In Istanbul, Drinking Coffee in Public Was Once Punishable by Death

Author: Mark Hay / Source: Atlas Obscura

In 1633, the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV cracked down on a practice he believed was provoking social decay and disunity in his capital of Istanbul. The risk of disorder associated with this practice were so dire, he apparently thought, that he declared transgressors should be immediately put to death.

By some accounts, Murad IV stalked the streets of Istanbul in disguise, whipping out a 100-pound broadsword to decapitate whomever he found engaged in this illicit activity.

So what did Murad IV find so objectionable? Public coffee consumption.

Odd though it may sound, Murad IV was neither the first nor last person to crack down on coffee drinking; he was just arguably the most brutal and successful in his efforts. Between the early 16th and late 18th centuries, a host of religious influencers and secular leaders, many but hardly all in the Ottoman Empire, took a crack at suppressing the black brew.

Few of them did so because they thought coffee’s mild mind-altering effects meant it was an objectionable narcotic (a common assumption). Instead most, including Murad IV, seemed to believe that coffee shops could erode social norms, encourage dangerous thoughts or speech, and even directly foment seditious plots. In the modern world, where Starbucks is ubiquitous and innocuous, this sounds absurd. But Murad IV did have reason to fear coffee culture.

These crackdowns touched off in the 16th century because that’s when coffee reached much of the world.

Coffee beans were likely known and used for centuries beforehand in Ethiopia, their point of origin. But the first clear historical evidence of grinding coffee beans and brewing them into a cup of joe dates—as the historian Ralph Hattox established in his definitive tome Coffee and Coffeehouses—to 15th century Yemen. There, local Sufi Muslim orders used the brew in mystical ceremonies, whether as a social act to foster brotherhood, a narcotic to produce spiritual intoxication, or a pragmatic concentration booster. The drink soon spread up the Red Sea, reaching Istanbul in the early 1500s and Christian Europe over the following century.

In response, reactionaries cited religious reasons to outlaw coffee. “There’s always an undercurrent of” conservative Muslims “who think that any innovation … that is distinct from the time of the prophet Muhammad should be quashed,” says Ottoman social historian Madeline Zilfi. (Reactionary tendencies are not unique to Islam; later, in Europe, religious leaders asked the Pope to ban coffee as a satanic novelty.) Justifications included that coffee intoxicated drinkers (forbidden), that it was bad for the human body (forbidden), and that roasting made it the equivalent of charcoal (forbidden for consumption). Other religious figures charged (maybe legitimately, maybe dubiously) that coffeehouses were natural magnets for licentious behaviors such as gambling, prostitution, and drug usage. Others just thought the fact that it was new was reason enough to condemn it.

But reactionary religious arguments cannot explain most of the coffee crackdowns in the Ottoman Empire. As Hattox notes, the religious establishment was hardly uniform in its opposition to coffee. Bostanzade Mehmet Efendi, the highest ranking cleric in the Ottoman world in the 1590s, even issued a poetic defense of coffee.

More often, secular authorities opposed coffee for political reasons. Before coffeehouses, Zilfi points out, there weren’t many spaces in the Ottoman Empire for people to gather, especially across social lines, and talk secular matters. Mosques offered a gathering place, but rarely accommodated long, worldly chit chat. Taverns weren’t for good Muslims, and patrons usually got ripped with people they knew, had fun, then passed out.

Coffeehouses, though, were considered acceptable for Muslims. They were cheap and lacked social restrictions, so they were accessible to everyone. The way they made coffee—slowly brewed in a special pot for almost 20 minutes, then served in a cup filled to the brim, so bitter and scalding hot that it could only be consumed in tiny sips—encouraged patrons to sit, watch whatever entertainment came through, and talk. They were a new social space that encouraged class mixing and energetic conversation about cities and governments.

That spooked the bajeezus out of elites concerned with ossifying social order in the name of stability. Which often meant their own elevated place in Ottoman society. They made it clear that they didn’t like coffee shops’ public…

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