Chapter XXXV: World's Coffee Manners and Customs (1)

_How coffee is roasted, prepared, and served in all the leading
civilized countries--The Arabian coffee ceremony--The present-day
coffee houses of Turkey--Twentieth-century improvements in Europe
and the United States_

Coffee manners and customs have shown little change in the Orient in the six hundred-odd years since the coffee drink was discovered by Sheik Omar in Arabia. As a beverage for western peoples, however, and more particularly in America, there have been many improvements in making and serving it.

A brief survey of the coffee conventions and coffee service in the principal countries where coffee has become a fixed item in the dietary is presented here, with a view to show how different peoples have adapted the universal drink to their national needs and preferences.

To proceed in alphabetical order, and beginning with Africa, coffee drinking is indulged in largely in Abyssinia, Algeria, Egypt, Portuguese East Africa, and the Union of South Africa.

_Coffee Manners and Customs in Africa_

In Abyssinia and Somaliland, among the native population, the most primitive methods of coffee making still obtain. Here the wandering Galla still mix their pulverized coffee beans with fats as a food ration, and others of the native tribes favor the _kisher_, or beverage made from the toasted coffee hulls. An hour's boiling produces a straw-colored decoction, of a slightly sweetish taste. Where the Arabian customs have taken root, the drink is prepared from the roasted beans after the Arabian and Turkish method. The white inhabitants usually prepare and serve the beverage as in the homeland; so that it is possible to obtain it after the English, French, German, Greek, or Italian styles. Adaptations of the French sidewalk café, and of the Turkish coffee house, may be seen in the larger towns.

In the equatorial provinces of Egypt, and in Uganda, the natives eat the raw berries; or first cook them in boiling water, dry them in the sun, and then eat them. It is a custom to exchange coffee beans in friendly greeting.

Individual earthen vessels for making coffee, painted red and yellow, are made by some of the native tribes in Abyssinia, and usually accompany disciples of Islam when they journey to Mecca, where the vessels find a ready sale among the pilgrims, most of whom are coffee-devotees.

Turkish and Arabian coffee customs prevail in Algeria and Egypt, modified to some extent by European contact. The Moorish cafés of Cairo, Tunis, and Algiers have furnished inspiration and copy for writers, artists, and travelers for several centuries. They change little with the years. The _mazagran_--sweetened cold coffee to which water or ice has been added--originated in Algeria. It probably took its name from the fortress of the same name reserved to France by the treaty of the Tafna in 1837. It is said that the French colonial troops were first served with a drink made from coffee syrup and cold water on marches near Mazagran, formerly spelled Masagran. Upon their return to the French capital, they introduced the idea, with the added fillip of service in tall glasses, in their favorite cafés, where it became known as _café mazagran_. Variants are coffee syrup with seltzer, and with hot water. "This fashion of serving coffee in glasses", says Jardin, "has no _raison d'être_, and nothing can justify abandoning the cup for coffee."

In the principal streets and public squares of any town in Algeria it is a common sight to find a group of Arabs squatting about a portable stove, and a table on which cups are in readiness to receive the boiling coffee. The thirsty Arab approaches the dealer, and for a modest sum he gets his drink and goes his way; unless he prefers to go inside the café, where he may get several drinks and linger over them, sitting on a mat with his legs crossed and smoking his _chibouque_. Indeed, this is a typical scene throughout the Near East, where sheds or coffee tents--sketches of the more pretentious coffee houses--coffee shops, and itinerant coffee-venders are to be met at almost every turn.

In an unpublished work, Baron Antoine Rousseau and Th. Roland de Bussy have the following description of a typical Moorish café at Algiers:

We entered without ceremony into a narrow deep cave, decorated with
the name of the café. On the right and on the left, along its
length, were two benches covered with mats; notched cups, tongs, a
box of brown sugar, all placed near a small stove, completed the
furniture of the place. In the evening, the dim light from a lamp
hanging from the ceiling shows the indistinct figures of a double
row of natives listening to the nasal cadences of a band who play a
pizzicato accompaniment on small three-stringed violins.

Here, as in Europe, the cafés are the providential rendezvous for
idlers and gossips, exchanges for real-estate brokers and players
at cards.

Europeans recently arrived frequent them particularly. Some go only
to satisfy their curiosity; others out of an inborn scorn for the
customs of civilization. They go to sleep as Frenchmen, they awake
Mohammedans! Their love for "Turkish art" only leads them to haunt
the native shops and to affect oriental poses.

If we quit for a moment the interior of the city to follow between
two hedgerows of mastics or aloes, one of those capricious paths
which lead one, now up to the summit of a hill, now to the depths
of some ravine, very soon the tones of a rustic flute, the
modulations of the _Djou-wak_, will betray some cool and peaceful
retreat, some rustic café, easily recognized by its facade, pierced
with large openings. To my eyes, nothing equals the charm of these
little buildings scattered here and there along the edges of a
stream, sheltered under the thick foliage, and constantly enlivened
by the coming and going of the husbandmen of the neighborhood.

Certain old Moors from the neighboring districts, fleeing the
noises of the city, are the faithful habitués of these agreeable
retreats. Here they instal themselves at dawn, and know how to
enjoy every moment of their day with tales of their travels and
youthful adventures, and many a legend for which their imagination
takes all the responsibility.

