“Close to the mosque of Hakem is the hemp-eater’s coffee-house, called Kahwet-el-Hashasheen, which is frequented by those who indulge in the abominable narcotic called hasheesh. Of these coffee houses there are five in Cairo and its environs, and two in Boulak. But at least twenty per cent of the male population eat hasheesh in private, and there were no less than thirty-five retailers of lozenges of hasheesh. It is divided into three kinds, the dawa mask, which produces simple gaiety – the geraweesh, which gives virile power – and the Hindy, or Indian, which throws people into ecstasy.”
Source: A History of the Egyptian Revolution, from the Period of the Mamelukes to the Death of Mohammed Ali (Vol. 2), by By A. A. Paton, F.R.G.S. 1870
