by Lucy E. Zahnle

Created on: September 06, 2009   Last Updated: September 18, 2011

Coffee beans were first documented in Yemen and to a lesser extent in Ethiopia in the fifteenth century although many people in mountainous, isolated villages probably chewed raw coffee beans as early as the tenth century. Coffee was first brewed as a drink amongst medieval Sufi clergymen. From there, it passed into the general population and controversy was born.

Coffeehouses soon sprang up in many great Islamic cities. Suddenly people had somewhere to visit in the evenings besides a mosque or a religious meeting. Compared to the forbidden and dangerous gambling or drinking dens, coffeehouses were also safe and respectable places to pass the time when one was not engaged in work or worship. People could indulge in something that was not forbidden, but did not directly serve their religion.

On top of that, in the early fifteenth century, some coffeehouses offered music. According to historians, at one coffeehouse in the town of Hajiz , both men and women sang and played instruments. In some coffeehouses, the women were hidden discreetly behind screens. In others, they mingled more freely. By the second half of the fifteenth century, however, coffeehouses were a purely male domain.

Those opposed to coffee believed that it fostered idleness, gossip, and rebellion. They complained of lazy young men who frittered their days away in the coffeehouses, telling unlikely falsehoods, usually at the expense of virtuous young women, and avoiding all work or responsibility. They also insisted that plots against the government had been hatched and sometimes even launched over steaming cups of the demon brew.

Critics of coffee also maintained that it encouraged the use of harsher drugs because hashish and opium addicts found the drink attractive, sometimes stirring their drugs into their coffee. At the very least, opponents argued, coffee itself caused people to become more rambunctious, talkative, and irresponsible.

Those who supported coffee drinking insisted that it had medicinal benefits, citing instances where very ill people had drunk coffee and swiftly recovered their health. Members of the clergy drank coffee and the practice was accepted among many of the mosque's highest officials. Despite the fact that, at certain points in time, a single cup had been passed around a group as if it were an intoxicant, coffee proponents contended that It was a social drink with no intoxicating properties and did no harm. They also declared that the coffeehouse was a cheap place

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