Maâjoun culture/traditions/maajoun.md
*Maâjoun* is a Moroccan sweetconfection made with cannabis: a kneaded paste of almonds, aniseedwalnuts, nutsaniseed and often cannabis seed, scented with nutmeg, poppy seed, mace and, cardamom and poppy seed, bound with olive oil or honey. Its name, Arabic *maʿjūn*and made active with cannabis resin ([hashish](/culture/language/hashish/)), says what it is: something kneaded, a pasteleaves or oil. It is eaten incut into small pieces and eaten with a glass of hot tea.[@1,23] The name is Arabic *maʿjūn*, the passive participle of *ʿajana*, "to knead": a paste or compound.[@5]
What makes it interestingmore than a recipe is where it is eatenhow the same confection changes meaning. The semiotician Khalid Hadji, who interviewed people in [Morocco about it](/country/ma/), found maâjoun among young men on the margins of society, among craftsmen and the musicians of the, Gnawa and ʿIssawa brotherhoodsmusicians, and also in prominent families, eatenwhere it is served according to a set ritual in chosen company. The same substanceIn one setting it is a street narcotic; in one setting andanother, a refined delicacy. The difference lies in anotherthe company, place and manner of eating.[@1]
## A paste from the pharmacy
The word goes back toIn the medicine of the medieval Islamic world, where a *maʿjūn* was a compound remedy prepared asmade into a paste. Hadji points to the pharmacopoeias that describe such preparations: Avicenna's *Canon*, a fourteenth-century treatise by Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd of Shiraz, Dāwūd al-Anṭākī's sixteenth-century *Tadhkira*, and a thirteenthal-century apothecaryHārūnī's manual by the herbalist althirteenth-Hārūnīcentury manual, with a whole chapter on making medicinal pastes, forty-seven of themmedicinal pastes.[@1] Almond pastes, he notes, were used to carry a remedy, because they acted faster than a decoction of herbs.[@1]
The Moroccan maâjoun keepsresemblance is suggestive, not proof. The pharmacopoeias show the form of that pharmacy and ofits medical use, not a familiarrecipe passing unchanged from a medieval manuscript to a Moroccan gathering. Hadji does not claim an unbroken line. What the sweet shares with the pharmacy is a method — grinding, mixing, binding — and a name. Its recipe[@1,5]
A familiar relative is close to *sellou*, the toasted-flour confection Moroccans eateaten during Ramadan and at a child's naming feast. Hadji compares maâjoun's composition to sellou's, with cannabis added. Hadji, and reads thisthe resemblance as a way of slipping the forbidden past the watchers: something close to a narcotic, presented as an apparently lawful pastry.[@1]
## The afternoon gathering
The older form survives, Hadji writes, survives among people who keep to the "rules of the art". Gatherings startbegin after the afternoon prayer, at the end of the working day and often at weekends, in a garden or a house at the edge of town, away from curious neighbours and the police. They are held by menMen of the middle classes hold them, sometimes joined bywith people of high standing, and separately by; women of the middle and uppersame classes, hold separate gatherings in a large house with no men present.[@1]
At the men's gatherings, called *zhou*, "pleasure", there may be wine, song and joking as well as [kif](/culture/language/kif/) and maâjoun; poets composed *malhun* verses about such evenings. At the women's, maâjoun i … to drop the social mask and talk freely, not to get as intoxicated as possible.[@1]
Some of those he interviewed believed the custom imitated the entertainments of the Makhzen, the royal court, whicha claim that would explain whythe presence of notables sometimes attend, and why the emphasis on quality of the ingredients matters.[@1] That is an oral tradition, reported as such.[@1]
Hadji's account comes from interviews in a particular milieu, not a national survey; it does not establish that every Moroccan gathering follows this script.[@1]
## Old recipe, new street forms
Alongside the classic paste, Hadji lists street varieties with blunt names.[@1]
| Name | What Hadji's informants described |
|---|---|
| *Barbouqa* | Finely cut kif, or the leftovers of the plant, leftovers crushed into yoghurt, sellou or biscuits |
| *al-Qortassa*, "the bullet" | Spices and oli … the killer") | Mixed with pills or psychiatric medicines; described as dangerous |
These newer mixtures, with tablets or pharmaceuticals, have little to do with the old recipe, and Hadji treats them as something apart.[@1] But the line between traditional and adulterated is older than the street names suggest. A 1945 toxicology account, quoted in a 1956 United Nations report, lists a celebrated ma'joun recipe with datura seeds and belladonna berries alongside kif, almonds, walnuts, honey and butter. Not every old preparation was benign, and not every dangerous mixture is a recent invention.[@2]
A 2013 clinical case report from Fez describes two infants poisoned by maâjoun; one had eaten a piece thinking it was chocolate; his tests found cannabis and benzodiazepines.[@4]
## Food, drug and the law
Hadji calls maâjoun "both licit and illicit, food and drug". Socially it is tolerated in private. In; in his reading it is not recognised by law, though not explicitly named in itprohibited either.[@1] Its cannabis is another matter. Independent Morocco [banned kif in 1956](/his … abis for medical and industrial use left unlicensed production and use under the old ban, so awith no route for recreational cannabis food. A maâjoun made with cannabis is therefore still outside the law.
It is the eaten counterpart of the [kif pipethe sebsi](/culture/traditions/kif-and-the-sebsi/), but not its simple opposite. An olderIn Hadji's account adds that some versions were mixed, *kif* is the smoked form, associated with other drugs: a toxicology handbook of 1957 describedthe pipe and everyday sociability; maâjoun is the eaten form, associated with the table and the chosen gathering. The same *majunzhou* as containing hempmay include both, opiumso the contrast is one of setting and datura seedmanner rather than of two separate substances.[@21]
The confection remains outside the licensed system: a private delicacy for some, a street narcotic for others, and in law a cannabis preparation still covered by the old prohibition.[@1]
A Moroccan confection of cannabis kneaded withresin, almonds, nuts, honey and spices, eaten in small pieces with hot tea at private gatherings of men or of women. It descends fromIts name and form recall the medicinal pastes of medieval Arabic pharmacy and sits uneasily between food and drug, but its social life runs from private delicacy to street narcotic.
majoun, maajoun, ma'jun, ma'joun, maâjoune, madjoun, barbouqa, qortassa
opusdeepseek-5v4.51-flash
United Nations — The cannabis situation in the Scherifian Empire (French Zone), E/CN.7/286/Add.11
Neurobehavioral and Social Sequelae of “Maajoune Illicit Drug” Use by Young Individuals
Severe Maajoun Poisoning in Two Infants, Morocco
Wiktionary — معجون (Arabic maʿjūn, passive participle of ʿajana, "to knead")
Wikipedia — Majoun
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text معجون · lang Arabic · say maʿjūn
src ../../src/assets/culture/maajoun-morocco.jpg · alt Three piles on a dark surface: coarse dried plant material at left, a finer green-brown mixture in the middle, and a round golden-brown ball of maâjoun at right, with a red arrow pointing to the ball. · caption Cannabis material, a finer mixture and a finished piece of maâjoun, photographed for a Moroccan study of the confection. The arrow is in the original figure. · credit Ait Belcaid et al., Archives of Neuroscience, 2024, Figure 1, CC BY 4.0 · credit url https://brieflands.com/articles/ans-138597 · license url https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ · aspect ratio 2.14 · position center