*

COFFEEHOUSES IN EARLY
MODERN MEDITERRENIAN
WORLD
“A History of Coffee” by Cemal Kafadar
Coffeehouse as an ivenitable
part of daily life.
 Coffee
 It s a brewed
beverage prepared
from roasted
seeds, commonly
called coffee
beans, of the
coffee plant.
 The term was
introduced to
Europe via the
Ottoman Turkish
kahve, which is
Coffee Flower
Coffee Seeds
Coffee Beans
Coffeehouse
 Coffeehouse: A coffeehouse is an
establishment which serves prepared
coffee or other hot beverages.
 It was named with similar words in
different languages. French/Portuguese:
café; Spanish: cafetería or café; Italian:
caffetteria, German: Café or Kaffeehaus,
Greek: Καφενείο, Καφενές, or
Καφετέρια, Turkish: Kahvehane.
 As a social institution, coffeehouses are
the centers of social interaction.

The Introduction of
Coffeehouse to Istanbul
 Pecevi, an Ottoman historian of the early
seventeenth century, wrote that:
 “Until the year 962 (1554-55), coffee and
coffeehouses did not exist in the
Ottoman Empire. About that year, two
persons, Hakam from Aleppo and
Shams from Damascus, came to the
city: they each opened a large shop in
the district called Tahtalkala, and began
to sell coffee.
Coffee finds its institution as
Coffeehouse
 By the time it reached Istanbul, coffee had been
known in the certain parts of the Arab world
(the Arabian peninsula, late Mamluk Egypt and
Syria) for more than a century.
 The early consumption of this ibeverage was
limited to Sufi orders, homes, and small street
shops.
 When coffee reached Cairo and Istanbul, it
began to be used in a social institution as a
coffeehouse.
 Coffeehouses spread all around the empire.
 The coffee was spreading as a part of daily life
both eastward to Iran and India and westward
to Europe, with the opening of coffeehouses in
Isfahan, Delhi, Oxford, Paris, Vienna, and many
other cities before the end of the 17th century.
As a meeting place
 These shops became meeting places for
1.pleasure seekers
2.idlers, and
3.some intellectuals from among the men of
letters and literati.
 Some read books and fine writings.

 some were busy with backgammon and

chess,
 some brought new poems and talked of

literature.
 there was no place like it for pleasure and

relaxation, and filled it until there was no

First Complaints about Coffee
and Coffeehouses
 The imams and muezzins said that:
‘People have become addicts of the
coffeehouse: nobody comes to the
mosques!
 The ulema said: ‘It is a house of evil
deeds; it is better to go to the wine
tavern than there.’
 The preachers tried to forbid it and issued
fetvas against it.
 In the time of Sultan Murad III, there were
great prohibitions to coffeehouses.
Life without coffee!
 After a short time, it became so
widespread that the ban was
abandoned.
 The preachers and muftis now said that to
drink coffee is lawful, halal.
 Among scholars of religion, the sheikhs,
the viziers, and the great, there was
nobody who did not drink coffee.
 It even reached such a point that the
grand viziers built great coffeehouses as
investments.
What is the contribution of
Coffeehouses to the Ottoman
Empire
 Social arena;
 secularization of public space;
 literary activity;
 the formation and manipulation of public
opinion;
 tensions with the authorities;
 coffee as a commodity,
 the coffeehouse as an investment.
Coffeehouse for all the
people
 Thevenot who is a traveler in Istanbul in
1655 said that:
“There is no one poor or rich, who does not

drink at least two or three cups a day. …

All sorts of people come to these places
without distinction of religion or social
position; there is not the slightest bit of
shame in entering such a place, and
many go there simply to chat with one
another.”
All the people except women
 For a while after its introduction to the
Middle East, the Balkans, and Europe,
coffeehouses were male spaces.
 Lady Montague, wife of the British
ambassador to the Ottoman empire in
the early 18th century, visited the
Ottoman public bathhouses for women,
and called them as “women’s
coffeehouses.”
Different kinds of Sociability:
Secular Space
 The coffeehouse provided a different kind
of sociability from other traditional
institutions.
 It was secular. It was outside the direct
control of the religious authorities.
 The taverns were banned to all of Muslim
society.
 Coffee as a beverage was not forbidden
like alcohol.
 Therefore, it was open to both Muslims
and non-Muslims.
Entertaining
 Recitation of books, epics, romances
spread over many nights.
 Shadow and puppet shows were
performed in the coffeehouses.

