190 COFFEE 



mufti of Aden, having become acquainted with its virtues 

 on a journey to the opposite shore of Africa, recommended 

 it on his return to the dervises of his convent as an 

 excellent means for keeping awake during their devotional 

 exercises. The example of these holy men brought coffee into 

 vogue, and its use spreading from tribe to tribe, and from town 

 to town, finally reached Mecca about the end of the fifteenth 

 century. There fanaticism endeavoured to oppose its progress, 

 and in 1511 a council of theologians condemned it as being 

 contrary to the law of Mahomet, on account of its intoxicating 

 like wine, and sentenced the culprit who should be found 

 indulging in his cup of coffee to be led about the town on the 

 back of an ass. The sultan of Egypt, however, who happened 

 to be a great coffee-drinker himself, convoked a new assembly 

 of the learned, who declared its use to be not only innocent, but 

 healthy ; and thus coffee advanced rapidly from the Eed Sea 

 and the Nile to Syria, and from Asia Minor to Constan- 

 tinople, where the first coffee-house was opened in 1554, and 

 soon called forth a number of rival establishments. But here 

 also the zealots began to murmur at the mosques being 

 neglected for the attractions of the ungodly coffee divans, and 

 declaimed against it from the Koran, which positively says 

 that coal is not of the number of things created by Grod for 

 good. Accordingly the mufti ordered the coffee-houses to be 

 closed ; but his successor declaring coffee not to be coal, unless 

 when over-roasted, they were allowed to reopen, and ever since 

 the most pious mussulman drinks his coffee without any scruples 

 of conscience. The commercial intercourse with the Levant 

 could not fail to make Europe acquainted with this new source 

 of enjoyment. In 1652, Pasqua, a Grreek, opened the first coffee- 

 house in London, and twenty years later the first French cafes 

 were established in Paris and Marseilles. 



As the demand for coffee continually increased, the small 

 province of Yemen, the only country which at that time supplied 

 the market, could no longer produce a sufficient quantity, and the 

 high price of the article naturally prompted the European 

 governments to introduce the cultivation of so valuable a plant 

 into their colonies. The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon took 

 the lead in 1718, and Batavia followed in 1723. Some years 

 before, a few plants had been sent to Amsterdam, one of which 



