EARLY HISTORY. 5 



property of dissipating drowsiness and preventing sleep 

 was taken advantage of in connection with the prolonged 

 religious services of the Mahometans, and its use as a 

 devotional anti-soporific stirred up a fierce opposition on 

 the part of the strictly orthodox and conservative section 

 of the priesthood. Coffee being held by them to be an 

 intoxicant beverage, and therefore prohibited by the 

 Koran, and the dreadful penalties of an outraged sacred 

 law were held over the heads of all who became addicted 

 to its use in any form. But notwithstanding the threats 

 of divine retribution, and though all manner of devices 

 were adopted in order to check its growth, the coffee- 

 drinking habit spread rapidly among the Arabian Mahom- 

 etans, and the growth of coffee, as well as its use as a 

 national beverage, became as inseparably associated with 

 Arabia as tea has with China. 



From Aden, the use of coffee extended to Mecca, 

 Medina and other cities and towns of Arabia, the 

 knowledge and taste for it rapidly spreading outwards 

 from that country to Syria and Persia. Public coffee- 

 houses being everywhere established, also in many of the 

 other countries in western Asia, affording, according to 

 one authority, " a lounge for the idle and a relaxation for 

 the man of business, where the politician retailed the news 

 of the state ; the poet recited his verses, and the Mollahs 

 delivered their sermons to the frequenters." But the 

 mania for coffee becoming so great about this period, 

 particularly in Syria, that an effort was made by author- 

 ity of the government to check, if not to entirely sup- 

 press, the further growth of its consumption among the 

 inhabitants, on the alleged ground of " its intoxicating 

 properties," but in reality because of its use leading to 

 social and festive gatherings, incompatible with the 

 strictness and teaching of the Mahometan religion. 



