Yengi Hissar (appellation)
More actions
| Yengi Hissar | |
|---|---|
| Yengisar (英吉沙) | |
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Southern Xinjiang |
| Growing Area | Kashgar |
| Geography | |
| Country | China |
| Province/State | Xinjiang |
| Coordinates | 38.94, 76.17 |
| Landscape | |
| Terrain | Oasis farmland of Yengisar County, south of Kashgar at the western end of the Tarim Basin |
| Climate | |
| Climate Type | Arid |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | Yangi Hissar; Yanghissar; Yanyshahr; 英吉沙爾 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Yengi Hissar is a cannabis appellation of the oasis round the town of Yengisar (英吉沙), south of Kashgar in Xinjiang, China. It lies in the Kashgar growing area of the Southern Xinjiang growing region. In 1881 the British Joint Commissioner in Ladakh judged the charas of Yengi Hissar the best of the kinds produced in Eastern Turkestan.[1] In 2015 the psychiatrists Hu Hongxing, Zhang Guanbai and Hao Wei named Yengisar among the main producing counties of máyān (麻烟), the cannabis smoking-mixture of Xinjiang.[2]
Charas in the nineteenth century
In his account of Kashgar and the districts round it in 1858–59, Chokan Valikhanov, an officer in the Russian service, put Yanyshahr, his name for Yengi Hissar, about 47 miles (76 km) south of Kashgar, with 8,000 houses. Among its villages he named Terektek, "celebrated for the hashish it produces".[3]: iv, 154–155
In 1869 the charas that reached Leh was "far finer than anything ever before seen in Ladakh" and fetched double the usual price. The Leh trade report for that year explained that the finest charras, "grown at Yanghissar", usually went by Kokand and Bukhara, but had been bought up by merchants bound for Ladakh because duties were high and the road through Kokand and Russian Turkestan unsettled.[4]: 315 J. E. T. Aitchison, who printed that report in his handbook of the Leh trade, placed the very finest charas at Karmak, near Yangi Hissar. All of it went in balls to Bukhara and Kokand, and none of the really good quality came to Leh.[4]: 52
The Joint Commissioner's letter of 1881, as the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission summarised it, listed Yengi Hissar with Yarkand, Kashgar and Khotan among the places that produced the charas brought into India by the Ladakh road. The charas of Yengi Hissar was often sent through Kokand to Bukhara, imported into India with the charas of Bukhara and sold under its name.[1] Looking back in 1950 on the trade that had brought charas from Chinese Turkestan "until recent years", R. J. Bouquet wrote that Kashgar had been the main depot for the crops bought at Yangi-hissar and Rabat Kupriuk.[5]: 24
When the British embassy of 1873–74 passed through, every street of the town had its bang shop, a small shed with two or three pipes for passers-by, and there were several opium divans. H. W. Bellew judged the people of Yangi Hissar more given to these drugs than those of Yarkand or Kashgar.[6]: 38
Máyān in the twentieth century
Li Huan, in his Xinjiang yanjiu (新疆研究, "Studies of Xinjiang") of 1944, wrote that máyān was produced in the counties of Shule, Yengisar (英吉沙爾), Shache, Yecheng and Pishan. He wrote that it was made from the "frost" (霜) on the leaves of the hemp plant, gathered and stored in lumps. Xinjiang had once taxed máyān; by the time he wrote, the provincial government held it no less harmful than the opium poppy and had strictly prohibited it.[7]: 203
In the 1950s and 1960s cannabis was still planted in large quantities at Yengisar and at other places in southern Xinjiang, among them Kashgar, Makit and Maralbexi, and the plant could be seen everywhere. In 2015 Hu, Zhang and Hao counted Yengisar, with Shache, Makit, Maralbexi, Yecheng, Yopurga, Pishan, Kuqa and Bügür, among the main producing counties of máyān.[2]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. VII, "Trade and movement of the hemp drugs", paras. 293–295, pp. 111–112 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hu, Hongxing; Zhang, Guanbai; Hao, Wei (2015). 中国新疆大麻使用及相关问题的历史与现状 [History and current status of cannabis use and related problems in Xinjiang, China]. 中国药物依赖性杂志 [Chinese Journal of Drug Dependence] (in 中文) (4): 241–243, 287. ISSN 1007-9718. Retrieved 3 October 2026 – via 杜新忠戒毒网.
- ↑ Valikhanof (1865). "On the condition of Alty-shahr, or the six eastern towns of the Chinese province of Nan-lu (Little Bokhara), in 1858–1859". The Russians in Central Asia: Their Occupation of the Kirghiz Steppe and the Line of the Syr-Daria (PDF). Translated from the Russian by John and Robert Michell. London: Edward Stanford – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Aitchison, J. E. T. (1874). Hand-book of the Trade Products of Leh, with the Statistics of the Trade, from 1867 to 1872 Inclusive (PDF). Calcutta: Wyman & Co. – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ Bouquet, R. J. (1950). "Cannabis". Bulletin on Narcotics (4). United Nations: 14–30.
- ↑ Bellew, H. W. (1875). "General description of Káshghar". Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873, under Command of Sir T. D. Forsyth, K.C.S.I., C.B., Bengal Civil Service (PDF) – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ 李寰 (1944). 新疆研究 [Studies of Xinjiang] (PDF) (in 中文) (初版 ed.). 重慶: 安慶印書局 – via Wikimedia Commons.