Gérôme's painting of the "Coffee House at Cairo," which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gives one a good idea of the atmosphere of the Egyptian café. The preparation and service is modified Turkish-Arabian. The coffee is ground to a powder, boiled in an _ibrik_ with the addition of sugar, and served frothing in small cups. Story-tellers, singers, and dancers furnish amusement as of yore. The Oriental customs have not changed much in this respect. Trolley cars, victorias, and taxis may have replaced the donkeys in the new sections of the larger Egyptian cities; but in old Alexandria and Cairo, the approach to the native coffee house is as dirty and as odorous as ever. Coffee is always served in all business transactions. Nowadays, the Egyptian women chew gum and the men smoke cigarettes, French department stores offer bargain sales, and the hotels advertise tea dances; but the Egyptian coffee drink is still the tiny cup of coffee grounds and sugar that it was three hundred years ago, when sugar was first used to sweeten coffee in Cairo.

In Portuguese East Africa, the natives prepare and drink coffee after the approved African native fashion, but the white population follows European customs. In the Union of South Africa, Dutch and English customs prevail in making and serving the beverage.

_Manners and Customs in Asia_

"Arabia the Happy" deserves to be called "the Blest", if only for its gift of coffee to the world. Here it was that the virtues of the drink were first made known; here the plant first received intensive cultivation. After centuries of habitual use of the beverage, we find the Arabs, now as then, one of the strongest and noblest races of the world, mentally superior to most of them, generally healthy, and growing old so gracefully that the faculties of the mind seldom give way sooner than those of the body. They are an ever living earnest of the healthfulness of coffee.

The Arabs are proverbially hospitable; and the symbol of their hospitality for a thousand years has been the great drink of democracy--coffee. Their very houses are built around the cup of human brotherhood. William Wallace,[366] writing on Arabian philosophy, manners, and customs, says:

The principal feature of an Arab house is the _kahwah_ or coffee
room. It is a large apartment spread with mats, and sometimes
furnished with carpets and a few cushions. At one end is a small
furnace or fireplace for preparing coffee. In this room the men
congregate; here guests are received, and even lodged; women rarely
enter it, except at times when strangers are unlikely to be
present. Some of these apartments are very spacious and supported
by pillars; one wall is usually built transversely to the compass
direction of the _Ka'ba_ (sacred shrine of Mecca). It serves to
facilitate the performance of prayer by those who may happen to be
in the _kahwah_ at the appointed times.

Several rounds of coffee, without milk or sugar, but sometimes flavored with cardamom seeds, are served to the guest at first welcome; and coffee may be had at all hours between meals, or whenever the occasion demands it. Always the beans are freshly roasted, pounded, and boiled. The Arabs average twenty-five to thirty cups (findjans) a day. Everywhere in Arabia there are to be found cafés where the beverage may be bought.

Those of the lower classes are thronged throughout the day. In front, there is generally a porch or bench where one may sit. The rooms, benches, and little chairs lack the cleanliness and elegance of the one-time luxurious "_caffinets_" of cities like Damascus and Constantinople, but the drink is the same. There is not in all Yemen a single market town or hamlet where one does not find upon some simple hut the legend, "Shed for drinking coffee".

The Arab drinks water before taking coffee, but never after it. "Once in Syria", says a traveler, "I was recognized as a foreigner because I asked for water just after I had taken my coffee. 'If you belonged here', said the waiter, 'you would not spoil the taste of coffee in your mouth by washing it away with water.'"

It is an adventure to partake of coffee prepared in the open, at a roadside inn, or khan, in Arabia by an _araba_, or diligence driver. He takes from his saddle-bag the ever-present coffee kit, containing his supply of green beans, of which he roasts just sufficient on a little perforated iron plate over an open fire, deftly taking off the beans, one at a time, as they turn the right color. Then he pounds them in a mortar, boils his water in the long, straight-handled open boiler, or _ibrik_ (a sort of brass mug or _jezveh_), tosses in the coffee powder, moving the vessel back and forth from the fire as it boils up to the rim; and, after repeating this maneuver three times, pours the contents foaming merrily into the little egg-like serving cups.

_Cafée sultan_, or _kisher_, the original decoction, made from dried and toasted coffee hulls, is still being drunk in parts of Arabia and Turkey.

Coffee in Arabia is part of the ritual of business, as in other Oriental countries. Shop-keepers serve it to the customer before the argument starts. Recently, a New York barber got some valuable publicity because he regaled his customers with tea and music. It was "old stuff". The Arabian and Turkish barber shops have been serving coffee, tobacco, and sweetmeats to their customers for centuries.

For a faithful description of the ancient coffee ceremony of the Arabs, which, with slight modification, is still observed in Arabian homes, we turn to Palgrave. First he describes the dwelling and then the ceremony:

The K'hawah was a large oblong hall, about twenty feet in
height, fifty in length, and sixteen, or thereabouts, in breadth;
the walls were coloured in a rudely decorative manner with brown
and white wash, and sunk here and there into small triangular
recesses, destined to the reception of books, though of these
Ghafil at least had no over-abundance, lamps, and other such like
objects. The roof of timber, and flat; the floor was strewed with
fine clean sand, and garnished all round alongside of the walls
with long strips of carpet, upon which cushions, covered with faded
silk, were disposed at suitable intervals. In poorer houses felt
rugs usually take the place of carpets.

