Beldia ( local) in Morroccan.

[Psy_explorer]

Does any one have ever come close to this landrace? I wonder what grade of certainty there is about the purity,the true uncontamined population. Taking into account that the area near Ketama and the whole province is so polluted with foreign genes I guess the same may have happened in Parvaty Valley , in towns like Kasol and so on...

 

[Hempy McNoodle]

Does any one have ever come close to this landrace? I wonder what grade of certainty there is about the purity,the true uncontamined population. Taking into account that the area near Ketama and the whole province is so polluted with foreign genes I guess the same may have happened in Parvaty Valley , in towns like Kasol and so on...

The last I saw there are 3 seed companies that may have something Moroccan. I think they are all from near ketama:

The Real Seed Co
Ace Seeds
Derg Corra Collective

Hope this helps!

 

[Psy_explorer]

Thanks for the response, I will take a look to those seedbanks.

Any of you have ever try the true moroccan sativa well dryed ( not being expose to sun etcetera) and grown this?

The last I saw there are 3 seed companies that may have something Moroccan. I think they are all from near ketama:

The Real Seed Co
Ace Seeds
Derg Corra Collective

Hope this helps!

 

[therevverend]

Khalifa Genetics has one-it looks like Ace is distributing their stuff now. Compared to a few years ago it seems like everyone has an old time Moroccan strain for sale. The landrace team, Mandala has a strain called Ketama, I think it's the World of Seeds variety, Early Maroc seems like it's been around for a while, Cannabiogen has Hashfruit and Sandstorm, hybrids, Moroccan Gold seems to be a strain, plus the ones already mentioned. I'm sure there's a dozen more out there I haven't mentioned plus a bunch of hybrids that increase resin and yield. I don't have a lot of interest in this stuff but if I lived in a cold northern climate with lots of sun June-August I'd be all over Moroccan strains.

 

[Psy_explorer]

Thank you @therevverend, I have checked the companies you’ve mentioned. Some of them as you said are hybrids and in some cases I guess polihybrids with a high number of generations produced outside of its origin. I’ve found that Aceseeds is currently selling it in its pure form,the landrace from near Ketama,Angus from The Real Seed Co. is not offering this strain right now.
Anyone knows if TRSC offers it periodically? Anyhow I have had good experience with both seedbanks. Greetings from the mediterranean.

 

[Hempy McNoodle]

I've gown a few World of Seeds "landrace" strains. They are some of the best genetics I've grown, as far as the plants themselves go. I have zero confidence that they are genuine landrace or anything close.

 

[Psy_explorer]

Sometimes is hard to determine the grade of genuineness of a small population grown outside its local origin, in other cases is easier. Glad to hear that cause I’ve got some beans ( other from Hindu kush)as a freebi from this seedbank.
Expect a very low in thc, very charming but light dreamy effect, in relation to the plant growth, depending of your latitud it could be very early maturing plant. In southern Spain it finishes even in early august.

I've gown a few World of Seeds "landrace" strains. They are some of the best genetics I've grown, as far as the plants themselves go. I have zero confidence that they are genuine landrace or anything close.

 

[Hempy McNoodle]

Sometimes is hard to determine the grade of genuineness of a small population grown outside its local origin, in other cases is easier. Glad to hear that cause I’ve got some beans ( other from Hindu kush)as a freebi from this seedbank.
Expect a very low in thc, very charming but light dreamy effect, in relation to the plant growth, depending of your latitud it could be very early maturing plant. In southern Spain it finishes even in early august.

That pakistani valley kush strain from world of seeds is a VERY potent heavy indica. As was the Ketama. Ketama was even heavier. Similar to a good bubba kush high but with less electric body buzzing. Very medicinal in some ways if you need something heavy.

 

[ahortator]

Moroccan kif used to be very poor quality. They smoked the chopped buds in small pipes until in the 60's when some American hippies taught them to make hash. Plants weren't like the typical Hindu Kush hash plants. They were more sativa-like in appearance but unbranched. People in the Rif sowed the seeds in February throwing handfuls of them to the fields. They harvested them in August when they died due to drought. If you grew such seeds and you took care of them the plants developed into huge branched trees but the quality of the buds decreased even more because without the drought stress they made very little resin. The soap bar used to be really nasty due the amount of incredible different things they added to it to make a bigger amount, mainly henna. Also they cured the plants on the roof under the sun for a long time, until winter when they made the hash. It was difficult to get a decent high with such stuff. I guess the hash had only the limit amount of THC to get a fine if you were caught by police, but not enough to get any psychoative effect. There was better quality with less henna but it was not available most of the times.

