All About Coffee - William H. Ukers (best novel books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: William H. Ukers
- Performer: -
Book online «All About Coffee - William H. Ukers (best novel books to read .TXT) 📗». Author William H. Ukers
Adam Olearius[38] (1599–1671), who was secretary to the German Embassy that traveled in Turkey in 1633–36, tells of the great diversions made in Persian coffee houses "by their poets and historians, who are seated in a high chair from whence they make speeches and tell satirical stories, playing in the meantime with a little stick and using the same gestures as our jugglers and legerdemain men do in England."
At court conferences conspicuous among the shah's retinue were always to be seen the "kahvedjibachi," or "coffee-pourers."
Early Coffee Manners and Customs
Karstens Niebuhr[39] (1733–1815), the Hanoverian traveler, furnishes the following description of the early Arabian, Syrian, and Egyptian coffee houses:
They are commonly large halls, having their floors spread with mats, and illuminated at night by a multitude of lamps. Being the only theaters for the exercise of profane eloquence, poor scholars attend here to amuse the people. Select portions are read, e.g. the adventures of Rustan Sal, a Persian hero. Some aspire to the praise of invention, and compose tales and fables. They walk up and down as they recite, or assuming oratorial consequence, harangue upon subjects chosen by themselves.
In one coffee house at Damascus an orator was regularly hired to tell his stories at a fixed hour; in other cases he was more directly dependant upon the taste of his hearers, as at the conclusion of his discourse, whether it had consisted of literary topics or of loose and idle tales, he looked to the audience for a voluntary contribution.
At Aleppo, again, there was a man with a soul above the common, who, being a person of distinction, and one that studied merely for his own pleasure, had yet gone the round of all the coffee houses in the city to pronounce moral harangues.
In some coffee houses there were singers and dancers, as before, and many came to listen to the marvelous tales, of the Thousand and One Nights.
In Oriental countries it was once the custom to offer a cup of "bad coffee," i.e., coffee containing poison, to those functionaries or other persons who had proven themselves embarrassing to the authorities.
While coffee drinking started as a private religious function, it was not long after its introduction by the coffee houses that it became secularized still more in the homes of the people, although for centuries it retained a certain religious significance. Galland says that in Constantinople, at the time of his visit to the city, there was no house, rich or poor, Turk or Jew, Greek or Armenian, where it was not drunk at least twice a day, and many drank it oftener, for it became a custom in every house to offer it to all visitors; and it was considered an incivility to refuse it. Twenty dishes a day, per person, was not an uncommon average.
Galland observes that "as much money must be spent in the private families of Constantinople for coffee as for wine at Paris," and relates that it is as common for beggars to ask for money to buy coffee, as it is in Europe to ask for money to buy wine or beer.
At this time to refuse or to neglect to give coffee to their wives was a legitimate cause for divorce among the Turks. The men made promise when marrying never to let their wives be without coffee. "That," says Fulbert de Monteith, "is perhaps more prudent than to swear fidelity."
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.
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.
When the three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee, came to Europe—Coffee first mentioned by Rauwolf in 1582—Early days of coffee in Italy—How Pope Clement VIII baptized it and made it a truly Christian beverage—The first European coffee house, in Venice, 1645—The famous Caffè Florian—Other celebrated Venetian coffee houses of the eighteenth century—The romantic story of Pedrocchi, the poor lemonade-vender, who built the most beautiful coffee house in the world
Of the world's three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee, cocoa was the first to be introduced into Europe, in 1528, by the Spanish. It was nearly a century later, in 1610, that the Dutch brought tea to Europe. Venetian traders introduced coffee into Europe in 1615.
Europe's first knowledge of coffee was brought by travelers returning from the Far East and the Levant. Leonhard Rauwolf started on his famous journey into the Eastern countries from Marseilles in September, 1573, having left his home in Augsburg, the 18th of the preceding May. He reached Aleppo in November, 1573; and returned to Augsburg, February 12, 1576. He was the first European to mention coffee; and to him also belongs the honor of being the first to refer to the beverage in print.
Rauwolf was not only a doctor of medicine and a botanist of great renown, but also official physician to the town of Augsburg. When he spoke, it was as one having authority. The first printed reference to coffee appears as chaube in chapter viii of Rauwolf's Travels, which deals with the manners and customs of the city of Aleppo. The exact passage is reproduced herewith as it appears in the original German edition of Rauwolf published at Frankfort and Lauingen in 1582–83. The translation is as follows:
If you have a mind to eat something or to drink other liquors, there is commonly an open shop near it, where you sit down upon the ground or carpets and drink together. Among the rest they have a very good drink, by them called Chaube [coffee] that is almost as black as ink, and very good in illness, chiefly that of the stomach; of this they drink in the morning early in open places before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of China cups, as hot as they can; they put it often to their lips but drink but little at a time, and let it go round as they sit.
In this same water they take a fruit called Bunnu which in its bigness, shape and color is almost like unto a bayberry, with two thin shells surrounded, which, as they informed me, are brought from the Indies; but as these in themselves are, and have within them, two yellowish grains in two distinct cells, and besides, being they agree in their virtue, figure, looks, and name with the Bunchum of Avicenna, and Bunca, of Rasis ad Almans exactly; therefore I take them to be the same, until I am better informed by the learned. This liquor is very common among them, wherefore there are a great many of them that sell it, and others that sell the berries, everywhere in their Batzars.
The Early Days of Coffee in Italy
It is not easy to determine just when the use of coffee spread from Constantinople to the western parts of Europe; but it is more than likely that the Venetians, because of their close proximity to, and their great trade with, the Levant, were the first acquainted with it.
Prospero Alpini (Alpinus; 1553–1617), a learned physician and botanist of Padua, journeyed to Egypt in 1580, and brought back news of coffee. He was the first to print a description of the coffee plant and drink in his treatise The Plants of Egypt, written in Latin, and published in Venice, 1592. He says:
I have seen this tree at Cairo, it being the same tree that produces the fruit, so common in Egypt, to which they give the name bon or ban. The Arabians and the Egyptians make a sort of decoction of it, which they drink instead of wine; and it is sold in all their public houses, as wine is with us. They call this drink caova. The fruit of which they make it comes from "Arabia the Happy," and the tree that I saw looks like a spindle tree, but the leaves are thicker, tougher, and greener. The tree is never without leaves.
Alpini makes note of the medicinal qualities attributed to the drink by dwellers in the Orient, and many of these were soon incorporated into Europe's materia medica.
Johann Vesling (Veslingius; 1598–1649), a
Comments (0)