Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (37 page)

The report from Ibrahim Peçevi demonstrates that from the
very beginning, the introduction of coffee and coffeehouses ignited controversy
and stirred heated and bitter public debate. Many among the conservative ulema
condemned the new beverage as “an intoxicant fully comparable to wine,”
consumption of which the holy Quran banned. The palace and the ulema used
coffee as the scapegoat for the decline in public morality and the rise in
loose, immoral, and rebellious behavior. The advocates and supporters of the
black drink, however, refused to be intimidated. They struck back and used
their own interpretation of the Quran and the Islamic law to dismiss the
comparison with wine, emphasizing the benefits of drinking coffee and arguing
that, as long as it did not interfere with the daily religious obligation,
there could not be anything wrong with enjoying several cups of the black
beverage.

In spite of vehement and organized opposition from the
conservatives, the popularity and consumption of coffee spread like wildfire.
By the closing decades of the 16th century, the consumption of the black
stimulant had become common enough that even remote towns in Anatolia possessed
coffeehouses. After the Syrian merchant Shems, who had introduced coffee to
Istanbul, returned home with a handsome profit of five thousand gold pieces,
many more coffeehouses were built in the city and the new black drink emerged
as the beverage of chess players and thinkers. Elaborate ceremonies were
organized around the brewing and serving of coffee at the imperial palace,
where the sultan’s coffee maker received support from 40 assistants. The women
of the harem also received special training in preparing coffee for their royal
master, while outside the palace, prospective suitors judged the merits of their
intended brides in accordance with the taste of the coffee they prepared.

Coffee was taken at hot temperatures from a special coffee
pot called
cezve
and served with Turkish delight. In some areas of the
empire, pistachio grains were added into the coffee. By the last decade of the
16th century, the popularity of the black drink had forced the conservatives to
back down and concede defeat, albeit grudgingly. Bostanzade Mehmed Effendi, who
served as the chief mufti from 1589 to 1592 and again from 1593 to 1598,
finally delivered a
fetva
granting his approval to the black drink,
which had been denounced by an Arab poet as “the negro enemy of sleep and love.”
This did not, however, end the controversy and the debate.

During the reign of Murad IV (1623–1640), the authorities
cracked down on coffeehouses, denouncing them as centers of unlawful and
seditious activities. Many coffeehouses were closed down, and several coffee
drinkers and smokers were executed. For the sultan and his ministers, the
prevailing social chaos and political anarchy were partially caused by the
rapid increase in the number of coffeehouses—where storytellers, poets, and
shadow puppeteers ridiculed the mighty and powerful for their corruption and
hypocrisy. When, in September 1633, a devastating fire burned thousands of
shops in the capital, the sultan interpreted it as a sign of God’s wrath and
demanded the restoration of the moral order. The use of coffee and tobacco was
outlawed, and coffeehouses, which had been used as centers of political and
social mobilization, were closed. While the small traders were badly hit by the
prohibition, the wealthy merchants survived because they possessed a
substantial amount of capital and they could make a profit on the black market.

Despite these repressive measures, the state could not
enforce the ban. Moreover, the government gradually recognized that the
importation, distribution, and sale of coffee could significantly increase
state revenue. Its import was taxed for the first time during the reign of
Süleyman II (1687–1698), and “to provide still greater income for the treasury,
a further tax was levied on its sale.” The central government also increased
its profit from the sale of coffee by “farming out the right of coffee-roasting
to the highest bidder.”

In the second half of the 16th century, European travelers
who visited the Ottoman Empire became the first Westerners to discover coffee.
The physician Prospero Alpini, who lived in Egypt in 1590, and Pietro della
Valle, who visited Istanbul in 1615, wrote of it:

The Turks also have another beverage, black in colour, which
is very refreshing in summer and very warming in winter, without however
changing its nature and always remaining the same drink, which is swallowed hot
. . . They drink it in long draughts, not during the meal but afterwards, as a
sort of delicacy and to converse in comfort in the company of friends. One
hardly sees a gathering where it is not drunk. A large fire is kept going for
this purpose and little porcelain bowls were kept by it ready-filled with the
mixture; when it is hot enough there are men entrusted with the office who do
nothing else but carry these little bowls to all the company, as hot as
possible, also giving each person a few melon seeds to chew to pass the time.
And with the seeds and this beverage, which they call kafoue, they amuse
themselves while conversing sometimes for a period of seven or eight hours.

