Cannabis Activism in the Middle East During the 1910s

The short answer: there was no organized activism

Modern cannabis 'activism' — organized advocacy aimed at legal reform, civil rights framing, or public education — is a phenomenon of the late 20th century. In the 1910s Middle East, no such movement is documented in the historical record Strong evidence. What existed instead was a long-running tension between hashish consumers (cafés, Sufi circles, rural users), smugglers and producers, and state authorities trying to suppress the trade ^[1][2].

Claims circulating on cannabis blogs that there were '1910s hashish rights movements' in Egypt or the Levant are not supported by primary sources or by the major academic histories of the period No data. The serious scholarship — Liat Kozma, James Mills, Cyrus Schayegh, Haggai Ram — consistently describes a decade of tightening prohibition, not pushback against it ^[1][2][3].

Egypt: the center of hashish politics

Egypt under British occupation was the regional epicenter of hashish policy in the 1910s. Cultivation had been banned in Egypt since the 1870s, and importation since 1879, but consumption remained widespread, especially among working-class men in urban cafés ^[1][2]. The Egyptian Coast Guard and Customs Administration spent the 1910s in a running battle with smugglers bringing hashish primarily from Greece, and secondarily from Ottoman Syria and Lebanon ^[1].

The key figure of the era was Russell Pasha (Thomas Russell), though his most famous anti-hashish campaigning came later, in the 1920s, when he headed the Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau ^[2]. In the 1910s the policy machinery was already in place: hashish was illegal, possession was criminalized, and the question debated by officials was enforcement, not legalization ^[1].

There were no Egyptian newspapers, parties, or civil-society organizations campaigning for hashish liberalization in this decade that historians have identified Strong evidence. Café culture and consumption persisted as a de facto practice, but practice is not the same as activism.

The Ottoman Empire and the Hague Convention

The 1912 International Opium Convention, signed at The Hague, is the single most important cannabis-policy event of the decade. Egypt — represented by Mohamed El Guindy — pushed hard to have hashish (Indian hemp) included alongside opium and cocaine in international control ^[3][4]. The final Convention text included a recommendation (Article 11 of the Hague discussions referenced 'Indian hemp') urging study of the question, though binding international cannabis control would not come until the 1925 Geneva Convention ^[3][4].

The Ottoman Empire was a signatory. Domestically, Ottoman authorities had banned hashish cultivation in several provinces during the late 19th century, and enforcement in places like the Beqaa Valley (then Ottoman Syria) was inconsistent through the 1910s, especially once World War I disrupted state capacity ^[1][5]. Lebanese hashish production expanded during and after the war partly because central authority collapsed — again, not because of activism, but because of its absence ^[5].

Where the 'activism' myth comes from

Several threads get retrofitted into a fictional '1910s activism' narrative:

• Sufi and folk defense of hashish use. There is a long tradition, going back centuries, of Sufi orders defending hashish on religious or mystical grounds. This was cultural and theological, not political activism, and by the 1910s it had been marginalized by Salafi reformers and state authorities ^[1][6] Weak / limited.
• Smuggler resistance. Armed smuggling networks resisted Egyptian Coast Guard interdiction. This was organized crime, not advocacy ^[1].
• Backdating of later movements. Egyptian and Lebanese cannabis politics in the 1920s–30s involved real policy debates (especially around the Geneva conventions), and online sources sometimes carelessly push these back into the 1910s Disputed.
• Confusion with hemp industry lobbying elsewhere. Industrial hemp interests in Europe and North America did engage in policy debate during this era, but this had nothing to do with Middle Eastern drug-hashish politics Strong evidence.

What we don't know

The Arabic-language press of the 1910s has not been exhaustively surveyed for cannabis-related commentary, and it is possible that individual editorials, satirical pieces, or pamphlets defending hashish use exist in archives that have not been digitized or studied No data. If such material is ever surfaced, the picture could shift modestly — but it is very unlikely to reveal an organized movement, because the institutional preconditions (legal civil society, a free press, public assembly rights) were thin to nonexistent under late Ottoman and British-occupied Egyptian rule ^[2][3].

The honest historical statement is: in the 1910s Middle East, the cannabis story is one of consumption, smuggling, and prohibition — not activism. Anyone telling you otherwise should be asked for a primary source.

Sources

How this page was made