EARLY HISTORY. 



coffee-houses being thronged night and day, the poorer 

 classes actually begging money in the streets for the sole 

 object of purchasing coffee." And in Constantinople, at 

 this time, we are informed that " a refusal to supply a 

 wife with a specified quantity of coffee per diem 

 was admitted to be a valid cause for divorce." But 

 in Constantinople, as in Cairo, the new habit excited 

 considerable commotion among the ecclesiastical author- 

 ities and political rulers, owing to the popularity of 

 the coffee-houses having a depressing influence on the 

 attendance at the mosques, on which account a fierce 

 hostility was excited among the religious orders against 

 the new beverage. They laid their grievances before the 

 Sultan, who first prohibited and then laid a heavy tax 

 upon the coffee-houses, notwithstanding which they con- 

 tinued to flourish and extend. A similar persecution 

 to that in Syria and Cairo soon attended its use in 

 the Tur-kish ^capital, having not only to contend there 

 with religious but also with political opposition, the 

 religious, as usual, predominating in its severity. 

 The dervishes had the sagacity to discover " that 

 coffee when roasted became a kind of coal, and coal 

 being one of the substances which their prophet had 

 declared was not intended by Allah for human food," 

 they therefore declaimed against it with unbounded 

 fury. The mufti being of their party, the coffee-houses 

 were at once closed by a firman of the Sultan, Amuret 

 III. This prohibition was, however, found impossible to 

 maintain, as a few years later a more liberal governor 

 succeeding, he assured the faithful " that roasted Coffee 

 was not coal, and had no relation to it." The coffee- 

 houses were immediately reopened, and soon became as 

 much patronized as before. But though religious super- 

 stition thus readily gave way to the seductive influences 