Turkish Shadow Theater
Medda
h
Europe
 Europe met with coffee through travelers
in Ottoman lands.
 In Europe, physicians were introduced
first with coffee because it was used as
medicine.
 Starting around the middle of the 17th
century, coffee became an attraction
and then a habit for Europeans as well.
Londo
n
1700s
Coffee Trade
 With the widespread consumption of coffee, its
trade also became very important.
 Throughout the late-17th and early-18th
centuries, coffee was exported in large
quantities from the Middle East toward Europe.
 By the 1710s, “the Dutch were growing coffee in
Java for the European market.
 The French were growing coffee in their West
Indian colonies. Soon they were even
exporting coffee to the Ottoman empire.
 Through the middle of the 18th century, Colonial
coffee was cheaper than coffee coming from
the Red Sea.
 Confrontation Zone between
State and Public
 The coffeehouse had a negative position in
the eyes of state authorities.
 They perceived coffeehouse as a
“scapegoat” for urban disorder.
 It was the center of popular political
discourse.
 As a measurein the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the authorities
applied periodic bans on all the
coffeehouses.
 But in the later centuries, the attitude of the
State canged, they closed only some
coffeehouse “as a warning to all”.(İbreten
lil-gayr)
Invention of Nightime
 the coffee-drinking in public was related
to the increasing use of the nighttime.
 In early modern Ottoman context, it was
very difficult to control nightime for
Ottoman authorities.
 They were using candles and lighting oil,
and street lighting was not so
widespread in every neighborhood.
A miniature
from the
second half of
the 16th
century

 Manuscript 439, folio 9. Courtesy of the

Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library.
Quoted from Ralph S. Hattox, Coffee and
Coffeehouses, The Origins of a Social
Beverage in the Medieval Near East,
(Seattle and London: University of
Washington Press, 1996), p. 52. For him,
it is from the mid-sixteenth century.

The Number of Coffeehouses in
Istanbul in 18th Century
Place Number
Places between Suleymaniye and Sirkeci 90
Places between Edirnekapı and Beyazıt on the 142
part of Golden Horn
Places between Topkapı and Beyazıt on the 140
part of Marmara Sea
Exterior of the City Walls of Asitane-i Aliye 142
From Kadıköy to Anadolu Kavağı 253
From Beşiktaş to Rumeli Kavağı 124
Galata 162
Tophane 120
Kasımpaşa ?
Eyüp, Hasköy 106
Toplam 1279+?
Geographical Distribution of
Coffeehouses in Istanbul
The Proportion of Coffeehouses
to Other Shops
Place # of coffee # of esnaf
shopkeeper
s
Tophane-i Amire Region 33 113
Tophane-i Amire Square 14 75
Boğazkesen Market 12 54
Firuz Ağa Market 9 35
Sur-ı Mükebbir Market 3 3
Cihangir Market 3 3
Salı (Tuesday) Market ve Fındıklı 15 73
Market
Dereiçi Market 7 22
Kazgancı Market 2 5
Ağaçaltı in Taksim 3 3
Ağa Camii Market 2 8
Ağa Cami-i Şerif Market 2 8
In front of the Saray-ı Galata 8 21
Gate of Kule-i Kebir (Galata Tower) 10 39
Total 123 462
The engraving by Melling
Thomas Allom’s engraving
“Interior of a Turkish Caffinet”
Coffee Kiosque, on the Port by
William Bartlett
Neighborhood Coffeehouses
 Most coffeehouses were placed in the
residential neighborhoods of the city.

Coffeehouses in Topkapı,
Flandin
Coffeehouses in Eyüp,
Edirnekapı Direklerarası
Tiryaki Çarşısı Fatih Camii
Avlusu
Social Gathering Spaces in
Numbers
S p a ce S o u rce D a te N um ber
Coffeehouse ADVN, 1790s ~ 1350
Kahvehane ,
Public Baths, DBŞM
Cevdet 1766 195
Kahve
Tavernsdükkanı
Hammam , , Belediye
(DBŞM- 1827 560
Kahveci
Şerbethane , ZCR
Tobacco Shops, MAD),.d 1781 1470
Koltuk
Duhan , Meyhane 20446
9980
Dükkanları
As a last
Gönül ne kahve ister ne kahvehane
Gönül sohbet ister kahve bahane

T h e h e a rt n e ith e r d e sire s co ffe e n o r

co ffe e h o u se
T h e h e a rt is a fte r so h b e t, th e co ffe e is
ju st a p re text