Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity (6 page)

The company preserved a respectful silence. Now the viceroy, taking a bean between finger and thumb, lifted it high in the air, showed it to all present, and continued: “We read in the chapter entitled ‘The Table’ that wine, gaming, pictures, graven images, and casting lots, are among the most evil devices of Shaitan!”

“That is not wine!” said one of the muftis. “It is more of the nature of charcoal. Grind it between your teeth, and you will realize that it is like wood charcoal.”

“You say, then, it is an ash?”

“Certainly it resembles ashes.”

“In that case it is as earth, and you know well that earth is one of the articles of diet forbidden by the Koran.”

“You are mistaken, lord!” said one of the masters of the law. “That roasted seed is not earth in the sense in which we apply the term to the earth of our fields. It is a dead portion of a plant. Even if this plant were forbidden—we do not know, as yet, for we are assembled to decide that point—it would be permissible in the condition of the bean you hold, for it has passed through the fire.”

“Yes, I agree,” said an old, white-bearded Ulema. “Fire, ‘atesch,’ purifies everything. It purifies by transforming. Even though the blossoms and the substance of the coffee-berry were unclean—which we do not know as yet, since that is what we are gathered here to ascertain—the condition of the bean you now hold is one transformed. An unclean article can be purified through the instrumentality of another. Bear in mind Abu Bekr’s dog. Being a dog, the beast was unclean. But when it fell into a salt lake and became petrified, it was cleansed.”

The viceroy grew angry, but contained himself. Those whom he had assembled in council were the wisest of the land. He dismissed them to think the matter over, enjoining on them to return at the same hour next day.

“Bismillah!” he said piously, to open the conversation. “In the name of Allah, the all-merciful, we have set out from false premises. We are not concerned with passing judgment upon the plant, but upon its effect. I consider it to be ‘buzeh,’ intoxicating, like brandy or mead. There are two hakims among the company. Let us hear what they have to say about the matter.”

“That is not so easy,” replied the elder of the two physicians. “One who is to know what is ‘buzeh’ must be an infidel! I have never partaken of mead or brandy, but I have been informed by others that he who has consumed a sufficiency of strong drink becomes, in the end, insensible. When I have drunk coffee, the power of my senses has been redoubled.”

“If Allah,” rejoined the viceroy pithily, “had wished to redouble your intelligence, he would have done so himself, without this artificial aid.”

“True,” said some of the muftis. This seemed to most of those present a strong point against coffee. If it conferred supernatural powers on one who drank it, it must be a devilish potion. A man had only two hands, although he might fancy that it would have been more convenient for him to have four.

“Not one of us knows what an intoxicant is,” said the viceroy, whose temper had improved. “Still, which among you can deny that coffee banishes sleep? What do you think of that in the light of the sixth chapter of the Koran, the one entitled ‘The Beast’? Do we not read therein: ‘Allah sends us the morning, having ordained the night for repose, and provided the sun and the moon for the determination of time’? Remember that the Koran proceeds as follows: ‘Such is the ordinance of the Almighty!’”

All present sprang to their feet. With one exception, they pointed meaningly, with the exclamation: “Forbidden! We have decided!”

“Not so fast,” put in the younger hakim. “Our ruler asks my opinion. As that of a practising physician, may I utter it?”

“Say on.”

“No more than the rest of you do I know from personal experience the effects of wine, being a true believer. But there are other things than wine that can produce insensibility. There is, for instance, opium, the juice of the poppy plant. This puts the senses to sleep.”

“As I listen to your words, hakim,” said the viceroy sourly, “I recall the thirty-eighth verse of the sixth chapter of the Koran: ‘God leads astray whom he wills, and leads whom he wills into the right path.’”

“May I be allowed to continue my argument?” asked the hakim. “I will elaborate. If coffee is a magic potion, so is that prepared from the opium plant. If we are not permitted artificially to induce wakefulness, neither may we artificially induce sleep. In the ninety-sixth verse we read: ‘Allah has appointed the night for repose.’ The scripture does not say that He has appointed the day for repose! But those to whom opium has been administered sleep by day as well as by night. Why then, lord, should we be forbidden to drink coffee so as to keep awake at night?”

