[Of The Hemp-Flowers, They Use For This Purpose The
Small Leaves Standing Round The Seed, (Called Sheranek.) The Common
People Put A Small Quantity Of Them Upon The Top Of The Tobacco With
Which Their Pipes Are Filled.
The higher classes eat it in a jelly or
paste (maadjoun) made in the following manner:
- A quantity of the
leaves is boiled with butter for several hours, and then put under a
press; the juice so expressed is mixed with honey and other sweet drugs,
and publicly sold in Egypt, where shops are kept for that purpose. The
Hashysh paste is politely termed bast, and those who sell it basty (i.e.
cheerfulness). On the occasion of a festival to celebrate the marriage
of a son of one of the principal grandees at Cairo, when all the
different crafts of the town were represented in a showy procession, the
basty, although exercising a business prohibited and condemned by the
law, was among the most gaudy. Many persons of the first rank use the
bast in some shape or other; it exhilarates the spirits, and raises the
imagination as violently as opium. Some persons also mix the paste with
seeds of the Bendj, which comes from Syria.]
In all these shops the Persian pipe is smoked, of which there
[p.26] are three different sorts. 1. The Kedra, which is the largest,
and rests upon a tripod; it is always neatly worked, and found only in
private houses. 2. The Shishe (called in Syria Argyle), of a smaller
size, but, like the former, joined to a long serpentine tube (called
lieh), through which the smoke is inhaled.
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