Cultivo y usos etnobotánicos del cañamo ( Cannabis Sativa L.) en la ciencia árabe (siglos VIII-XVII)

Abstract

Recent years have been witness to a vast outpouring of publications on hemp from many different scientific perspectives. Among them, Ethnobotany is interested in tracking how human action determined the cultural diffusion of this plant and how human beings have interacted with it throughout history. Within the theoretical frame of historical Ethnobotany, philological studies can provide us with a great deal of relevant information as they help us to reconstruct the cultural diffusion of hemp uses and products in the context of different ages and geographical spaces. So far, there is not available any publication on cannabis cultivation and its ethnobotanical uses in Arab-Islamic civilization. In this article we analyse several different aspects concerning this topic: cultivation, harvesting, retting and fiber separation techniques, human food and culinary uses, animal feed uses, raw material for threads, robes, cloth and paper fabrication uses, insecticide, animal repellent, medication in veterinary medicine, detergent, combustible and ritual incense uses. Our research is based on the information we find in nearly thirty Arabic scientific sources written between the 7th and the 18th centuries. This information enables us to claim that hemp techniques cultivation and uses were transferred from the pre-Islamic Ancient World civilizations to the Arab-Islamic civilization.