TURKISH COFFEE

CULTURE
“A CUP OF COFFEE COMMITS
ONE TO FORTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP”

by
Beşir Ayvazoğlu

REPUBLIC OF TURKEY
MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND TOURISM PUBLICATIONS
© Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism
General Directorate of Libraries and Publications
3315

Handbook Series
15

ISBN: 978-975-17-3567-6

www.kulturturizm.gov.tr
e-mail: yayimlar@kulturturizm.gov.tr

Translated by
Melis Şeyhun

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First Edition
Print run: 5000.
Printed in Ankara in 2011.

Ayvazoğlu, Beşir
Turkish Coffee Culture/
Beşir Ayvazoğlu; Trans. Melis Şeyhun.-
Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2011.
160 p.: col. ill.; 20 cm.- (Ministry of Culture and
Tourism Publications; 3315. Handbook Series of
General Directorate of Libraries and Publications: 15)
ISBN: 978-975-17-3567-6
Selected Bibliography
I. title. II. Seyhun,Melis. III. Series.
641.877
 CONTENTS
FOREWORD .............................................................................................................5
I FROM YEMEN TO ISTANBUL ...................................................................9
II COFFEE AND MYSTICISM.........................................................................15
III COFFEE IS THE EXCUSE ...............................................................................23
IV TAHMISHANE ......................................................................................................31
V WATER OF LIFE ...................................................................................................35
VI FROM MORTAR TO CUP ..........................................................................39
VII THE COFFEE CUP .............................................................................................53
VIII COFFEE CEREMONY AT THE PALACE ..........................................59
IX COFFEE SERVICE AT OTTOMAN MANSIONS ........................67
X COFFEE IN DOMESTIC LIFE .....................................................................71
XI COFFEE ADDICTION .....................................................................................77
XII BRAZIER AND ASH COFFEE....................................................................87
XIII COFFEE SHORTAGES .....................................................................................93
XIV FORTUNE IN A CUP ...................................................................................101
XV COFFEE SCENES FROM OLD ISTANBUL ...................................111
XVI LOCAL COFFEEHOUSES ..........................................................................121
XVII KIRAATHANE....................................................................................................129
XVIII ENTERTAINMENT AT THE COFFEEHOUSE ............................135
XIX LITERARY COFFEEHOUSES ...................................................................143
XX FROM COFFEE TO TEA ............................................................................149
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...............................................................................................155
 FOREWORD

W
hen I received an offer to write a book on “Turkish Coffee
Culture” I wanted to review the literature before I began writing.
It was enough merely to peruse the bibliographies of the books
in my library to intimidate myself. It appeared that almost everything had
already been written on the history of coffee and coffeehouses.
There was one thing I could do: base my work predominantly
on literary texts. This was indeed a difficult undertaking: since it was
impossible to review the literature in such a short time, I was obliged to
content myself with what I could access and strive to produce a text that
was different from its precedents. My only reassurance was a folder I had
put together over the years due to my keen interest in the history and
culture of coffee with the hope that I would, one day, write a few lines
on this delicious drink, to which I was “addicted” since my younger days.
I piled all the coffee books I could find in bookstores on my desk
along with the ones in my own library. On the day I felt ready, after
having leafed through the pages for a while, I made myself a strong cup
of Turkish coffee with little sugar, recited a “Bismillah” and settled in front
of the computer. While I am at it, I must say that a well-made coffee is
indescribably delicious and brings clarity to the mind. You feel, already
at your first sip, that you can write better poetry, overcome your writer’s
block, or conclude your experiment in the best possible way. While
drinking Turkish coffee from a small cup brings profound wisdom, if you
are to spend considerable mental effort, then it’s best that you own a large
cup without a handle. I would not advise you to drink it sweetened; after
all, the older generation did not take sweetened coffee drinkers seriously.

5
Still, I find adding a little sugar is just as respectable having an unsweetened
cup of coffee.
After I took a sip of my coffee, I began to write. It was a delightful
journey across the long road that began from Abyssinia, reached Istanbul
via Yemen, the Hejaz, and Egypt, and extended all across the world on
diverging paths. Quite frankly, I spent little time between Yemen and
Istanbul. Nor did I wander off to the roads originating from Istanbul. My
real concern was coffee’s adventure in Istanbul. In fact, the book opens
with the incident during which the first ships bringing coffee to Istanbul
were sunk at the Port of Tophane upon a decree issued by Sheikh-ul Islam
Ebussuud Efendi, continues with brief flashbacks and a summary of the
adventures of coffee until it reaches Istanbul, and finally casts anchor in
this historic city.
Although coffee was met with considerable opposition as soon
as it arrived in Istanbul, it eventually established its reign in the city, and
managed to convert the majority of its opponents. The intoxicating smell,
delectable taste, and other redeeming–stimulant and anti-exhaustion–
qualities are not the only factors behind this success; coffee has an
astonishing skill in bringing people together. What troubled the Ottoman
authorities of the time were the discussions that took place in places –
such as coffeehouses– where coffee would be consumed. Those who
issued decrees or fatwas to abolish coffee were perhaps drinking their
bitter coffees in large cups. However, it was impossible to uphold the
prohibitions and succeed at banning coffee altogether; coffee had already
entered the Palace and assumed its place in protocol, conquering the
castle from the inside, so to speak. The last serious –and even bloody–
bans were issued during the reign of Sultan Murad IV. In the ensuing
years, rather than closing down the coffeehouses, the state preferred to
keep them under close surveillance with the help of spies. Prohibiting
coffee as a drink was inconceivable, since by then, coffee, instead of blood,
was circulating through people’s veins. Foreign travelers have amazedly
observed how coffee became an indispensible part of the life style in
Turkey. The average Turk began the day with “kahvaltı”—the Turkish word
for breakfast, which is derived from “kahve-altı” or pre-coffee. In other
words, rather than having breakfast, the Turks had a quick bite in the
morning just to drink coffee.
The day still begins with “kahvaltı” in Turkey; however, tea has
replaced coffee by now. The coffee shortages that began during World
War I and continued intermittently in the ensuing years, and, even worse,
the addition of different kinds of dry legumes and grains such as chickpeas
and barley to coffee caused the public to shy away from coffee and turn
to tea instead. Today, tea is more commonly opted in coffeehouses. While

