Individual earthen vessels for making coffee, painted red and yellow, are made by some of the native tribes in Abyssinia, and usually accompany disciples of Islam when they journey to Mecca, where the vessels find a ready sale among the pilgrims, most of whom are coffee-devotees.
Turkish and Arabian coffee customs prevail in Algeria and Egypt, modified to some extent by European contact. The Moorish cafés of Cairo, Tunis, and Algiers have furnished inspiration and copy for writers, artists, and travelers for several centuries. They change little with the years. The mazagran—sweetened cold coffee to which water or ice has been added—originated in Algeria. It probably took its name from the fortress of the same name reserved to France by the treaty of the Tafna in 1837. It is said that the French colonial troops were first served with a drink made from coffee syrup and cold water on marches near Mazagran, formerly spelled Masagran. Upon their return to the French capital, they introduced the idea, with the added fillip of service in tall glasses, in their favorite cafés, where it became known as café mazagran. Variants are coffee syrup with seltzer, and with hot water. "This fashion of serving coffee in glasses", says Jardin, "has no raison d'être, and nothing can justify abandoning the cup for coffee."
Moorish Coffee House in Algiers
In the principal streets and public squares of any town in Algeria it is a common sight to find a group of Arabs squatting about a portable stove, and a table on which cups are in readiness to receive the boiling coffee. The thirsty Arab approaches the dealer, and for a modest sum he gets his drink and goes his way; unless he prefers to go inside the café, where he may get several drinks and linger over them, sitting on a mat with his legs crossed and smoking his chibouque. Indeed, this is a typical scene throughout the Near East, where sheds or coffee tents—sketches of the more pretentious coffee houses—coffee shops, and itinerant coffee-venders are to be met at almost every turn.
In an unpublished work, Baron Antoine Rousseau and Th. Roland de Bussy have the following description of a typical Moorish café at Algiers:
We entered without ceremony into a narrow deep cave, decorated with the name of the café. On the right and on the left, along its length, were two benches covered with mats; notched cups, tongs, a box of brown sugar, all placed near a small stove, completed the furniture of the place. In the evening, the dim light from a lamp hanging from the ceiling shows the indistinct figures of a double row of natives listening to the nasal cadences of a band who play a pizzicato accompaniment on small three-stringed violins.
Here, as in Europe, the cafés are the providential rendezvous for idlers and gossips, exchanges for real-estate brokers and players at cards.
Europeans recently arrived frequent them particularly. Some go only to satisfy their curiosity; others out of an inborn scorn for the customs of civilization. They go to sleep as Frenchmen, they awake Mohammedans! Their love for "Turkish art" only leads them to haunt the native shops and to affect oriental poses.