Samarkand
More actions
| Samarkand | |
|---|---|
| Samarqand | |
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Zarafshan Valley |
| Geography | |
| Country | Uzbekistan |
| Province/State | Samarkand Region |
| Coordinates | 39.83, 66.41 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 16,500 km² |
| Terrain | Irrigated valley of the middle Zarafshan round Samarkand and Kattakurgan, with hills and uplands on either side; approximately Samarkand Region |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | Zeravshan district (from 1868), Samarkand oblast (from 1887) |
| Dated news reports | 2026 |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Samarkand is a cannabis growing area in Uzbekistan, drawn on Samarkand Region, on the middle course of the Zarafshan round the city of Samarkand. It lies in the Zarafshan Valley growing region. In 1900 the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary listed hemp among the crops of the irrigated land of Samarkand oblast.[1] In 2021 the police found a field of cannabis sown by a farmer in Jambay district,[2] and in 2026 plants grown in a backyard in Samarkand district.[3]
Geography
The Zarafshan comes out of the mountains a little east of Penjikent, in Tajikistan, and runs north-west across a broad valley to Samarkand. The 1894 Brockhaus and Efron entry on the river describes how, eight versts from the city, it divides into the Ak-darya and the Kara-darya, which rejoin downstream and enclose the island of Miankal: densely settled, cut through by canals and well farmed, the most productive part of the valley in the dictionary's account. Eighty-three main canals were drawn from the river in Samarkand oblast, irrigating about 2,782 square versts, on part of which two crops a year were taken.[4]
History
Russian troops took Samarkand, Urgut and Kattakurgan from the Bukhara khanate in 1868, and the land became the Zeravshan district.[5] On 1 January 1887 it became part of the new Samarkand oblast, which by 1900 had four districts: Samarkand, Kattakurgan, Jizzakh and Khujand. The settled population lived chiefly by farming, on irrigated land and on unwatered bogara land sown mostly with wheat and barley. The Brockhaus and Efron entry on the oblast names hemp among more than twenty crops of the irrigated land, alongside wheat, rice, cotton, flax, poppy and tobacco, without saying what it was grown for. Wheat, barley, rice, cotton, sorghum and lucerne covered the most ground.[1]
At a dervish lodge just outside Samarkand in 1873, Eugene Schuyler found some of the dervishes "half stupid from smoking nasha, or hemp"; those who agreed to sing for him first shared a pipe of it.[6]: 257
Genebank seed
In 1997 the Vavilov Institute in St Petersburg sowed two accessions from Samarkand to renew its seed. Accession 455, labelled "Uzbekistan, Samarkand", gave 53 grams of seed at the Institute of Bast Crops in Glukhov, Ukraine; accession 457, from Kattakurgan district, was sown at the Penza Institute of Agriculture and did not germinate.[7]
Cultivation since 2000
On 7 August 2021 the police found a whole field of cannabis in the Almazar mahalla of Jambay district: 2,160 plants, more than 500 dried plants and about 100 grams of seed. They said a local farmer had sown and grown it and sold it.[2] In the second phase of the interior ministry's Qoradori-2026 operation, reported in September 2026, a man in Samarkand district was found to have grown 41 cannabis plants in his backyard and to hold 400 grams of marijuana.[3]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Самаркандская область". Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (in русский). Vol. XXVIIIa. St Petersburg: Brockhaus–Efron. 1900. pp. 178–181 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Tuxsinov, D. (9 August 2021). "Samarkand police detain a farmer growing hemp in his house". Kun.uz. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Control through helicopters: 70 kg of narcotic plants destroyed". Zamon.uz. 16 September 2026. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ "Зеравшан". Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (in русский). Vol. XIIa. St Petersburg: Brockhaus–Efron. 1894. pp. 554–556 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ "Зеравшанский округ". Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (in русский). Vol. XIIa. St Petersburg: Brockhaus–Efron. 1894. p. 553 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ Schuyler, E. (1876). Turkistan: notes of a journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja. Vol. 1 (3rd revised ed.). London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington – via HathiTrust.
- ↑ Kutuzova, S.N.; Grigoryev, S.V.; Rumyantseva, L.T.; Clarke, R.C. (1998). "Maintenance of Cannabis germplasm in the Vavilov Research Institute Gene Bank – 1997". Journal of the International Hemp Association. 5 (1): 28–31.