The assembly of the sages was agitated like a sea. Their green silken robes rustled. The wearers, with lean faces, aquiline noses, eloquent lips, disputed acrimoniously. Some agreed with the older physician, others with the younger. Impotent in his wrath, the viceroy looked on. He did not venture to utter anything authoritative that might tip the scales one way or the other. All he could say was: “I look to you for a truthful decision. Such is the will of Allah!”

The dispute went on for hours. The parties to it swayed, now to the right, and now to the left, differing from one another as much as is possible among pious Moslems. One of the army officers went so far as to compare the dark, roasted coffee-beans with the brilliant eyes of the houris of Paradise. This infuriated a mufti who, foaming at the mouth, shouted words from the forty-fourth chapter of the Koran: “The tree sakum is the sinner’s food! It will scald the belly of those who consume it, like molten brass or boiling water!”

Thus did they argue more and more fiercely, until peace was restored by sunset and the summons to evening prayer. Then, when devotions were finished, lest the debate should be resumed, an old man of ninety said: “When I look at you, I am reminded of those soldiers who engage in a sham fight, twenty marching towards the west and twenty towards the east. I also recall the words of the learned Muktassi, who visited many lands, and, who at the close of his life, wrote: ‘It seems to have pleased Allah that I should be both holy and unholy. I have swallowed broth with the Sufis, eaten porridge with monks, and have consumed the rough diet of seafaring men with sailors. Sometimes I observed all the rules of piety; and at other times I ate forbidden victuals, against my better judgment and without any absolute necessity. I have lain in prison; I have been highly honoured. Mighty princes listened to my words; at other times I was chastised with rods.’ Since, my lord viceroy, we cannot, at your divan, decide as to the qualities of coffee-beans, let us break up our assembly. Some will avoid coffee, regarding it as forbidden, others will drink coffee, regarding its use as permissible.”

“You do not speak like a true believer,” said some of the company, critically, before departing.

The upshot was, however, that coffee was declared to be “mekruh,” neither forbidden nor permitted, thus merely “undesirable.”

At midnight Khair Bey stood on the roof of his house looking down on the Holy City. There are larger towns than Mecca, but none more sacred. Here the footprint of Father Abraham is eternally preserved in stone. Here is the hallowed Ka’ba, with the Black Stone built into one of the corners. From all parts of the world, a polyhedron with multitudinous sides, the bodies and souls of men fly hither like pious arrows. They wander unceasingly round the sacred edifice, and contemplate the Black Stone.

Khair Bey contemplated the sleeping city, or what should have been the sleeping city. The constellations Aquila and Swan sparkled in the sky. Betelgeux and Aldebaran were writing the glories of Allah in the firmament, and the minarets, the stony fingers of the mosques, were dumbly tracing the record of the heavens.

Here and there, however, in the town, there was light where darkness should have reigned. Torches moved near the walls, and noises from the distance reached the viceroy’s ears. He could even hear the sound of fiddles!

Khair Bey was in a rage. “They are wounding the night,” he thought. Summoning the watch, he issued his orders, and his men hastened to the coffee-houses, where the copper utensils were flung ruthlessly to the floor. Few among the drinkers ventured to resist, and they were bound that they might be haled to prison. Their friends and relatives assembled to attack the watch. Wounds were inflicted; two men lay dead upon the ground. Three of the coffee-houses were burned.

Next day coffee was prohibited. Not because it was contrary to the sacred words of the Koran, but because it “led to riots.” There followed a reign of terror lasting a whole week. Those who persisted in drinking their favourite beverage were bound, face to tail, on the backs of asses, and driven through the town, being flogged the while. It is recorded that many of the women forsook their husbands from jealousy of coffee, since he who sat awake enjoying the stimulation of the draught had no desire to lie down beside his wife.

The viceroy sent a report of these happenings to the sultan at Cairo. He described what measures he had taken, and asked the monarch’s approval. The sultan was in a quandary. He himself, and all his courtiers, were habitual coffee-drinkers. His reply to Khair Bey took the form of an advice to withdraw the prohibition of coffee. None of those, said the sultan, who were most learned among the interpreters of the Koran could find any ground for forbidding the use of coffee. Besides, if there had been riots, they had not been due to coffee, but to the steps taken to prevent its enjoyment.

