The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #107587   Message #2232529
Posted By: Jack Campin
09-Jan-08 - 06:19 PM
Thread Name: Venues are a changing.
Subject: RE: ? Venues are a changing.
You could add this bit: when coffee roasting arrived in Istanbul it didn't get an easy ride. The Old Testament forbids burnt foods and this Jewish prohibition was adopted by the Muslims. So was coffee really some sort of carbonized pagan sacrifice, or just a rather enthusiastically toasted food? Some local clerics got extremely hot under the turban over it. Part of the problem was that tobacco had arrived at almost the same time, so the Ottomans had two drug problems to cope with at once. Usually the two were consumed in the same places; suddenly there were hundreds of exotic dens where men drank black sludge in rooms so thick with smoke you couldn't see who was in there, which must have been a problem for the Sultan's secret police. (It was also seen as a problem that coffee might impair men's sexual urges). It took several months of committee meetings for the ulema to rule that it was sort of okay, maybe.

(Source: Bernard Lewis, "Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire".)