Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East

225 Pages·1985·59.181 MB·English

by  Ralph S. Hattox

COFFEE AND
COFFEEHOUSES

COFFEE AND
COFFEEHOUSES
The Origins of a Social Beverage in the
Medieval Near East
RALPH S. HATTOX
UNNERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
Seattle and London
Cover illustration: Thrkish miniature (detail): mid-sixteenth century.
(Courtesy of the Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library)
Coffee and Coffeehouses was originally published in 1985 as No.3 in Near
Eastern Studies, University of Washington, sponsored by the Department of
Near Eastern Languages and Civilization and the Middle East Center of the
Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.
Copyright © 1985 by the Department of Near Eastern Languages and
Civilization, University of Washington
University of Washington Press edition, 1988
Third printing, 1996
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, ele!;tronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storllge or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hattox, Ralph S.
Coffee and coffeehouses.
Reprint. Originally published: Seattle: Distributed by University of
Washington Press, cl985. Originally published in series: Near Eastern studies.
University of Washington: no. 3
Bibliography: p.
Includes index
1. Coffee-Middle East-History. 2. Coffee·houses-Middle Ea5t
History. 3. Coffee-History. 4. Coffee-houses-History.
I. Title.
GT2919.M628H38 1988 394.1'2 87-31618
ISBN 0-295-96231-3
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials. ANSI 239.48-1984. co
To my parents

CONTENTS
Illustrations viii
Preface ix
1. The Great Coffee Controversy 3
2. The Coming of Coffee to the Near East 11
3. Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Opposition 29
4. Wine, Coffee, and the Holy Law 46
5. Lethargy, Leprosy, and Melancholia:
Coffee and Medieval Medicine 61
6. Taverns without Wine: The Rise of the Coffeehouse 72
1. Society and the Social Life of the Coffeehouse 92
8. The Coffeehouse: Social Norms, Social Symbols 112
Appendix: Note on Sources 191
Glossary 197
Notes 142
Bibliography 165
Index 171
ILLUSTRATIONS
Following page 52
1. Engraving of a Coffee Tree (LaRoque)
2. Engraving of a Coffee Plant (LaRoque)
3. Early European Image of Coffee (Dufour)
4. Engraving of Coffee Pots (Blegny)
5. Engraving of Coffee Cups (Blegny)
6. Turkish Miniature of a Coffeehouse
7. Intirieur d'un cafe publique (Melling)
8. Intirieur d'un cafe publique (detaiQ
9. Interior of a Turkish Caffinet (Allom)
10. Coffee Kiosque, on the Port (Bartlett)
11. Troisieme vue du Bosphore (Melling)
12. Damascus Cafes (Bartlett)
13. Vendeur de caffe par les rues (van Moor)
14. Jerusalem Coffee Vendor (Bonfils)
15. Coffee Shop in Cairo (Bonfils)
16. A Turkish Cafe (Kilburn)
PREFACE
I began writing this book some seven years ago as a short
seminar paper at Princeton. Faced with the task of in
vestigating the application of Islamic law to some specific
question, I chose that of the prohibition of coffee. Start
ing with the knowledge that coffee was eventually found
licit by the major schools of law, what remained was to
examine the process of legal reasoning through which cof
fee was originally condemned, and how this condemnation
was ultimately overturned. Several months of research led
to the perplexing realization that coffee was eventually
found licit because the original prohibition was not just
faulty, but based on such flimsy claims that one had to
wonder why they were put forward to begin with. If cof
fee itself patently fell within the group of legal beverages,
there must be something with which it was associated that
prompted all the furor. This work is an effort to discover
what that something was.
A few methodological problems had to be tackled in
dealing with the question. To begin with, while a fair
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