Later some entrepreneurs introduced there Dutch hybrid seeds. They call it now Pakistani which smells terrible like Skunk, so they can add more henna to the product and it still stinks. Unlike the old landrace they need now pipes for irrigation and fertilizers and they need more intensive care. Those new Dutch strains have crossed with their landrace and they call such hybrids hardala or khardala. So since some years I heard or read about the beldia strain which means "our strain" or so to call the old kif landrace.

In this TV program filmed in 2002 you can see the fields with the actual old kif or nowadays called beldia landrace.

https://youtu.be/KLKTBsXu1FQ?t=272

https://youtu.be/KLKTBsXu1FQ?t=2812

 

[Hempy McNoodle]

Moroccan kif used to be very poor quality. They smoked the chopped buds in small pipes until in the 60's when some American hippies taught them to make hash. Plants weren't like the typical Hindu Kush hash plants. They were more sativa-like in appearance but unbranched. People in the Rif sowed the seeds in February throwing handfuls of them to the fields. They harvested them in August when they died due to drought. If you grew such seeds and you took care of them the plants developed into huge branched trees but the quality of the buds decreased even more because without the drought stress they made very little resin. The soap bar used to be really nasty due the amount of incredible different things they added to it to make a bigger amount, mainly henna. Also they cured the plants on the roof under the sun for a long time, until winter when they made the hash. It was difficult to get a decent high with such stuff. I guess the hash had only the limit amount of THC to get a fine if you were caught by police, but not enough to get any psychoative effect. There was better quality with less henna but it was not available most of the times.

Later some entrepreneurs introduced there Dutch hybrid seeds. They call it now Pakistani which smells terrible like Skunk, so they can add more henna to the product and it still stinks. Unlike the old landrace they need now pipes for irrigation and fertilizers and they need more intensive care. Those new Dutch strains have crossed with their landrace and they call such hybrids hardala or khardala. So since some years I heard or read about the beldia strain which means "our strain" or so to call the old kif landrace.

In this TV program filmed in 2002 you can see the fields with the actual old kif or nowadays called beldia landrace.

https://youtu.be/KLKTBsXu1FQ?t=272

https://youtu.be/KLKTBsXu1FQ?t=2812

I wonder if the old plants had much in common with the egyptian and other red sea regional plants?

 

[Psy_explorer]

Hempymcnoodle, indeed the theories suggest that. The migrations from the Lebanon, Irak, Iran and so on carried cannabis to the Rif and the Magreb in general. Cannabis could even arrive to the Iberian peninsula before the subsequent migration of the Almoravides , with the Omeyas.

 

[Psy_explorer]

It seems that the autoflorewing character of this landrace has preserved it from being pollinated by afhgan and pakistani genes...as they are the unique variety that flowers that early in the seasson. So even being literally invaded by foreing genes, there are still small plots also that are done even before the rest are just about to start flowering.

 

[Psy_explorer]

Autoflowering * not autoflorewing

 

[funkyhorse]

I wonder if the old plants had much in common with the egyptian and other red sea regional plants?

I was all over these areas in the 20th century and I tried all of the strains. I was never a grower until now, I cant tell you about the plants but I can tell you about the high of them and certainly all of the strains over the area are different
Lebanese as it was 40 years ago is extinct. It was a hashish strain. Some sacks were more uplifting than others that made your ass very heavy. It was dreamy hash
Back in the 20th century the word cannabis was not known massively and instead the products were called hashish or marihuana.

At the Red Sea I tried 3 different varieties:
a)Sinai, bedouin strain. It was marihuana, very nice quality, the best of it would have mild entheogen qualities. For me the best in the Middle East
b)Sudanese. It was hash. Lowest quality of all the middle eastern strains
c)Arabah/Aravah desert strain. It was marihuana,some of it was heavily seeded. Not as good as Sinai, but still ok, it had a high which lasted 60-90 min

I also smoked moroccan hash, in egg form and from blocks. Quality was very far from lebanese, I didnt like it much because I expected something similar and it was much lower quality. Light high but still better than sudanese

I hope it helps. Thank you Ahortator for the documentary link, very interesting!

 

[Psy_explorer]

Maybe Angus from the Real Seed co. knows something about the origins of the strain. I would say that this landrace has arrived to the Rif’s foothills long time ago. Bowls with smoke traces have been found in Al-Andalus, in Nizari territories and others around Cordoba, fact that by itself invalidate the recurrent mantra that no one have ever smoke in Europe before the colonisation of the Americas, but this is another issue.

 

[Psy_explorer]

Nazari, not Nizari sorry( which is another muslim affiliation) So based in archeological evidence found in Spain, cannabis used by its psychoactive properties,has at least a history that goes as far as Nazari kigdom, “at least” because the waves of migrations that came before like the Umayyads , also were in Morocco and Spain, so maybe this landrace arrived to the North African foothills with these migrations from middle east, carry with them the genetics from Syria, Lebanon and so on...


