tray and cut up when cool. Both Hindus and Muslims ate it. In villages without medical aid it was sometimes given to the sick as a sleeping draught, and some took it as a nervine tonic.[6]: 94
- In Berar the memorandum took its account from a majum-seller at Ballapur whose preparation was "celebrated in the province" and was known in many places as "Deolal", after the shop's first owner. Ganja was cleaned, boiled, washed, boiled again in ghee and filtered. The fluid was mixed with spices and boiled sugar and boiled once more into a green sweet. A red version, gulab shakri majum, was coloured with hingul. The memorandum added that yakuti "appears only to be another name of majum", though it had to contain the richer spices.[7]: 107–108
- In Mysore the contractor at the Government Central Distillery made majum six maunds at a time. He used the ganja powder left over in vending, broiled it in an iron cauldron and pounded it, and pounded the cloves, caraway, poppy seed and cinnamon separately. These went into a thick syrup of granular jaggery with ghee, and the mass was worked by hand into a powder without clots. Every tola of it held 48¾ grains of ganja.[8]: 144
- In Kashmir the leaves were boiled lightly and put into hot ghee, and the ghee was mixed with flour and sugar. Majum was eaten "to some extent by the Hindustanis and well-to-do Kashmiris", the state's memorandum reported. Consumption did not exceed one maund a year, and there were "no habitual eaters".[9]: 129
In 1957 I. C. and R. N. Chopra described majun made from bhang or, "very occasionally", ganja, heated in a little ghee or boiled in water. The active resin floated up as "a green, jelly-like substance", which was skimmed off, mixed with sugar, heated to a paste and cut into small pieces when it set. It was eaten the same day or within a few days. In Madras and Mysore powdered ganja was boiled in jaggery syrup and strained, and the residue was fried in ghee with black pepper, almonds and saffron. They also recorded a Madras majiyam, "a kind of fire-dried and powdered majun" made from ganja with palmyra jaggery and spices, sometimes with plantains.[10]
Egypt
In Cairo in the 1830s, the orientalist Edward William Lane wrote, the capsules of hemp without their seeds were pounded with aromatic substances into "an intoxicating conserve". The Egyptians made several conserves of hellebore, hemp and opium with aromatic drugs: "A conserve of this nature is called 'maagoon;' and the person who makes or sells it, 'maagungee.'" The commonest kind was called barsh. Particular kinds were said to make the taker sing, chatter or dance, to work pleasantly on the sight, or simply to calm. They were sold at the mahshesh′eh, the hashish shop.[11]
Bouquet's ma'agun type of 1950 was made with honey added to hashish, spices and aphrodisiacs. Powdered gum arabic was worked in until the paste set hard, and it was divided into pellets for swallowing.[5]
Morocco
Bellakhdar describes ma'jûn as made from the best ḥašîša or the sieved resin šîrra. The other ingredients vary: small amounts of belladonna berries, datura, henbane or poppy seeds, grains of paradise, cubeb, black pepper, cantharides, almond, walnut, gum arabic, honey and butter, kneaded together and rolled into small balls. It is most often eaten in cakes, lamûna in particular, in sweets, in sweet and heavily spiced cooked dishes, or in tea or coffee.[3]: 112 In 1950 Bouquet reproduced a formula from A. Charnot's La toxicologie au Maroc (1945) for "a Majoun-Dawamesk type electuary well known in Morocco". It used almonds, walnuts, cubeb, nutmeg, malagueta pepper, datura seeds, belladonna berries and cannabis tips, pounded and mixed with honey and butter, at about two coffee-spoonfuls after meals.[5]
Netherlands Indies
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Orta, Garcia da (1913) [1563]. Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India. Translated by Markham, Clements. New edition (Lisbon, 1895) edited and annotated by the Conde de Ficalho. London: Henry Sotheran and Co. pp. 53–56.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. VIII, "Extent of use and the manner and forms in which the hemp drugs are consumed", paras. 415–429, pp. 154–158 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bellakhdar, Jamal (2013). "L'histoire du chanvre au Maghreb". Hespéris-Tamuda. XLVIII: 107–141. ISSN 0018-1005.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Boorsma, W.G. (1918). "Over het voorkomen en het gebruik van Indische hennep in Ned.-Indië". Teysmannia (in Nederlands) (VI): 324–334.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Bouquet, R. J. (1950). "Cannabis". Bulletin on Narcotics (4). United Nations: 14–30.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Memorandum on hemp drugs in Bombay, by the Hon'ble T. D. Mackenzie, Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. III: Appendices, Miscellaneous. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 88–102 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Memorandum on hemp drugs in Berar". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. III: Appendices, Miscellaneous. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 107–109 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Memorandum regarding ganja and its preparations in Mysore, by Mr. J. G. McDonnell, Special Assistant Excise Commissioner in Mysore". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. III: Appendices, Miscellaneous. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 144–145 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Kashmir State memorandum". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. III: Appendices, Miscellaneous. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. paras. 23–25, p. 129 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Chopra, I. C.; Chopra, R. N. (1957). "The use of the cannabis drugs in India". Bulletin on Narcotics (1). United Nations: 4–29.
- ↑ Lane, Edward William (1890) [1836]. "Use of tobacco, coffee, hemp, opium, etc.". An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Written in Egypt during the Years 1833–1835. London: Ward, Lock and Co. ch. XV – via Project Gutenberg.