The European merchants purchased Yemeni coffee in Cairo,
where the trade reached its zenith in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, “although
even between 1624 and 1630 there were some very wealthy Cairo wholesalers
dealing in coffee.” By 1700, coffee had replaced spices as the mainstay of a
large and flourishing trade between “the Orient” and Africa on the one hand,
and the Mediterranean on the other. European traders tried to dislodge the
Muslims from the coffee trade by force, “as they had done earlier with pepper
and spice but they failed.” Ottoman control over Aden, which lasted until 1830,
allowed Muslim merchants to maintain their control over the lucrative trade,
particularly in the Red Sea region, western Arabia, Syria, and Anatolia. This
forced the Europeans to establish their own coffee plantations in the
Caribbean. The emergence of “plantation colonies” weakened the dominant
economic position of Egypt. West Indian coffee first arrived in Marseilles
around 1730 and was soon introduced to the bazaars of the eastern
Mediterranean. By 1786–1789, 21 percent of the French coffee was sold in the
Levant at a price “roughly 25 percent lower than that of Yemeni coffee.” The
threat posed by the cheaper West Indian coffee was sufficiently serious that “its
importation into Egypt was prohibited.”

In 18th- and 19th-century Istanbul, splendid coffeehouses
were built in the ornate Rococo style—”timber framed with the interiors carved
and painted,” often equipped with a stove for heating the coffee and charcoal
for the pipes, rows of
nargiles,
or glass-bottomed water pipes for
smoking, and “small decorative fountains to cool the air in summer” so that “the
customers could drink their coffee while listening to music, have a shave,
smoke their
çubuks
(long cornel-wood pipes), listen to story-tellers,
meet their friends or just relax.” Since “these structures were made of wood,
they were particularly vulnerable to the terrible fires that broke out
frequently in Istanbul.”

The popularity of coffee was not confined to the urban
centers of the empire. In the distant provinces of the empire, and in the most
remote tribal areas of the Middle East, drinking the bitter black liquid
brought members of various Arab tribes together. As one foreign traveler
observed, the Arab nomadic groups ate very little, particularly when there were
no guests, relying primarily on bread and a bowl of camel’s milk for their
daily nutrition. This may explain why they remained lean and thin, but also why,
when a sickness befell a tribe, it carried off a large proportion of the clan’s
members. In sharp contrast, when guests visited the tribe, a sheep was killed
in honor of the occasion and a sumptuous meal of mutton, curds, and flaps of
bread was prepared and eaten with fingers. Although the flora of the desert
regions of Syria and Jordan were scanty in quantity, it was of many varieties
and “almost every kind was put to some useful end.” The leaf of
uturfan
was
used to scent butter, while a salad was made of the prickly
kursa’aneh.
On
these special occasions, preparing, serving, and drinking coffee played a
central role in demonstrating the hospitality of the host toward his guest.

Arab nomads lit a bonfire of tamarisk, willow, and other
desert scrubs in the earthen fireplace dug into the center of the tent. The
guest of honor was motioned to the spot on the carpet between the hearth and
the partition that separated the women’s quarters from the men’s. Sometimes the
ceremony of preparing the coffee took a full hour, during which the host and
his guest sat in dignified silence. Preparations began by roasting the beans
and then crushing them in the mortar—a music dear to the ears of desert Arabs.
The coffee pots essential to desert hospitality were then placed in the ashes
of the bonfire to simmer. It was an indignity among the Arabs if the coffee
served to a visitor was made by women. Often the son of the sheikh (the chief
of the clan or tribe) prepared the coffee as a sign of respect for the visitor.
When the coffee was ready, an empty cup was handed to the guest, who returned
it declaring: “May you live.” The coffee was then poured into the cup by the
host and handed to the guest. As the guest began to drink, a voice would declare,
“double health,” and the guest would reply, “Upon your heart.” Only after the
cups had been passed around once or twice, and all the necessary phrases of
politeness had been exchanged, could the business of the evening be discussed. Smoking
a pipe went hand in hand with drinking coffee.

