SC - coffe and tea at events

[david friedman]

At 1:00 PM -0600 1/24/98, Decker, Terry D. wrote:

>If Uker's chronology is correct, a 15th Century Turk might have coffee
>available, especially if they were wealthy.  This is primarily based on
>the types of ewers and the coffee roasting plates which became available
>in Persia, Egypt and Turkey between 1350 and 1500.  I keep hoping to
>come across a study of a chemical or neutron bombardment analysis of the
>interior of some of these artifacts (especially the earlier pottery
>ewers) to determine if they were actually used for coffee.
>
>In Uker, general coffee drinking starts about 1454 with Sheik
>Gemaleddin, the Mufti of Aden, sanctioning the use of coffee in Arabia
>Felix.  Coffee use spreads north.  Coffee is prohibited in Cairo in
>1511.  Coffee reaches Constantinople with Selin I in 1517.

It sounds as though is chronology and Hattox's are about the same. So a
fifteenth century Turk would not regard coffee as a familiar drink to be
routinely served to guests--which was the position Ras was offering. I
think we agree that he could conceivably have tasted it on his travels, if
they happened to take him in the direction of Yemen.

>>From the sources I have available, and I do not have Hattox, my opinion
>is that coffee has been available in the Islamic world since about 900
>CE (Rhaze's description of bunchum).  It was probably a medicinal until
>about 1250 (apocryphally, Sheik Omar, disciple of Sheik Schadheli,
>patron saint and legendary founder of Mocha, discovers the beverage
>coffee at Ousab, Arabia), when it became a luxury trade good for the
>very rich.  This would explain the existence of coffee making artifacts
>and the lack of coffee houses.  Cultivation of coffee expanding to meet
>the demand creates a surplus which lowers the price of coffee and brings
>it to the masses around 1450.

I think the problem with that account is that coffee is being treated as a
novelty in the fifteenth century, if I remember Hattox correctly--among
other things, the question of whether it counts as an intoxicant and should
be banned surfaces then. That might happen if it had been known only as a
medicine before, but doesn't sound plausible if it had been a luxury trade
good for the previous two centuries. Absent your hypothetical future tests,
I find "coffe making arifacts" pretty weak evidence--how do they differ
from similar artifacts used for other purposes?

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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