COFFEE. 387 



amusements of chess, singing, dancing, gambliiig, and other 

 recreations not very consistent with the rigour of the Koran. 



About the beginning of the sixteenth century it \v;is brought 

 by certain dervises of Yemen to Cairo, where its qualities 

 recommended it to general use. But the innovation of drink- 

 ing it in the mosques gave rise to a bitter controversy, wliich 

 seemed to threaten the East with a new revolution. In the 

 year 1611, it was publicly condemned at Mecca by an assem- 

 bly of muftis, lawyers, and physiciang, who declared it to be 

 contrar}- to the law of the Prophet, and alike injurious to soul 

 and body. The pulpits of Cairo resomided with the anathe- 

 mas of the more orthodox divines ; all the magazines of this 

 " seditious berry" were laid in ashes ; the saloons were shut, 

 and their keepers pelted with the fragments of their broken 

 pots and cups. This occurred in 1523 ; but by an order of 

 Selim I. the decrees of the muftis were reversed ; the 

 tumults both in Egypt and Arabia were quashed ; the drink- 

 ing of coffee was pronounced not to be heretical ; and two 

 Persian doctors, who had declared it to be pernicious to the 

 health, were hanged by order of the sultan. From Cairo 

 this contested liquor passed to Damascus and Aleppo, and 

 thence to Constantinople (in 1554), where it encountered and 

 triumphed over the persecution of the dervises, who de- 

 claimed vehemently against the impiety of human beings 

 eating charcoal, as they called the bean when roasted, which 

 their Prophet had declared was not intended by God for food. 



From the Levant it found its way by degrees to Europe, 

 and was probably imported by the Dutch and Venetian mer- 

 chants. Pietro de la Valle, who travelled in 1615, seems 

 the first that made it known in Italy. Mons. Thevenot, on 

 his return from the East in 1657, brought it with him to 

 France as a curiosity, though it appears to have been used 

 privately at Marseilles ten years earlier ; and in 1679 the 

 medical faculty of that city made its deleterious effects the 

 theme of a public disputation. The first coffee-house opened 

 in Paris was in 1672, by an Armenian named Pascal (or 

 Pasqiia), who sold this beverage at 25. 6d. a-cup ; but the 

 want of encouragement obliged him to remove to London. 

 The government of Charles II. atternpted in vain to suppress 

 these places of entertainment as nurseries of sedition ; and in 

 a few years they became general throughout the country. 

 The first European author that wrote expressly on coffee was 