Aside from coffee, the other popular drink among the Turks,
as well as many residents of the empire in the Balkans, was
boza,
a type
of malt drink, which was most probably brought by the Turks from Central Asia. The
popular drink differed slightly according to region, depending on crops
available and local customs. It was made from corn and wheat in Anatolia, and
wheat or millet in Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria. From Anatolia and the
Balkans,
boza
spread to other Ottoman provinces, such as Egypt, where it
was prepared from barley and drunk by boatmen of the Nile and many among the
lower classes.
Boza
had a thick consistency and a low alcohol content
with an acidic sweet flavor. The Ottoman army units consumed
boza
because
it was rich in carbohydrates and vitamins. Numerous
boza
makers
accompanied the janissaries.

Boza
production was an important component of
the Ottoman urban economy. During the reign of Selim II (1566–1574),
boza
consumption
ran into government restriction when a new brand of the drink, laced with
opium, was introduced to the market. The Ottoman government once again imposed
restrictions on alcoholic beverages, including
boza,
during the reign of
Mehmed IV (1648–1687), but consumption of the drink continued. By the 19th
century, the sweet and non-alcoholic Albanian
boza
that was consumed in
the imperial palace had triumphed among the masses.

Other drinks and beverages unique to a particular region or
district were produced locally. As with food, drinks varied from one region and
district of the empire to another, depending on ingredients available. The
people of Vlorë (Vlora), in southwestern Albania, produced a white honey with
an aroma of musk and ambergris that they mixed with 20 cups of water to make a
delicious sherbet or pudding, while the people of Gjirokastër in central
Albania drank red wine,
reyhania,
and Polish arrack. In Albania, where
fruits such as grapes, pears, apples, cherries, pomegranates, and chestnuts
were abundant, the popular drinks consisted of red wine, grape juice flavored
with mustard,
reyhania,
sour-cherry juice, honey mead, and
boza.
In
the Kurdish-populated eastern Anatolia, “the renowned beverages and stimulants
were poppy sherbet, pomegranate sherbet, rice water sherbet, rhubarb sherbet,
wine boiled to a third and canonically lawful, apricot julep, and hemlock
sherbet.”

Coffee kiosk (house), on the
port (Istanbul). William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe,
The Beauties of the
Bosphorus
(London: 1839).

Wine

Though wine was prohibited in Islam, Ottomans of all ranks
and social standing deviated from the precepts of the
_¸
seriat
(Islamic
legal code) and drank wine regularly at various parties and gatherings. A
European diplomat who lived in the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the
17th century wrote that although it was forbidden and banned by Islamic law, “wine
was commonly used” and “publicly drunk” without any “caution or fear” of
causing any scandal. He admitted, however, that high government officials were
often worried about their image as wine drinkers. He also observed that
drinking was often judged in connection to the age of the drinker; thus its use
by young men was often tolerated and excused, but it was a scandal and a crime
for an old man to drink an alcoholic drink. Less than half a century later, the
wife of an English ambassador who visited Istanbul from 1717 to 1718 was
shocked when one of her Ottoman hosts, a man of power and status, drank wine in
her presence with the same ease and freedom as the Europeans did. When she
asked her host how he could allow himself the liberty to enjoy a drink that had
been denounced by his religion, the Ottoman dignitary fired back that all of
God’s creations were good and designed for the use of man. In his interpretation
of Islam, “the prohibition of wine was a very wise maxim,” but it was meant for
the common people and the prophet Muhammad had never designed to confine those
who knew how to consume it with moderation.