Mecca is the centre of the world. What happens in Mecca speedily becomes known in Afghanistan, Persia, Egypt, Libya, Mesopotamia, Syria, Asia Minor. The news that Khair Bey had sustained a defeat in his attack upon coffee was borne by returning pilgrims on swift camels to all parts of the Mohammedan world. “K’hawah” had become a stimulant in more senses than one. It played a great part in religion and in politics. The spirit of wakefulness and alertness hidden in the shining bean was not a spirit of evil! Khair Bey was forced to restore the utensils he had impounded in the raid on the coffee-houses. The export of Mocha from the wadies of Yemen to the seacoast towns was considerably increased.

Enthusiasm of the friends of coffee was, however, countered by the fervour of its adversaries. No one could deny that the drinking of this beverage made people contentious, and that their contentions led to the use of knives and sticks. In the year 1521, at Cairo, there were riotous affrays among those who tarried long at the coffee-houses. For at the refreshment houses in the lands where Islam was dominant, the beverage on sale was not wine but coffee. Quarrels took place between coffee-drinkers and those who wished to lead pious lives and to retire seasonably at night. There were not wanting persons who declared that coffee promoted a critical spirit, and who maintained that the sultan was guided by the voice of his own lusts and had listened to evil counsellors.

Thus in the land of Egypt, where, twenty years before, the prohibition of coffee in Yemen had been remitted, the drug was for a second time prohibited in places of public entertainment. In private houses, however, people continued to drink as much as they pleased, so that the law was a dead letter.

Besides, what was drunk in Egypt, though in private, was drunk openly and without shame in Aleppo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Tehran. A hundred reasons, good, bad, and indifferent, were given for drinking coffee. During the heat of the day it promoted coolness of body and deliberation of mind, whereas during the cold hours of the night it fostered warmth both physical and mental. Especially was its use recommended in the foothills, because it counteracted the evil effects of the
tramontana
, the cold wind from the mountains. Then, as now, it was the sovereign remedy for migraine.

From time to time, religious zealots took up their campaign against coffee. The dervishes raged whenever they saw the black drink boiling in copper vessels over a fire. Many fanatics declared that, at the Day of Judgment, the faces of coffee-drinkers would be as black as the beverage itself. Of course this did not matter to the Ethiopians and other Africans, who were now being won over to Islam, since they were blackavized by nature.

It was the period in which the power and greatness of Islam were spreading far and wide. Vengeance was being taken against Christendom for having unchained the horror of the Crusades against Syria and Palestine. The aims of Islam were more than half fulfilled. In 1453, Constantinople fell before the onslaught of the Turks; the Byzantine empire was partitioned; the Balkan peoples had been largely exterminated or forcibly converted to Mohammedanism. Within the boundaries of the state, the Turkish impetus unified the Moslem realm, destroying the petty sultanates, so that Islam and the Ottoman Empire had come to mean the same thing. In the year 1517, Selim I annexed Egypt and Arabia to the northwestern portion of the Ottoman dominion.

In the unified Turkish realm, the importance of coffee was greatly enhanced. In camp and on the battlefield, it refreshed the Turkish warriors, and at home it performed the same service for the members of philosophical circles. Even women, now, had begun to drink the beverage. It was found that coffee eased the pains of labour, and in Turkey a law was actually passed making it a valid ground for divorce that a husband should refuse coffee to his wife. By now the national drink had become a regular article of diet, declared to be nutritive and of equal importance with bread and with water.

In view of this widespread popular sentiment, the attacks of the zealots and the dervishes had no more than a sectarian significance. Yet they were right enough in contending that coffee, “reduplicating the ego,” was really being idolized, for people thought more of their coffee than they thought of Allah. To the ultra-faithful, this seemed as intolerable as the deification of the vine in the Greek worship of Bacchus.

Moreover, just at that time, a fierce struggle was going on between coffee and wine. In the newly conquered provinces, which had so recently been Christian, viticulture naturally prevailed. Coffee-drinking was advocated with missionary fervour as against wine-bibbing. In Constantinople, more particularly, wine-shops were closed. Thus the “Black Apollo” became once more one of the most successful champions of Islam.