All About Coffee

by William H. Ukers

Native Café, Harar, Abyssinia

Early Manner of Serving Coffee, Tea and Chocolate From a drawing in Dufour's Traités Nouveaux et Curieux du Café, du The et du Chocolat

For a more recent pen picture of coffee manners and customs in Arabia, we turn to Charles M. Daughty's "Travels in Arabia Deserta"[367]:

Hirfa ever demanded of her husband towards which part should "the house" be built. "Dress the face". Zeyd would answer, "to this part", showing her with his hands the south, for if his booth's face be all day turned to the hot sun there will come in fewer young loitering and parasitical fellows that would be his coffee-drinkers. Since the sheukh, or heads, alone receive their tribes' surra, it is not much that they should be to the arms [of his] coffee-hosts. I have seen Zeyd avoid [them] as he saw them approach, or even rise ungraciously upon such men's presenting themselves (the half of every booth, namely the men's side, is at all times open, and any enter there that will, in the free desert), and they murmuring he tells them, wellah, his affairs do call him forth, adieu; he must away to the mejlis; go they and seek the coffee elsewhere. But were there any sheykh with them, a coffee lord, Zeyd could not honestly choose but abide and serve them with coffee; and if he be absent himself, yet any sheykhly man coming to a sheykh's tent, coffee must be made for him, except he gently protest "billah, he would not drink." Hirfa, a sheykh's daughter and his nigh kinswoman, was a faithful mate to Zeyd in all his sparing policy.

Our menzil now standing, the men step over to Zeyd's coffee-fire, if the sheykh be not gone forth to the mejlis to drink his mid-day cup there. A few gathered sticks are flung down beside the hearth; with flint and steel one stoops and strikes fire in tinder, he blows and cherishes those seeds of the cheerful flame in some dry camel-dung, sets the burning shred under dry straws, and powders over more dry camel-dung. As the fire kindles, the sheykh reaches for his dellàl, coffee pots, which are carried in the fatya, coffee-gear basket; this people of a nomad life bestow each thing of theirs in a proper beyt; it would otherwise be lost in their daily removings. One rises to go to fill up the pots at the water-skins, or a bowl of water is handed over the curtain from the woman's side; the pot at the fire, Hirfa reaches over her little palm-ful of green coffee berries.... These are roasted and brayed; as all is boiling he sets out his little cups, fenjeyl (for fenjeyn). When, with a pleasant gravity, he has unbuckled his gutia or cup-box, we see the nomad has not above three or four fenjeyns, wrapt in a rusty clout, with which he scours them busily, as if this should make his cups clean. The roasted beans are pounded amongst Arabs with a magnanimous rattle—and (as all their labor) rhythmical—in brass of the town, or an old wooden mortar, gaily studded with nails, the work of some nomad smith. The water bubbling in the small dellàl, he casts in his fine coffee powder, el-bunn, and withdraws the pot to simmer a moment. From a knot in his kerchief he takes then a head of cloves, a piece of cinnamon or other spice, bahar, and braying these he casts their dust in after. Soon he pours out some hot drops to essay his coffee; if the taste be to his liking, making dexterously a nest of all the cups in his hand, with pleasant clattering, he is ready to pour out for all the company, and begins upon his right hand; and first, if such be present, to any considerable sheykh and principal persons. The fenjeyn kahwah is but four sips; to fill it up to a guest, as in the northern towns, were among Bedouins an injury, and of such bitter meaning, "This drink thou and depart."

Nubian Slave Girl with Coffee Service, Persia

Then is often seen a contention in courtesy amongst them, especially in any greater assemblies, who shall drink first. Some man that receives the fenjeyn in his turn will not drink yet—he proffers it to one sitting in order under him, as to the more honourable; but the other putting off with his hand will answer ebbeden, "Nay, it shall never be, by Ullah! but do thou drink." Thus licensed, the humble man is despatched in three sips, and hands up his empty fenjeyn. But if he have much insisted, by this he opens his willingness to be reconciled with one not his friend. That neighbor, seeing the company of coffee-drinkers watching him, may with an honest grace receive the cup, and let it seem not willingly; but an hard man will sometimes rebut the other's gentle proffer.

Some may have taken lower seats than becoming their sheykhly blood, of which the nomads are jealous; entering untimely, they sat down out of order, sooner than trouble all the company. A sheykh, coming late and any business going forward, will often sit far out in the assembly; and show himself a popular person in this kind of honourable humility. The more inward in the booth is the higher place; where also is, with the sheykhs, the seat of a stranger. To sit in the loose circuit without and before the tent, is for the common sort. A tribesman arriving presents himself at that part or a little lower, where in the eyes of all men his pretension will be well allowed; and in such observances of good nurture, is a nomad man's honour among his tribesmen. And this is nigh all that serves the nomad for a conscience, namely, that which men will hold of him. A poor person, approaching from behind, stands obscurely, wrapped in his tattered mantle, with grave ceremonial, until those sitting indolently before him in the sand shall vouchsafe to take notice of him; then they rise unwillingly, and giving back enlarge the coffee-circle to receive him. But if there arrive a sheykh, a coffee-host, a richard amongst them of a few cattle, all the coxcomb companions within will hail him with their pleasant adulation taad henneyi, "Step thou up hither."

The astute Fukara sheukh surpass all men in their coffee-drinking courtesy, and Zeyd himself was more than any large of this gentlemen-like imposture: he was full of swaggering complacence and compliments to an humbler person. With what suavity could he encourage, and gently too compel a man, and rising himself yield him parcel of another man's room! In such fashions Zeyd showed himself a bountiful great man, who indeed was the greatest niggard. The cups are drunk twice about, each one sipping after other's lips without misliking; to the great coffee sheykhs the cup may be filled more times, but this is an adulation of the coffee-server. There are some of the Fukara sheukh so delicate Sybarites that of those three bitter sips, to draw out all their joyance, twisting, turning, and tossing again the cup, they could make ten. The coffee-service ended, the grounds are poured out from the small into the great store-pot that is reserved full of warm water; with the bitter lye the nomads will make their next bever, and think they spare coffee.