In one corner, namely, that furthest removed from the door, stood a
small fireplace, or, to speak more exactly, furnace, formed of a
large square block of granite, or some other hard stone, about
twenty inches each way; this is hollowed inwardly into a deep
funnel, open above, and communicating below with a small horizontal
tube or pipe-hole, through which the air passes, bellows-driven, to
the lighted charcoal piled up on a grating about half-way inside
the cone. In this manner the fuel is soon brought to a white heat,
and the water in the coffee-pot placed upon the funnel's mouth is
readily brought to boil. The system of coffee furnaces is universal
in Djowf and Djebel Shomer, but in Nejed itself, and indeed in
whatever other yet more distant regions of Arabia I visited to the
south and east, the furnace is replaced by an open fireplace
hollowed in the ground floor, with a raised stone border, and
dog-irons for the fuel, and so forth, like what may be yet seen in
Spain. This diversity of arrangement, so far as Arabia is
concerned, is due to the greater abundance of firewood in the
south, whereby the inhabitants are enabled to light up on a larger
scale; whereas throughout the Djowf and Djebel Shomer wood is very
scarce, and the only fuel at hand is bad charcoal, often brought
from a considerable distance, and carefully husbanded.

This corner of the K'hawah is also the place of distinction
whence honour and coffee radiate by progressive degrees round the
apartment, and hereabouts accordingly sits the master of the house
himself, or the guests whom he more especially delighteth to
honour.

On the broad edge of the furnace or fireplace, as the case may be,
stands an ostentatious range of copper coffee-pots, varying in size
and form. Here in the Djowf their make resembles that in vogue at
Damascus; but in Nejed and the eastern districts they are of a
different and much more ornamental fashioning, very tall and
slender, with several ornamental circles and mouldings in elegant
relief, besides boasting long beak-shaped spouts and high steeples
for covers. The number of these utensils is often extravagantly
great. I have seen a dozen at a time in a row by one fireside,
though coffee-making requires, in fact, only three at most. Here in
the Djowf five or six are considered to be the thing; for the south
this number must be doubled; all this to indicate the riches and
munificence of their owner, by implying the frequency of his guests
and the large amount of coffee that he is in consequence obliged to
have made for them.

Behind this stove sits, at least in wealthy houses, a black slave,
whose name is generally a diminutive in token of familiarity or
affection; in the present case it was Soweylim, the diminutive of
Salim. His occupation is to make and pour out the coffee; where
there is no slave in the family, the master of the premises
himself, or perhaps one of his sons, performs that hospitable duty;
rather a tedious one, as we shall soon see.

We enter. On passing the threshold it is proper to say,
"_Bismillah_, _i.e._, in the name of God;" not to do so would be
looked on as a bad augury alike for him who enters and for those
within. The visitor next advances in silence, till on coming about
half-way across the room, he gives to all present, but looking
specially at the master of the house, the customary
"_Es-salamu'aleykum_," or "Peace be with you," literally, "on you."
All this while every one else in the room has kept his place,
motionless, and without saying a word. But on receiving the salaam
of etiquette, the master of the house rises, and if a strict
Wahhabee, or at any rate desirous of seeming such, replies with
the full-length traditionary formula. "_W' 'aleykumu-s-salamu,
w'rahmat' Ullahi w'barakátuh_," which is, as every one knows, "And
with (or, on) you be peace, and the mercy of God, and his
blessings." But should he happen to be of anti-Wahhabee
tendencies the odds are that he will say "_Marhaba_," or "_Ahlan w'
sahlan_," _i.e._, "welcome" or "worthy, and pleasurable," or the
like; for of such phrases there is an infinite, but elegant
variety.

All present follow the example thus given, by rising and saluting.
The guest then goes up to the master of the house, who has also
made a step or two forwards, and places his open hand in the palm
of his host's, but without grasping or shaking, which would hardly
pass for decorous, and at the same time each repeats once more his
greeting, followed by the set phrases of polite enquiry, "How are
you?" "How goes the world with you?" and so forth, all in a tone of
great interest, and to be gone over three or four times, till one
or other has the discretion to say "_El hamdu l'illah_," "Praise
be to God", or, in equivalent value, "all right," and this is a
signal for a seasonable diversion to the ceremonious interrogatory.

The guest then, after a little contest of courtesy, takes his seat
in the honoured post by the fireplace, after an apologetical
salutation to the black slave on the one side, and to his nearest
neighbour on the other. The best cushions and newest looking
carpets have been of course prepared for his honoured weight. Shoes
or sandals, for in truth the latter alone are used in Arabia, are
slipped off on the sand just before reaching the carpet, and there
they remain on the floor close by. But the riding stick or wand,
the inseparable companion of every true Arab, whether Bedouin or
townsman, rich or poor, gentle or simple, is to be retained in the
hand, and will serve for playing with during the pauses of
conversation, like the fan of our great-grandmothers in their days
of conquest.

Without delay Soweylim begins his preparations for coffee. These
open by about five minutes of blowing with the bellows and
arranging the charcoal till a sufficient heat has been produced.
Next he places the largest of the coffee-pots, a huge machine, and
about two-thirds full of clear water, close by the edge of the
glowing coal-pit, that its contents may become gradually warm while
other operations are in progress. He then takes a dirty knotted rag
out of a niche in the wall close by, and having untied it, empties
out of it three or four handfuls of unroasted coffee, the which he
places on a little trencher of platted grass, and picks carefully
out any blackened grains, or other non-homologous substances,
commonly to be found intermixed with the berries when purchased in
gross; then, after much cleansing and shaking, he pours the grain
so cleansed into a large open iron ladle, and places it over the
mouth of the funnel, at the same time blowing the bellows and
stirring the grains gently round and round till they crackle,
redden, and smoke a little, but carefully withdrawing them from the
heat long before they turn black or charred, after the erroneous
fashion of Turkey and Europe; after which he puts them to cool a
moment on the grass platter.

