Characteristic Scene in a Turkish Coffee House of the Seventeenth Century
Despite the severe penalties staring them in the face, violations of the law were plentiful among the people of Constantinople. Venders of the beverage appeared in the market-places with "large copper vessels with fire under them; and those who had a mind to drink were invited to step into any neighboring shop where every one was welcome on such an account."
Later, Kuprili, having assured himself that the coffee houses were no longer a menace to his policies, permitted the free use of the beverage that he had previously forbidden.
Coffee and Coffee Houses in Persia
Some writers claim for Persia the discovery of the coffee drink; but there is no evidence to support the claim. There are, however, sufficient facts to justify a belief that here, as in Ethiopia, coffee has been known from time immemorial—which is a very convenient phrase. At an early date the coffee house became an established institution in the chief towns. The Persians appear to have used far more intelligence than the Turks in handling the political phase of the coffee-house question, and so it never became necessary to order them suppressed in Persia.
The wife of Shah Abbas, observing that great numbers of people were wont to gather and to talk politics in the leading coffee house of Ispahan, appointed a mollah—an ecclesiastical teacher and expounder of the law—to sit there daily to entertain the frequenters of the place with nicely turned points of history, law, and poetry. Being a man of wisdom and great tact, he avoided controversial questions of state; and so politics were kept in the background. He proved a welcome visitor, and was made much of by the guests. This example was generally followed, and as a result disturbances were rare in the coffee houses of Ispahan.
Adam Olearius[38] (1599–1671), who was secretary to the German Embassy that traveled in Turkey in 1633–36, tells of the great diversions made in Persian coffee houses "by their poets and historians, who are seated in a high chair from whence they make speeches and tell satirical stories, playing in the meantime with a little stick and using the same gestures as our jugglers and legerdemain men do in England."
At court conferences conspicuous among the shah's retinue were always to be seen the "kahvedjibachi," or "coffee-pourers."