Encyclopedia of Islam

clitoridectomy

---

home, Middle Eastern women prepare and serve 

coffee to guests and friends. Also, in almost any 

gathering of women, there are several who offer 

to tell friends’ fortunes by reading the patterns of 

the fine black coffee sediment created when the 

empty cups are turned upside down, then right 

side up again.

Some Muslim religious and political authori-

ties attempted to either outlaw coffee drinking or 

close coffeehouses as they became more and more 

popular in the 16th century. There were suspi-

cions that coffee was an intoxicating beverage and 

that it should therefore be banned like alcoholic 

drinks, which are forbidden according to Islamic 

dietary

 

laWs

. Religious conservatives also wanted 

it banned because they believed it was a harmful 

innovation (

bidaa

), not explicitly permitted by 

the q

Uran

 and 

hadith

. Coffeehouses were suspect 

because immoral activities reportedly occurred 

there. Also, some government officials became 

concerned because of the seditious talk and plots 

that might be hatched when men gathered to drink 

coffee. None of these efforts to prohibit coffee suc-

ceeded, however, as any visitor to the Middle East 

today can see with his or her own eyes.

The coffee trade was originally in the hands 

of Muslim merchants working out of the port of 

Mocha (al-Mukha) in Yemen, from which the best 

coffees originally came. Some types of coffee still 

carry the name mocha. Before the end of the 18th 

century, two things happened to end the Muslim 

monopoly on coffee cultivation and trade. First, 

the Europeans had not only acquired a taste for 

coffee themselves, but they had successfully intro-

duced coffee cultivation to their colonies in the 

New World and tropical Asia. Muslim merchants 

lost access to the European market, and they had 

to compete against the lower prices offered by 

European merchants. Second, more and more of 

the world’s maritime commercial traffic fell into 

the hands of Europeans; even the port of Mocha 

was opened to Dutch, French, and British sail-

ing vessels. Although coffee is still produced in 

Yemen, most of the coffee consumed in the Middle 

East and other parts of the world comes from 

Latin America (especially Brazil). Coffee drink-

ing in the United States began in the days of the 

British colonies, but it did not become a popular 

beverage until after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, 

when Americans boycotted British tea and drank 

coffee instead.

See also 

Food

 

and

 

drink

; s

UFism

.