Another Arabic manuscript by Bichivili in the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris furnishes us with this pen picture of the coffee ceremony as practised in Constantinople in the sixteenth century:
In all the great men's houses, there are servants whose business it is only to take care of the coffee; and the head officer among them, or he who has the inspection over all the rest, has an apartment allowed him near the hall which is destined for the reception of visitors. The Turks call this officer Kavveghi, that is, Overseer or Steward of the Coffee. In the harem or ladies' apartment in the seraglio, there are a great many such officers, each having forty or fifty Baltagis under them, who, after they have served a certain time in these coffee-houses, are sure to be well provided for, either by an advantageous post, or a sufficient quantity of land. In the houses of persons of quality likewise, there are pages, called Itchoglans, who receive the coffee from the stewards, and present it to the company with surprising dexterity and address, as soon as the master of the family makes a sign for that purpose, which is all the language they ever speak to them.... The coffee is served on salvers without feet, made commonly of painted or varnished wood, and sometimes of silver. They hold from 15 to 20 china dishes each; and such as can afford it have these dishes half set in silver ... the dish may be easily held with the thumb below and two fingers on the upper edge.
Serving Coffee to a Guest.—After a Drawing in an Early Edition of "Arabian Nights"
In his Relation of a Journey to Constantinople in 1657, Nicholas Rolamb, the Swedish traveler and envoy to the Ottoman Porte, gives us this early glimpse of coffee in the home life of the Turks:[40]
This [coffee] is a kind of pea that grows in Egypt, which the Turks pound and boil in water, and take it for pleasure instead of brandy, sipping it through the lips boiling hot, persuading themselves that it consumes catarrhs, and prevents the rising of vapours out of the stomach into the head. The drinking of this coffee and smoking tobacco (for tho' the use of tobacco is forbidden on pain of death, yet it is used in Constantinople more than any where by men as well as women, tho' secretly) makes up all the pastime among the Turks, and is the only thing they treat one another with; for which reason all people of distinction have a particular room next their own, built on purpose for it, where there stands a jar of coffee continually boiling.
It is curious to note that among several misconceptions that were held by some of the peoples of the Levant was one that coffee was a promoter of impotence, although a Persian version of the Angel Gabriel legend says that Gabriel invented it to restore the Prophet's failing metabolism. Often in Turkish and Arabian literature, however, we meet with the suggestion that coffee drinking makes for sterility and barrenness, a notion that modern medicine has exploded; for now we know that coffee stimulates the racial instinct, for which tobacco is a sedative.