Cannabis Prosecution in the Middle East During the 1900s

Egypt: the earliest and loudest prohibitionist

Egypt banned the import of hashish in 1879 under Khedive Isma'il, with additional decrees in 1884 and 1891 expanding prohibitions to cultivation and possession ^[1][2]. By the late 19th century the country was the world's largest consumer market for hashish, much of it smuggled from Greece and later Lebanon and Syria ^[1].

Egypt's enforcement record was mixed. The Anti-Narcotics Bureau, founded in 1929 under Russell Pasha (Thomas Russell, the British commandant of the Cairo Police), reported tens of thousands of arrests in the 1930s, but Russell himself acknowledged that hashish remained widely available ^[2][3]. Russell's papers, published in his 1949 memoir Egyptian Service, are one of the more candid primary sources for the period and document the corruption, smuggling routes, and class dimensions of enforcement ^[3].

It was Egypt's delegate, Mohamed El Guindy, who pushed hashish onto the agenda at the 1925 Geneva International Opium Convention, arguing — without strong evidence by modern standards — that cannabis caused insanity and crime Weak / limited^[1][4]. His intervention is the reason cannabis was added to the international drug control system, a decision whose scientific basis has been questioned by later historians ^[4].

Lebanon and Syria: production under French Mandate and after

Cannabis cultivation in the Bekaa Valley predates the 20th century, but it expanded dramatically under the French Mandate (1923–1946) ^[5]. French authorities formally prohibited cultivation but tolerated it in practice, and the trade became deeply entwined with local political economies ^[5][6].

After independence, Lebanon nominally banned cannabis under the 1946 narcotics law and again in 1998 (Law 673), but enforcement collapsed during the civil war (1975–1990), when Bekaa hashish — branded internationally as 'Lebanese Red' and 'Lebanese Blonde' — became a major export and a revenue source for armed factions ^[5][6]. Syria's role was largely as a transit and processing country; its 1993 anti-drug law imposed harsh penalties including the death penalty for trafficking Strong evidence^[7].

Post-war eradication campaigns in Lebanon in the 1990s, funded in part by the UN Office for Drug Control, destroyed crops but offered weak alternative-livelihood programs, and cultivation rebounded after 2011 ^[6].

Turkey: cannabis in the shadow of opium policy

Turkey's drug policy in the 20th century was dominated by opium, but cannabis was caught up in the same legal framework. The Ottoman Empire had restricted hashish at various points in the 19th century, and the Republic of Turkey ratified the 1925 Geneva Convention and subsequent treaties, integrating cannabis into a unified narcotics regime ^[4][8].

The 1933 Law No. 2313 on the Control of Narcotic Drugs criminalized unlicensed cultivation, production, and trade of cannabis alongside opium ^[8]. Licensed industrial hemp cultivation, however, continued in certain provinces such as Kastamonu, and remains legal there under permit today — a fact frequently misreported in international media Strong evidence^[8].

Palestine, Israel, and Jordan

Under the British Mandate for Palestine (1920–1948), cannabis was regulated under the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1936, which followed the template of British colonial drug law ^[9]. Israel inherited this framework on independence and incorporated it into the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance (New Version), 1973, which remains the backbone of Israeli drug law ^[9].

Jordan's 1988 Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Law and Egypt's later 1989 Law No. 122 reflected the regional trend in the 1980s–90s toward harsher penalties, aligned with the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs ^[10].

How international treaties drove domestic law

A persistent myth is that Middle Eastern cannabis bans grew out of Islamic legal tradition. The historical record is more complicated: classical Islamic jurisprudence is divided on hashish, and the prohibitions that actually shaped 20th-century criminal law came primarily through three international treaties — the 1925 Geneva Convention, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and the 1988 Trafficking Convention Strong evidence^[1][4][10].

The 1961 Single Convention placed cannabis in Schedule IV (the most restrictive category) and required signatories to criminalize production, trade, and possession ^[10]. Every country in the region eventually signed, and domestic laws were rewritten to comply. Historians such as James Mills and Liat Kozma have documented how Egyptian, French Mandate, and British colonial officials, rather than religious authorities, were the proximate drivers of statutory prohibition ^[1][4].

Myths versus the record

Several popular claims about Middle Eastern cannabis history don't survive contact with the sources:

• 'Hashish was always illegal under Islam.' Classical jurists disagreed; hashish was widely consumed in Mamluk and Ottoman society, sometimes openly Disputed^[1][4].
• 'The Assassins (Hashashin) used hashish before missions.' This story comes from Marco Polo and has no contemporaneous Islamic source; modern historians treat it as legend Anecdote^[11].
• 'Egypt banned hashish because of an insanity epidemic.' El Guindy's 1925 claims at Geneva were not backed by controlled evidence and have been criticized as politically motivated Weak / limited^[4].
• 'Lebanese hashish production was a post-war phenomenon.' Bekaa cultivation is documented at significant scale by the 1930s under the French Mandate ^[5][6].

Sources

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