Coffee house in Turkey

The drink was first common in Yemen. Tradition has it that the very first known coffee shop was established in Constantinople around the year of 1475.

It was named Kiv Han, and immediately became a popular meeting place. In 1554 two coffee houses open there and people came pouring in to socialize, listen to the music, play games and of course drink.

Some often called these places in Turkey the ‘school of the wise’, because they could learn so much by just visiting the coffee house and listening to conversations.

The Constantinople coffee house was a place for powerful elders, where younger men might be granted patronage and learn the political strategies of their mentors.

Turkish coffee was served strong, black and unfiltered. At that time a Turkish woman could divorce her husband if he could not give her enough coffee.

From there, the habit spread to Constantinople’s frequent trading partner, Venice, from where it disseminated to England and Germany.

In 1683 Turkish invaders brought their favorite drink with them when they swept into Vienna and the rest was history.

By the end of the Ottoman Empire, during the period of modernization, the older coffeehouse began to seem old-fashioned, ‘stagnant, sullied place’ where the older men played cards, while European-style café’s attracted those seeking the cachet of modernity.
Coffee house in Turkey

Coffee history in Arab World

Soon after discovery of coffee in Ethiopia in the sixteenth century, this staple became popular in nearby Mecca where Muslim pilgrims began to buy it and take it home, effectively creating a market for coffee throughout the Arab world.

While coffee was first considered a medicine or religious aid, it soon enough became an everyday habit. Wealthy people had a coffee room in their homes reserved only for ceremonial imbibing.

The Arabs were the first, not only to cultivate coffee but also to begin its trade. By 15th century, coffee was being cultivated commercially in the Yemeni district of Arabia and by the 16th it was known in Persia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey.

In 1453, Coffee was introduced to Constantinople by Ottoman Turks. The world’s first coffee shop, Kiva Han, open there in 1475.

Coffee shop or coffeehouses allowed people to get together for conversation, entertainment, and business, inspiring agreements, poetry and irreverence in equal measure.

With the expansion of the Arab-Muslim empires, commercial activity in each of these domains flourished.

In the middle of the 16th, the coffee was already drunk in Egypt, Syria, Persia and Turkey, and coffee shop were to be found in the cities of Medina, Cairo, Baghdad, Alexandria, Damask and Istanbul.

Despite efforts from the Arabs to control coffee cultivation – by prohibiting the export of unroasted beans and seedlings – in the early eighteenth century the Dutch started its cultivation in their Asian and South American colonies, as did the French in the Caribbean.
Coffee history in Arab World