He then sets the warm water in the large coffee-pot over the fire
aperture, that it may be ready boiling at the right moment, and
draws in close between his own trouserless legs a large stone
mortar, with a narrow pit in the middle, just enough to admit the
large stone pestle of a foot long and an inch and a half thick,
which he now takes in hand. Next, pouring the half-roasted berries
into the mortar, he proceeds to pound them, striking right into the
narrow hollow with wonderful dexterity, nor ever missing his blow
till the beans are smashed, but not reduced into powder. He then
scoops them out, now reduced to a sort of coarse reddish grit, very
unlike the fine charcoal dust which passes in some countries for
coffee, and out of which every particle of real aroma has long
since been burnt or ground.

After all these operations, each performed with as intense a
seriousness and deliberate nicety as if the welfare of the entire
Djowf depended on it, he takes a smaller coffee-pot in hand, fills
it more than half with hot water from the larger vessel, and then
shaking the pounded coffee into it, sets it on the fire to boil,
occasionally stirring it with a small stick as the water rises to
check the ebullition and prevent overflowing. Nor is the boiling
stage to be long or vehement: on the contrary, it is and should be
as light as possible. In the interim he takes out of another
rag-knot a few aromatic seeds called heyl, an Indian product, but
of whose scientific name I regret to be wholly ignorant, or a
little saffron, and after slightly pounding these ingredients,
throws them into the simmering coffee to improve its flavour, for
such an additional spicing is held indispensable in Arabia though
often omitted elsewhere in the East. Sugar would be a totally
unheard of profanation. Last of all, he strains off the liquor
through some fibres of the inner palm-bark placed for that purpose
in the jug-spout, and gets ready the tray of delicate
parti-coloured grass, and the small coffee cups ready for pouring
out. All these preliminaries have taken up a good half-hour.

Meantime we have become engaged in active conversation with our
host and his friends. But our Sherarat guide, Suleyman, like a true
Bedouin, feels too awkward when among townsfolk to venture on the
upper places, though repeatedly invited, and accordingly has
squatted down on the sand near the entrance. Many of Ghafil's
relations are present; their silver-decorated swords proclaim the
importance of the family. Others, too, have come to receive us, for
our arrival, announced beforehand by those we had met at the
entrance pass, is a sort of event in the town; the dress of some
betokens poverty, others are better clad, but all have a very
polite and decorous manner. Many a question is asked about our
native land and town, that is to say, Syria and Damascus,
conformably to the disguise already adopted, and which it was
highly important to keep well up; then follow enquiries regarding
our journey, our business, what we have brought with us, about our
medicines, our goods and wares, etc., etc. From the very first it
is easy for us to perceive that patients and purchasers are likely
to abound. Very few travelling merchants, if any, visit the Djowf
at this time of year, for one must be mad, or next door to it, to
rush into the vast desert around during the heats of June and July;
I for one have certainly no intention of doing it again. Hence we
had small danger of competitors, and found the market almost at our
absolute disposal.

But before a quarter of an hour has passed, and while blacky is
still roasting or pounding his coffee, a tall thin lad, Ghafil's
eldest son, appears, charged with a large circular dish,
grass-platted like the rest, and throws it with a graceful jerk on
the sandy floor close before us. He then produces a large wooden
bowl full of dates, bearing in the midst of the heap a cup full of
melted butter; all this he places on the circular mat, and says,
"_Semmoo_," literally, "pronounce the Name", of God, understood;
this means "set to work at it." Hereon the master of the house
quits his place by the fireside and seats himself on the sand
opposite to us; we draw nearer to the dish, and four or five
others, after some respectful coyness, join the circle. Every one
then picks out a date or two from the juicy half-amalgamated mass,
dips them into the butter, and thus goes on eating till he has had
enough, when he rises and washes his hands.

By this time the coffee is ready, and Soweylim begins his round,
the coffee-pot in one hand; the tray and cups on the other. The
first pouring out he must in etiquette drink himself, by way of a
practical assurance that there is no "death in the pot;" the guests
are next served, beginning with those next the honourable fireside;
the master of the house receives his cup last of all. To refuse
would be a positive and unpardonable insult; but one has not much
to swallow at a time, for the coffee-cups, or finjans, are about
the size of a large egg-shell at most, and are never more than
half-filled. This is considered essential to good breeding, and a
brimmer would here imply exactly the reverse of what it does in
Europe; why it should be so I hardly know, unless perhaps the
rareness of cup-stands or "zarfs" (see Lane's "Modern Egyptians")
in Arabia, though these implements are universal in Egypt and
Syria, might render an over-full cup inconveniently hot for the
fingers that must grasp it without medium. Be that as it may, "fill
the cup for your enemy" is an adage common to all, Bedouins or
townsmen, throughout the Peninsula. The beverage itself is
singularly aromatic and refreshing, a real tonic, and very
different from the black mud sucked by the Levantine, or the watery
roast-bean preparations of France. When the slave or freeman,
according to circumstances, presents you with a cup, he never fails
to accompany it with a "_Semm'_," "say the name of God," nor must
you take it without answering "_Bismillah_."

When all have been thus served, a second round is poured out, but
in inverse order, for the host this time drinks first, and the
guests last. On special occasions, a first reception, for instance,
the ruddy liquor is a third time handed round; nay, a fourth cup is
sometimes added. But all these put together do not come up to
one-fourth of what a European imbibes in a single draught at
breakfast.

