By Anwar Haneefa
Coffee has been a popular drink among the Muslims at least since the 15th century and has always been subject for serious discussions and debates. Here is a thread on different Muslim engagements with coffee in the early modern Middle East between the early 15th and late 17th century.
1. How coffee stimulated the intellectual vibrancy - especially Fiqh discourses - in Islam.
2. How coffee secured the afterlife of 'Ulema, 'Umara (wealthy) and Swālihin(pious people). (my personal favourite)
3. How coffee stimulated the popularity of homosexual orientation and homoerotic poetry.
4. How coffee changed the economic and temporal (how time was spent) culture of Muslims.
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1. André Raymond in his book ‘Cairo’(Harvard University Press, 2000) demonstrates how coffee paved the way for the expansion of Islamic knowledge across the northwestern and northeastern African lands. ‘After continuous plague and economic turmoil in the 14th and 15th centuries, Egypt came to relative economic prosperity by the late 16th and early 17th century by the coffee trade. The coffee from Yemen was brought into Egypt. And it was from Egypt the coffee entered into the wider Indian ocean market. Meanwhile, in West Africa, the Sa’adi dynasty was in its fall. Thus, for the economic, intellectual, and infrastructural stagnation prevailed in the area, 'Ulema from Timbuktu, Bilad-e-Sudan, Maghréb began to travel eastwards to Cairo, which was by the time on its prosperous hike. This led to the connectivity, and the then proliferation of Islamic knowledge - with cross textual interactions, dialogues, etc. - which was earlier only happened at the time of Hajj.’
2. Engseng Ho in his book ‘Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean’ (University of California Press, 2006) demonstrates how coffee was seen by the ‘Ulema and Swālihin (pious people) in the Yemeni lands - especially in Tarim - from 15th century as an object that secure their afterworld lives. That is, how coffee and eschatology are related. Drawing from Marshall Hodgson and Ralph S. Hattox, he finds ’coffee has been used by the Shādhili Sufis in the Red Sea area around Aden and Zabīd since the fifteenth century during their nighttime vigils of invocation, or Dhikr. While coffee is usually prepared with sugar, it was (and is) preferred unsweetened for religious (mainly Dhikr) occasions and by "old men" (who are the regular and common attendees of such ceremonies). The name for such coffee is Shādhiliyya - means "something related to Shādhili". So following the Hadith of Prophet “when a person dies, nothing of him or her remains except three things: beneficial knowledge, a pious son praying for one’s soul, or continuing good works", several ‘Ulema and Swālihin and wealthy people left their wealth as endowments (Waqf) for offering coffee and dates at the Shādhili and other spiritual gatherings. They believed the coffee and dates - when consumed by the people of Dhikr to prolong their worship - will sustain the flow of rewards to their graves even after their death. They saw coffee and dates as ‘continuing offerings’ (Sadaqa Jāriya) that affect their afterworld status. So, coffee was also related to the afterworld conceptions of Muslims.’
3. Khaled el-Rouayheb in his book ‘Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic, 1500-1800’ (Chicago University Press, 2005) demonstrates how coffee paved the way for the proliferation of Homo-erotic culture and literature. Drawing from Pedro Teixeira and George Sandys, he finds the coffee houses in Baghdad and Constantinople employed handsome beardless boys to serve their clients. It was to draw more customers to the shops. Coffee shops serviced with beardless boys to fulfil the customers' sensual needs and lust - like pinching, touching, tweeting, just looking, etc. This had influenced the normalcy of homo-orientation culture among the (literal) urban elites - like, every morning the coffee shops were overwhelmed with the elite crowd; and proliferation of homo-erotic poetry like of poets like Ahmad el-‘Ināyāti. So much as to, the image of the ‘cupbearer’ (Sāqī) was a cliché metaphor in the love and wine poetry of (and from) the time.’
4. Cemal Kafadar in his paper ‘The History of Coffee’ (presented at Duke University Middle East Study Centre, 2015) demonstrates how coffee paved the way for ‘Ulema of the 16th century in the central Ottoman lands to condemn it, and issued Fatwa against it for its ‘non-Islamicity'. From its very inception, ‘the coffee shops became the meeting place for pleasure seekers and idlers. People of literal orientation formed small groups of 20-30 members and began literal debates and discussions at the shops. Some spent the coffee shop times with playing chess and backgammon. People did ‘bet’ for games, and spent a lot of money offering need-less dinners just for entertainment and luxury. The culture became intensive so much as to even holders of high status and posts, and official great men began to waste a lot of time at the coffee shops. At last, it led the ‘Ulema and Muazzins to say “People have become addicts to coffee houses: nobody comes to the mosque.” Also, this replacement of mosques with coffee shops, and the “logic of addiction” led some scholars to issue Fatwas as coffee comes under the category of “Muskir” (intoxicant) and thus is non-Islamic - since it restrains people from attending Islamic practices.’
Image:A Coffee House in Palestine,c. 1900.
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