Hashish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hashish (from Arabic حشيش meaning grass, often shortened to hash, and also referred to by countless slang terms such as shit or chocolate) is a psychoactive drug derived from the Cannabis sativa plant. It is solid, of varying hardness and pliability, softening under heat. Its colour can vary from reddish brown to black, and can also be greenish or golden. It is usually smoked in pipes, and sometimes in joints mixed with tobacco or Cannabis buds. It can also be added to cookies or other food and ingested. Hash is used for its relaxing and mind-altering effects.
Hashish is comprised of the compressed trichomes collected from the leaves and flowers of a mature, flowering Cannabis plant. Certain strains of Cannabis are cultivated specifically for their ability to produce large quantities of trichomes, and are thus called hash plants. Trichomes are small glandular hairs containing plant resins which appear on the leaves and stems of the Cannabis plant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashish
- posted on 04/24/2006
Harem (household)
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In the Arab tradition, imitated by other Muslim cultures, the harîm حريم (cf. haram) is the part of the household forbidden to male strangers. In Western languages such as English, this term refers collectively to the wives in a polygynous household as well as the "no-males allowed" area, or in more modern usage to a number of women followers or admirers of a man.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Other use
3 See also
4 Further reading
[edit]
History
Contrary to the common belief, a harem is not necessarily a part of a palace and its inhabitants do not necessarily consist solely of women with whom the head of the household has a sexual relation. For example the Ottoman harem, the harem of the Great Sultan's Topkapi seraglio (closed palace) in the Turkish capital Istanbul, would contain several hundred women including wives (only four could be legal under Islam), mistresses, the sultan's mother, daughters and other female relatives, as well as eunuchs and slave girls to serve the aforementioned women. During the later periods, the sons of the Sultan also lived in the Harem until they were sixteen, when it might be considered appropriate for them to appear in the public and administrative areas of the palace. The Topkapi Harem was, in some senses, merely the private living quarters of the Sultan and his family, within the palace complex.
Harems existed in Ancient Persia as early as the Achaemenid dynasty and lasted well into the Qajar dynasty. The women of the royal harem played important though underreported roles in Iranian history, especially during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.
Harem is also the usual English translation of the Chinese language term hougong, ááŒm¡ªliterally meaning "the palaces behind." Hougong are large Chinese royal palaces for the emperor's consorts and female attendants. The women who lived in an emperor's hougong sometimes numbered in the thousands.
The institution of the harem exerted a certain fascination on the European imagination, especially during the Age of Romanticism (see also Orientalism), due in part to the writings of the adventurer Richard Francis Burton.
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Other use
In zoology, harem means the females in a group of animals living together, which only mate with the single of in any case less numerous adult males, a prerogative he must defend against external challengers.
- posted on 04/24/2006
Constantinople ¾ýʿ̹¶¡±¤
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This article details the history of Constantinople before the Turkish Conquest of 1453. For details on the city since 1453, see İstanbul.
Map of Constantinople. More detailed map.Constantinople[1] was the name of the modern-day city of İstanbul, Turkey over the centuries that it served as the second capital of the unified Roman Empire, and after its division into East and West, of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire (from the city's ancient Greek name, Byzantium). Constantinople was located strategically between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe met Asia, and was highly significant as the successor to ancient Rome and the largest and wealthiest city in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, known as the "Queen of Cities".
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