From a drawing in Dufour's _Traités Nouveaux et Curieux du Café, du The et du Chocolat_]

For a more recent pen picture of coffee manners and customs in Arabia, we turn to Charles M. Daughty's "_Travels in Arabia Deserta_"[367]:

Hirfa ever demanded of her husband towards which part should "the
house" be built. "Dress the face". Zeyd would answer, "to this
part", showing her with his hands the south, for if his booth's
face be all day turned to the hot sun there will come in fewer
young loitering and parasitical fellows that would be his
coffee-drinkers. Since the _sheukh_, or heads, alone receive their
tribes' _surra_, it is not much that they should be to the arms [of
his] coffee-hosts. I have seen Zeyd avoid [them] as he saw them
approach, or even rise ungraciously upon such men's presenting
themselves (the half of every booth, namely the men's side, is at
all times open, and any enter there that will, in the free
desert), and they murmuring he tells them, _wellah_, his affairs do
call him forth, adieu; he must away to the _mejlis_; go they and
seek the coffee elsewhere. But were there any _sheykh_ with them, a
coffee lord, Zeyd could not honestly choose but abide and serve
them with coffee; and if he be absent himself, yet any _sheykhly_
man coming to a _sheykh's_ tent, coffee must be made for him,
except he gently protest "_billah_, he would not drink." Hirfa, a
_sheykh's_ daughter and his nigh kinswoman, was a faithful mate to
Zeyd in all his sparing policy.

Our _menzil_ now standing, the men step over to Zeyd's coffee-fire,
if the _sheykh_ be not gone forth to the _mejlis_ to drink his
mid-day cup there. A few gathered sticks are flung down beside the
hearth; with flint and steel one stoops and strikes fire in tinder,
he blows and cherishes those seeds of the cheerful flame in some
dry camel-dung, sets the burning shred under dry straws, and
powders over more dry camel-dung. As the fire kindles, the _sheykh_
reaches for his _dellàl_, coffee pots, which are carried in the
_fatya_, coffee-gear basket; this people of a nomad life bestow
each thing of theirs in a proper _beyt_; it would otherwise be lost
in their daily removings. One rises to go to fill up the pots at
the water-skins, or a bowl of water is handed over the curtain from
the woman's side; the pot at the fire, Hirfa reaches over her
little palm-ful of green coffee berries.... These are roasted and
brayed; as all is boiling he sets out his little cups, _fenjeyl_
(for fenjeyn). When, with a pleasant gravity, he has unbuckled his
_gutia_ or cup-box, we see the nomad has not above three or four
fenjeyns, wrapt in a rusty clout, with which he scours them busily,
as if this should make his cups clean. The roasted beans are
pounded amongst Arabs with a magnanimous rattle--and (as all their
labor) rhythmical--in brass of the town, or an old wooden mortar,
gaily studded with nails, the work of some nomad smith. The water
bubbling in the small _dellàl_, he casts in his fine coffee powder,
_el-bunn_, and withdraws the pot to simmer a moment. From a knot in
his kerchief he takes then a head of cloves, a piece of cinnamon or
other spice, _bahar_, and braying these he casts their dust in
after. Soon he pours out some hot drops to essay his coffee; if the
taste be to his liking, making dexterously a nest of all the cups
in his hand, with pleasant clattering, he is ready to pour out for
all the company, and begins upon his right hand; and first, if such
be present, to any considerable _sheykh_ and principal persons. The
_fenjeyn kahwah_ is but four sips; to fill it up to a guest, as in
the northern towns, were among Bedouins an injury, and of such
bitter meaning, "This drink thou and depart."

Then is often seen a contention in courtesy amongst them,
especially in any greater assemblies, who shall drink first. Some
man that receives the _fenjeyn_ in his turn will not drink yet--he
proffers it to one sitting in order under him, as to the more
honourable; but the other putting off with his hand will answer
_ebbeden_, "Nay, it shall never be, by Ullah! but do thou drink."
Thus licensed, the humble man is despatched in three sips, and
hands up his empty _fenjeyn_. But if he have much insisted, by this
he opens his willingness to be reconciled with one not his friend.
That neighbor, seeing the company of coffee-drinkers watching him,
may with an honest grace receive the cup, and let it seem not
willingly; but an hard man will sometimes rebut the other's gentle
proffer.

Some may have taken lower seats than becoming their _sheykhly_
blood, of which the nomads are jealous; entering untimely, they sat
down out of order, sooner than trouble all the company. A _sheykh_,
coming late and any business going forward, will often sit far out
in the assembly; and show himself a popular person in this kind of
honourable humility. The more inward in the booth is the higher
place; where also is, with the _sheykhs_, the seat of a stranger.
To sit in the loose circuit without and before the tent, is for the
common sort. A tribesman arriving presents himself at that part or
a little lower, where in the eyes of all men his pretension will be
well allowed; and in such observances of good nurture, is a nomad
man's honour among his tribesmen. And this is nigh all that serves
the nomad for a conscience, namely, that which men will hold of
him. A poor person, approaching from behind, stands obscurely,
wrapped in his tattered mantle, with grave ceremonial, until those
sitting indolently before him in the sand shall vouchsafe to take
notice of him; then they rise unwillingly, and giving back enlarge
the coffee-circle to receive him. But if there arrive a _sheykh_, a
coffee-host, a richard amongst them of a few cattle, all the
coxcomb companions within will hail him with their pleasant
adulation _taad henneyi_, "Step thou up hither."

