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 vaHd cause for divorce." But in Con- 

 stantinople, as in Cairo, the new habit excited considerable 

 commotion among the ecclesiastical authorities 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 continued to 

 flourish and extend. A similar persecution to that in 

 Syria and Cairo soon attended its use in the Turkish 

 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 patron- 

 ized as before. But though religious superstition thus 

 readily gave way to the seductive influences of sensitive 



