Pieces of hashish, with a U.S. penny for scale
25 August 2021
Hashish is cannabis resin, which is smoked as a recreational drug. The word comes from the Arabic حشيش or ḥašīš, but it took three distinct etymological paths in making its way into English. The earliest appearances of the word in English are in the form assis, which was a borrowing from sixteenth-century Dutch. (The word in present-day Dutch is hasj.) Also making an early appearance in English is the form lhasis, which is a borrowing from post-classical Latin, which in turn comes the Arabic al-ḥašīš (the hashish). The modern spelling hashish is either a direct borrowing from Arabic or from one of the many European languages that borrowed it from that language.
The earliest known appearance of the hashish in English is in a translation from Dutch in the form assis. From Jan Huygens van Linschoten’s 1598 Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies:
Bangue is likewise much vsed in Turkie and Aegypt, and is made in three sorts, hauing also three seuerall names The first by the Aegyptians is called Assis, which is the poulder of Hemp, or of Hemp leaues, which water made in paste or dough, wherof they eate fiue peeces, each as bigge as a Chesnut and some more, such as eate it, for an hower after, are as if they were drunke, without sence, and as it were besides themselues, thinking they see many strange sights, wherein they are much pleased. This is vsed by the common people, because it is of a small price, and it is no wonder, that such vertue proceedeth from the Hempe, for that according to Galens opinion, Hempe excessiuely filleth the head.
The original Dutch reads, “Het eerste noemen die Ægyptenaren Assis.”
The lhasis form appears in English in a 1600 translation of John Leo’s Latin A Geographical Historie of Africa:
Most part of their substance and labour they bestow vpon perfumes and other such vanities. They haue here a compound called Lhasis, whereof whosoeuer eateth but one ounce falleth a laughing, disporting, and dallying, as if he were halfe drunken; and is by the said confection maruellously prouoked vnto lust.
Leo’s Latin uses the word Lhasis.
The modern form also first appears in a translation, this time from the German Haschisch. From a 1792 translation of Carsten Niebuhr’s Travels Through Arabia, and Other Countries in the East in a passage about North Africa:
The lower people are fond of raising their spirits to a state of intoxication. As they have no strong drink, they, for this purpose, smoke Haschisch, which is the dried leaves of a sort of hemp. This smoke exalts their courage, and throws them into a state in which delightful visions dance before the imagination. One of our Arabian servants, after smoking Haschisch, met with four soldiers in the street, and attacked the whole party. One of the soldiers gave him a sound beating, and brought him home to us. Notwithstanding his mishap, he would not make himself easy, but still imagined, such was the effect of his intoxication, that he was match for any four men.
The English word assassin is a bit odd, because while it ultimately comes from the word hashish, the word for the murderer appears in English several centuries before the word for the drug. English gets assassin from the Old French hassasis, which in turn is from the Arabic ḥašīšī, originally a derogatory name for the Nizari sect of the Ismaili Muslims, a branch of Shiism. The slur was the medieval equivalent of calling a group “a bunch of drug addicts.” In Arabic, the slur was associated with low social class or poor morals. It was in European stories brought back by Crusaders that first made the claim that the blind obedience of killers to their leader was facilitated by the drug.
The association with killing arises out of a twelfth-century folk tale, which has members of the sect getting high on hashish, a foretaste of what awaited them in paradise, and then conducting murders-for-hire at the behest of the leader, the “old man of the mountain,” that is Rashid al-Din Sinan, a leader of the Nizari in what is now Syria. In European versions of the tale, the victims of these assassins were often Christians. While the Nizari in the twelfth century did use assassination as a political tool, as did many other groups including the Crusaders themselves, the bit about doped-up killers is fiction.
Assassin first appears in English with the sense of a member of the Nizari sect, particularly one who killed at the behest of their leader. From the 1340 Ayenbite of Inwyt:
Þe milde bouȝþ gledliche uor he is ase þe hassasis. þet ys bliþe huanne he heþ þe heste onderuonge of his maistre. þet þe perils and þe pinen an þane dyaþ he onderuangþ þerwyþ mid to greate blisse uor þe loue þet he heþ to þe obedience.
(The humble person gladly bows because his is like the assassins, that is happy when he is under the command of his master, that he undertakes therewith the perils and pains of that death with too great bliss because of the love that he has for obedience.)
By the early sixteenth century, assassin was being used generally to mean a person who murders for hire, pointing out that at the time there was no English law against assassination per se, only for murder in general, and that intent to commit murder or assassination was not a crime, only the act itself. From Christopher Saint German’s 1531 Second Dialogue Between Doctor and Student:
Doctoure. yt appereth in the sayde summe called summa Angelica in the .xxi. chapytre. in the tytle of Ascismus the .2.Paragraf. that he is an ascismus that wyll slee men for money at the instaunce of euery man that wyll moue hym to yt, & such a man may laufully be slayne not only by the Juge but by euery pryuate persone. But it is sayd there in the .4.Paragraf. that he must fyrst be Juged by the lawe as an asismus [e]r he may be slayne or his goodes seased. And it is sayde ferther there in the .2.Paragraf that also in conseyence suche an ascismus may be slayne yf yt be done thrugh a ʒele of Justyce and els not. Is not the lawe of the realme lykewyse of men outlawed/abiured/ or Juged for felony.
Student. In the lawe of the realme there is no suche law that a man shall be adiuged as an ascinmus / ne yf a man be in full purpose for a certayne summe of money that he hath receyued to slee a man: yet yt is no felony ne murdre in the law in the law tyll he hathe done the acte for the intent in felony nor murdre is not punyssshable by the comon lawe of the realme though it be dedly synne afre god
And the figurative use of assassin, as in character assassin, appears by the early seventeenth century. From a 1609 sermon preached by William Symonds:
The onely perill is in offending God, and taking of Papists in to your company: if once they come creeping into your houses, then looke for mischiefe: if treason or poyson bee of any force: know them all to be very Assasines, of all men to be abhorred
So, while the words hashish and assassin are etymologically related, the notion that the original assassins were inspired to commit the act by the drug is false, an example of a medieval Islamophobic slur.
Sources:
Daftary, Farhad. “Assassins.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, third edition. Brill: 2007.
Gradon, Pamela. Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of Conscience (1866), vol. 1.Early English Text Society, O.S. 23. London: Oxford UP, 1965, 140. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, Arundel MS 57.
Leo, John. A Geographical Historie of Africa. John Pory, trans. London: George Bishop, 1600, 249. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Linschoten, Jan Huygen van. His Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies. London: John Wolfe, 1598, 125. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. hassasis, n.
Niebuhr, Carsten. Travels Through Arabia, and Other Countries in the East, vol. 2 of 2. Robert Heron, trans. Edinburgh: R. Morison and Son, et. al., 1792, 225. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2018, modified December 2020, s.v. hashish, n.
Saint German, Christopher. The Secunde Dyalogue in Englysshe wyth New Addycyons. London: Peter Treueris, 1531, fol. 104v. Early English Books Online (EEBO). (The digital scan here is difficult to read in places. I used the next source, which is a better scan, albeit with a slightly more modernized spelling, as a crib for transcribing this one.)
———. “Second Dialogue.” Two Dialogues in English Between A Doctour of Divinity and a Student in the Laws of England. London: John Streater, et al. 1688. 275–76. Wiley Digital Archives.
Symonds, William. Virginia. A Sermon Preached at White-Chappel, in the Presence of Many, Honourable and Worshipfull, the Aduenturers and Planters for Virginia. 25.April.1609. London: I. Windet for Eleazar Edgar and William Welby, 1609, 45–46. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, a.2005. Public domain image.