The astute Fukara _sheukh_ surpass all men in their coffee-drinking
courtesy, and Zeyd himself was more than any large of this
gentlemen-like imposture: he was full of swaggering complacence and
compliments to an humbler person. With what suavity could he
encourage, and gently too compel a man, and rising himself yield
him parcel of another man's room! In such fashions Zeyd showed
himself a bountiful great man, who indeed was the greatest niggard.
The cups are drunk twice about, each one sipping after other's lips
without misliking; to the great coffee _sheykhs_ the cup may be
filled more times, but this is an adulation of the coffee-server.
There are some of the Fukara _sheukh_ so delicate Sybarites that of
those three bitter sips, to draw out all their joyance, twisting,
turning, and tossing again the cup, they could make ten. The
coffee-service ended, the grounds are poured out from the small
into the great store-pot that is reserved full of warm water; with
the bitter lye the nomads will make their next bever, and think
they spare coffee.

Here is an Arabian recipe[368] for making coffee as given by Kadhi Hodhat, the best informed man of his time:

Tadj-Eddin-Aid-Almaknab-ben-Yacoub-Mekki Molki, chief of all the
cantons of Hedjaz, (May God have mercy on him!) I learned it when
once in his company at the time of the Holy Feasts.... He informed
me that nothing is more beneficial than to drink cold water before
coffee, because it lessens the dryness of the coffee and thus taken
it does not cause insomnia to the same degree. The poet did not
forget to explain this manner of taking coffee:

As with art 'tis prepared, one should drink it with art. The mere commonplace drinks one absorbs with free heart; But this--once with care from the bright flame removed, And the lime set aside that its value has proved-- Take it first in deep draughts, meditative and slow, Quit it now, now resume, thus imbibe with gusto; While charming the palate it burns yet enchants, In the hour of its triumph the virtue it grants Penetrates every tissue; its powers condense. Circulate cheering warmths, bring new life to each sense. From the cauldron profound spiced aromas unseen Mount to tease and delight your olfactories keen, The while you inhale with felicity fraught, The enchanting perfume that a zephyr has brought.

Gone are the "luxurious and magnificent" coffee houses of Constantinople (if they ever existed--at least as we understand luxury and magnificence) which first brought the beverage world-wide fame; such _caffinets_ as the one pictured by Thomas Allom and described by the Rev. Robert Walsh, in _Constantinople, Illustrated_:

The caffinet, or coffee-house, is something more splendid, and the
Turk expends all his notions of finery and elegance on this, his
favorite place of indulgence. The edifice is generally decorated in
a very gorgeous manner, supported on pillars, and open in front. It
is surrounded on the inside by a raised platform, covered with mats
or cushions, on which the Turks sit cross-legged. On one side are
musicians, generally Greeks, with mandolins and tambourines,
accompanying singers, whose melody consists in vociferation; and
the loud and obstreperous concert forms a strong contrast to the
stillness and taciturnity of Turkish meetings. On the opposite side
are men, generally of a respectable class, some of whom are found
here every day, and all day long, dozing under the double influence
of coffee and tobacco. The coffee is served in very small cups, not
larger than egg-cups, grounds and all, without cream or sugar, and
so black, thick, and bitter that it has been aptly compared to
"stewed soot". Besides the ordinary chibouk for tobacco, there is
another implement, called narghillai, used for smoking in a
caffinet, of a more elaborate construction. It consists of a glass
vase, filled with water, and often scented with distilled rose or
other flowers. This is surmounted with a silver or brazen head,
from which issues a long flexible tube; a pipe-bowl is placed on
the top, and so constructed that the smoke is drawn, and comes
bubbling up through the water, cool and fragrant to the mouth. A
peculiar kind of tobacco, grown at Shiraz in Persia, and resembling
small pieces of cut leather, is used with this instrument.

Certainly there never was any such thing as a coffee-house architecture. It may be that up to the time of Abdul Hamid, when money was more plentiful than it has been for the past fifty years, there were coffee houses more comfortably appointed than now exist.

The coffee house in a modernized form is, however, quite as numerous in Turkey as in the days of Amurath III and the notorious Kuprili.

H.G. Dwight[369] writing on the present day Turkish coffee house, says:

There are thoroughfares in any Turkish city that carry on almost no
other form of traffic. There is no quarter so miserable or so
remote as to be without one or two. They are the clubs of the
poorer classes. Men of a street, a trade, a province, or a
nationality--for a Turkish coffee-house may also be Albanian,
Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Kurd, almost anything you please--meet
regularly when their work is done, at coffee-houses kept by their
own people. So much are the humbler coffee-houses frequented by a
fixed clientèle that a student of types or dialects may realize for
himself how truly they used to be called Schools of Knowledge.

The arrangement of a Turkish coffee-house is of the simplest. The
essential is that the place should provide the beverage for which
it exists and room for enjoying the same. A sketch of a coffee-shop
may often be seen on the street, in a scrap of shade or sunshine
according to the season, where a stool or two invite the passer-by
to a moment of contemplation. Larger establishments, though they
are rarely very large, are most often installed in a room longer
than it is wide, having as many windows as possible at the street
end and what we would call the bar at the other. It is a bar that
always makes me regret I do not etch, with its pleasing curves, its
high lights of brass and porcelain striking out of deep shadow, and
its usually picturesque _kahvehji_.