If any of you knows any source of reliable information related with this landrace I would appreciate it

 

[therevverend]

Hashish manufacture in Morocco is recent. Commercial production didn't start until the 1960s. Before that Moroccans smoked kif, the flowers. Cannabis has been cultivated for kif at least since the early 19th century. A source in 1855 recorded that Berbers throughout North Africa favor kif smoking. Sidi Hidi, the Moroccan patron saint of kif smokers, is said to have brought kif and kif smoking to Morocco. There's all sorts of legends about him, he was probably a Sufi, but otherwise not much can be gleaned.

The kif plants are not good hashish plants, don't produce a lot of resin and the glands are tiny. Only 60 or 70 microns. This is why Lebanese and Afghani hashish have always been rated as better. Before the 1960s most of the hashish in Morocco was imported from Lebanon. 1962-1965 was when hashish production began in Morocco. It's interesting that foreigners were likely the ones who began experimenting with turning kif into hashish, teaching the Moroccans the techniques. Guys with names like English Richard, Light Touch Skip, Mohammed Rifi, French Jacques, Billy Badman. In 1965 an Algerian named Mustafa came to the Rif Mountains to make hashish from kif plants. The farmers who assisted Mustafa soon were making hashish from their own plants. It's important to note that hashish production was always for export, for Europeans, never for Moroccans. In the 70s there was an Englishman called 'Peter One' who made the best hashish.

Right from the start in the '60s growers and hashish makers have been trying to import better strains to improve production. In the early times strains were imported from India, Lebanon, Egypt, Muslim hashish producing regions. Kif growing exploded with much more land cultivated for cannabis then had been in the past. The best hashish was grown with manure as fertilizer, the low quality commercial stuff with mass produced chemicals. Land quickly became degraded and water irrigation has been tapped to the limit. That's basically where we are today. Very similar patterns here to elsewhere in the world, a small cottage industry gets maxed to the limit to feed a huge export demand. I'm curious what the benefits are to the local people, how many schools have been built, roads, hospitals, and infrastructure compared to before the hashish trade took off.

 

[Psy_explorer]

I wonder what really happened because all the theories dating cannabis in Morocco and Algeria back to the limit of 1800’s have crearly some blind spots.
Already in the XIV century,the andalusí (from Granada) poet Ibn al-Jatib , born in 1313 c.e. , not only mentioned cannabis, but also left some scriptures about HASHISH and its omnipresent use in the Nazari domains in the current south east Spain.

So I guess that for some reason, the hashish tradition within the Almohads culture got lost and diluded because is well documented that indeed hashish production was introduced in modern times in Morocco by the Hippie Trail travellers, who brought the tradition from charas and hash producing countries that we all know.

 

[therevverend]

In the 10th century Arab Muslims were debating the pros and cons of eating hashish, 1155 Sheik Haidar the Sufi Master 'discovered' cannabis in Khorasan, 1231 hashish introduced in Iraq, 1251 the Garden of Cafour near Cairo gets destroyed. These are good dates for hashish in Spain because it swept to the Arab world fairly quickly. This is hashish eating which is different then kif smoking which wouldn't have happened before Columbus and the Berbers are not Arabs. The 18th or early 19th century could be correct for kif since the Lebanese hashish trade seems to be something different. I wish there was more information about Sidi Hidi but he'd become entirely legendary by the time Westerners started sniffing around Morocco.

I'll point out that 'bowls with traces of smoke' are different then actual smoking, which requires a pipe. Direct inhalation versus indirect inhalation, incense. Bowls with cannabis smoke residue have been found that are thousands of years old. Arabs of the medieval period would say 'a whiff of hashish has the power to stupefy an elephant', vaporizing and burning cannabis pre-date the Arabs in the Middle East. It's also obvious that the Arabs re-discovered the psychoactive properties of hashish, Middle Eastern records go back to the Assyrians who were likely inhaling cannabis grown in Lebanon as incense. The Muslim world discovered hashish, it's like the hippies 'discovering' cannabis. This is all separate from the question of when the Berbers began smoking kif which I'm certain is tied into tobacco smoking. Tobacco and pipes were introduced, then Sidi Hidi came from the East (maybe Algeria or Egypt, maybe Iran, maybe Turkey or India?) and added cannabis to the mix.

It's also traditional to smoke a certain type of mint that's grown in Morocco. Sometimes straight, sometimes with tobacco and/or cannabis. There's stories that Sidi Hidi didn't smoke, or that he only smoked mint leaves. We'll never really get to the bottom of it unless someone got a grant from a university to go to Morocco to dig into the past.

 

[Hempy McNoodle]

I am working on a time machine that will teleport a person back in time. I just need one brave individual to volunteer as my first human test subject. Of course, you will be responsible for your return to present times.