You do not stand at it. You sit on one of the benches running down
the sides of the room. They are more or less comfortably cushioned,
though sometimes higher and broader than a foreigner finds to his
taste. In that case you slip off your shoes, if you would do as the
Romans do, and tuck your feet up under you. A table stands in front
of you to hold your coffee--and often in summer an aromatic pot of
basil to keep the flies away. Chairs or stools are scattered about.
Decorative Arabic texts, sometimes wonderful prints, adorn the
walls. There may even be hanging rugs and china to entertain your
eyes. And there you are.

The habit of the coffee-house is one that requires a certain
leisure. You must not bolt coffee as you bolt the fire-waters of
the West, without ceremony, in retreats withdrawn from the public
eye. Being a less violent and a less shameful passion, I suppose,
it is indulged in with more of the humanities. The etiquette of the
coffee-house, of those coffee-houses which have not been too much
infected by Europe, is one of their most characteristic features.
Something like it prevails in Italy, where you tip your hat on
entering and leaving a _caffè_. In Turkey, however, I have seen a
new-comer salute one after another each person in a crowded
coffee-room, once on entering the door and again after taking his
seat, and be so saluted in return--either by putting the right hand
to the heart and uttering the greeting _Merhabah_, or by making the
_temennah_, that triple sweep of the hand which is the most
graceful of salutes. I have also seen an entire company rise upon
the entrance of an old man, and yield him the corner of honor.

Such courtesies take time. Then you must wait for your coffee to be
made. To this end coffee, roasted fresh as required by turning in
an iron cylinder over a fire of sticks and ground to the fineness
of powder in a brass mill, is put into a small uncovered brass pot
with a long handle. There it is boiled to a froth three times on a
charcoal brazier, with or without sugar as you prefer. But to
desecrate it by the admixture of milk is an unheard of sacrilege.
Some _kahvehjis_ replace the pot in the embers with a smart rap in
order to settle the grounds. You in the meanwhile smoke. That also
takes time, particularly if you "drink" a _narguileh_, as the Turks
say. This is familiar enough in the West to require no great
description. It is a big carafe with a metal top for holding
tobacco and a long coil of leather tube for inhaling the
water-cooled fumes thereof. The effect is wonderfully soothing and
innocent at first, though wonderfully deadly in the end to the
novice. The tobacco used is not the ordinary weed, but a much
coarser and stronger one called _tunbeki_, which comes from Persia.
The same sort of tobacco used to be smoked a great deal in shallow
red earthenware pipes with long mouthpieces. They are now chiefly
seen in antiquity shops.

When your coffee is ready it is poured into an after-dinner
coffee-cup or into a miniature bowl, and brought to you on a tray
with a glass of water. A foreigner can almost always be spotted by
the manner in which he finally partakes of these refreshments. A
Turk sips his water first, partly to prepare the way for the
coffee, but also because he is a connoisseur of the former liquid
as other men are of stronger ones. And he lifts his coffee-cup by
the saucer, whether it possess a handle or no, managing the two
together in a dexterous way of his own. The current price for all
this, not including the water-pipe, is ten paras--a trifle over a
cent--for which the _kahvehji_ will cry you "Blessing". More
pretentious establishments charge twenty paras, while a giddy few
rise to a piaster--not quite five cents--or a piaster and a half.
That, however, begins to look like extortion. And mark that you do
not tip the waiter. I have often been surprised to be charged no
more than the tariff, although I gave a larger piece to be changed
and it was perfectly evident that I was a foreigner. That is an
experience which rarely befalls a traveller among his own
coreligionaries. It has even happened to me, which is rarer still,
to be charged nothing at all, nay, to be steadfastly refused when I
persisted in attempting to pay, simply because I was a foreigner,
and therefore a guest.

There is no reason, however, why you should go away when you have
had your coffee--or your glass of tea--and your smoke. On the
contrary, there are reasons why you should stay, particularly if
you happen into the coffee-house not too long after sunset. Then
coffee-houses of the most local color are at their best. Earlier in
the day their clients are likely to be at work. Later they will
have disappeared altogether. For Constantinople has not quite
forgotten the habits of the tent. Stamboul, except during the holy
month of Ramazan, is a deserted city at night. But just after dark
it is full of a life which an outsider is often content simply to
watch through the lighted windows of coffee-rooms. These are also
barber-shops, where men have shaved not only their chins, but
different parts of their heads according to their "countries". In
them likewise checkers, the Persian backgammon, and various games
of long narrow cards are played. They say that Bridge came from
Constantinople. Indeed, I believe a club of Pera claims the honor
of having communicated that passion to the Western World. But I
must confess that I have yet to see an open hand in a coffee-house
of the people.

One of the pleasantest forms of amusement to be obtained in
coffee-houses is unfortunately getting to be one of the rarest. It
is that afforded by itinerant story-tellers, who still carry on in
the East the tradition of the troubadours. The stories they tell
are more or less on the order of the Arabian Nights, though perhaps
even less suitable for mixed companies--which for the rest are
never found in coffee-shops. These men are sometimes wonderfully
clever at character monologue or dialogue. They collect their pay
at a crucial moment of the action, refusing to continue until the
audience has testified to the sincerity of its interest by some
token more substantial.

Music is much more common. There are those, to be sure, who find no
music in the sounds poured forth oftenest by a gramophone, often by
a pair of gypsies with a flaring pipe and two small gourd drums,
and sometimes by an orchestra so-called of the fine lute--a company
of musicians on a railed dais who sing long songs while they play
on stringed instruments of strange curves. For myself I know too
little of music to tell what relation the recurrent cadences of
those songs and their broken rhythms may bear to the antique modes.
But I can listen, as long as musicians will perform, to those
infinite repetitions, that insistent sounding of the minor key. It
pleases me to fancy there a music come from far away--from unknown
river gorges, from camp-fires glimmering on great plains. Does not
such darkness breathe through it, such melancholy, such haunting of
elusive airs? There are flashes too of light, of song, the playing
of shepherd's pipes, the swoop of horsemen and sudden outcries of
savagery. But the note to which it all comes back is the monotone
of a primitive life, like the day-long beat of camel bells. And
more than all, it is the mood of Asia, so rarely penetrated, which
is neither lightness or despair.

There are seasons in the year when these various forms of
entertainment abound more than at others, as Ramazan and the two
Bairams. Throughout the month of Ramazan the purely Turkish
coffee-houses are closed in the daytime, since the pleasures which
they minister may not then be indulged in; but they are open all
night. It is during that one month of the year that Karaghieuz, the
Turkish shadow-show, may be seen in a few of the larger
coffee-shops. The Bairams are two festivals of three and four days
respectively, the former of which celebrates the close of Ramazan,
while the latter corresponds in certain respects to the Jewish
Passover. Dancing is a particular feature of the coffee-houses in
Bairam. The Kurds, who carry the burdens of Constantinople on their
backs, are above all other men given to this form of
exercise--though the Lazzes, the boatmen, vie with them. One of
these dark tribesmen plays a little violin like a pochelle, or two
of them perform on a pipe and a big drum, while the others dance
round them in a circle, sometimes till they drop from fatigue. The
weird music and the picturesque costumes and movements of the
dancers make the spectacle one to be remembered.

Christian coffee-houses also have their own festal seasons. These
coincide in general with the festivals of the church. But every
quarter has its patron saint, the saint of the local church or of
the local holy well, whose feast is celebrated by a three-day
_panayiri_. The street is dressed with flags and strings of colored
paper, tables and chairs line the sidewalk, and libations are
poured forth in honor of the holy person commemorated. For this
reason, and because of the more volatile character of the Greek,
the general note of his merrymaking is louder than that of the
Turk. One may even see the scandalous spectacle of men and women
dancing together at a Greek _panayiri_. The instrument which sets
the key of these orgies is the _lanterna_, a species of hand-organ
peculiar to Constantinople. It is a hand-piano rather, of a loud
and cheerful voice, whose Eurasian harmonies are enlivened by a
frequent clash of bells.

What first made coffee-houses suspicious to those in authority,
however, is their true resource--the advantages they offer for
meeting one's kind, for social converse and the contemplation of
life. Hence it must be that they have so happy a tact for locality.
They seek shade, pleasant corners, open squares, the prospect of
water or wide landscapes. In Constantinople they enjoy an infinite
choice of site, so huge is the extent of that city, so broken by
hill and sea, so varied in its spectacle of life. The commonest
type of city coffee-room looks out upon the passing world from
under a grape-vine or a climbing wistaria.

Coffee-houses of distinction are to be found also in the Place of the Pines overlooking the Marble Sea, on Giant's Mountain, in the Landing Place of the Man-slayer, and along the rivers that flow into the Golden Horn.

Originally the Turkish method of preparing coffee was the Arabian method, and it is so described by Mr. Fellows in his _Excursions through Asia Minor_:

Each cup is made separately, the little saucepan or ladle in which
it is prepared being about an inch wide and two deep; this is more
than half filled with coffee, finely pounded with a pestle and
mortar, and then filled up with water; after being placed for a few
seconds on the fire, the contents are poured, or rather shaken, out
(being much thicker than chocolate) without the addition of cream
or sugar, into a china cup of the size and shape of half an
egg-shell, which is inclosed in one of ornamented metal for
convenience of holding in the hand.

Later, the Turks sought to improve the method by adding sugar (a concession to the European sweet tooth) during the boiling process. The improved Turkish recipe is as follows:

First boil the water. For two cups of the beverage add three lumps
of sugar and return the boiler to the fire. Add two teaspoonfuls of
powdered coffee, stirring well and let the pot boil up four times.
Between each boiling the pot is to be removed from the fire and the
bottom tapped gently until the froth on the top subsides. After the
last boiling pour the coffee first into one cup and then the other,
so as to evenly divide the froth.

In Syria and Palestine the Turkish-Arabian methods are followed. The brazen dippers, or _ibriks_, are used for boiling.

Oriental coffee-house keeper's costume]

In the Near East, coffee manners and customs are much the same today as they were fifty or even one hundred years ago. Witness Damascus. The following pen picture of the cafés in this ancient city was written in 1836 to accompany the drawing by Bartlett and Purser, which is reproduced here; but it might have been written in 1922, so slight have been the changes in the setting or the spirit of the original coffee house that Shemsi first brought to Constantinople from Damascus in 1554.[370]

The Cafés of the kind represented in the plate are, perhaps, the
greatest luxury that a stranger finds in Damascus. Gardens,
kiosques, fountains, and groves are abundant around every Eastern
capital: but Cafés on the very bosom of a rapid river, and bathed
by its waves, are peculiar to this ancient city: they are formed so
as to exclude the rays of the sun, while they admit the breeze; the
light roof is supported by slender rows of pillars, and the
building is quite open on every side.