6
coffee more or less maintains its place in traditional ceremonies such as
entertaining guests, asking for a girl’s hand in marriage, betrothals, and
engagements, one can no longer speak of “committing to a friendship
of forty years.” There is more theine than caffeine circulating in our
bloodstream. Nonetheless, there still exist serious aficionados who would
never trade the taste of Turkish coffee with anything else. Their primary
concern is the failure to uphold traditions and maintain the standards of
making Turkish coffee in its native land, the absence of establishments
that pay special attention to serving their customers Turkish coffee in its
purest form, and the disappearance of Turkish coffee from the menus of
certain hotels, cafés, etc.
Ending with a brief chapter on the transition from coffee to tea,
this book is written to once again draw attention to the rich culture and
literature that has evolved around coffee, which was once the symbol of
the Turkish way of living. All the while, the writing process required the
consumption of hundreds of cups of Turkish coffee…
I am indebted to my wife, who prepared my coffee and awaited my
return from the long journey I embarked upon in the ‘dark’ world of coffee
in my study for hours on end. I am also sustained by many friends who
shed light to my path with their knowledge: I would like to extend my
gratitude to Prof. Dr. İnci Enginün, Mustafa Çetin Tükek—a true coffee
aficionado and collector, Yusuf Çağlar, as well as the employees of Beyazıt
State Library, İSAM Library, and Atatürk Library.

Beşir Ayvazoğlu

7
Gün yetmedi taştıkça taşan neşvemize
imrendi o gün kahvede kim varsa bize
‘Dostlarla’ dedim, ‘sohbetimiz bal gibidir
ey kahveci gel katma şeker kahvemize! ’

(The day fell short of our overflowing glee

Everyone at the coffeehouse was green with envy
“With friends,” I said, “our causerie is sweet as honey
Oh coffeemaker, do not add sugar to our coffee!)

Beşir Ayvazoğlu
(“Sade Kahve”, Kayıp Şiir, p. 33)
 FROM YEMEN TO
I ISTANBUL

O
ne day, several ships boarded the Port of Tophane. The year
was 1543. We say several, because in Mîzânü’l-Hak, Kâtip Çelebi
speaks not of a single ship, but of several. Bringing sacks full of
coffee from Yemen, these ships, according to Kâtip Çelebi, were pierced
one by one and sunk with their cargo as per the fatwa (edict) of Sheik-ul
Islam Ebussuud Efendi.1 As he could so readily issue the fatwa, one might
presume that the Sheik-ul Islam was familiar with coffee or that he may
even have tasted it. One of the justifications behind this fatwa, which
possibly devastated coffee aficionados, was that coffee was roasted until
it was charred; the other excuse was that since the coffee cup was passed
from one hand to the next among the crowds gathered at coffeehouses
–as traditionally done in taverns–, it would eventually lead to debauchery.
Ebussuud Efendi’s familiarity with coffee, and more importantly,
importing coffee from Yemen by way of sea indicates that this drink had
well penetrated the daily life of Istanbul. There was no doubt that during
their months-long pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajis were introduced to
coffee and possibly brought some back on their return. Once Egypt and
Yemen came under Ottoman rule in 1517, coffee automatically became
a drink produced and consumed within the borders of the Ottoman
Empire; its arrival in Istanbul was thus inevitable.
1 Kâtip Çelebi, Mîzânü’l-Hakk fî İhtiyâri’l-Ahakk (ed. Orhan Şaik Gökyay), MEB Yayınları 1000
Temel Eser, Istanbul 1980, p. 39.

9
 The unexpected popularity of the first coffeehouses opened in
Tahtakale eight years after the sinking of coffee ships and their evolvement
into meeting points for literary crowds indicates that the ban on coffee was
not quite effective, that coffee found its way to Istanbul in various ways,
and that coffee aficionados increased in number. The verse, “Kahvehane
mahall-i eğlence” (959), mentioned in Hafız Hüseyin Ayvansarayî’s work
Mecmua-i Tevârih designates 1551-15522 as the opening date of the first
coffeehouses in Istanbul, whereas the verse “Zuhûr-ı kahve be diyâr-ı Rûm”
(962) quoted in Esmarü’t-Tevarih points to the year 1554.

Although it is no known when coffee beans were first used to make

a beverage, all records indicate that coffee drinking became widespread
in the Islamic world during the 16th century. According to Abdülkadir al-
Cezirî’s booklet entitled Umdetü’l-safve fi hilli’l-kahve, the first news about
the great popularity of coffee as a drink in Yemen reached Cairo at the
turn of the 16th century.3
A lesser-known legend suggests that Solomon was the first person
to roast coffee beans to make a drink. According to al-Cezirî, someone
named al-Zabhanî, who involuntarily lived on the African coast for a while,
brought coffee from Abyssinia to Aden and was made popular among
the mystic circles. Another legend implies that Sheikh Ali b. Ömer eş-Şazilî
brought coffee to Yemen. This honor has been ascribed to several different
names; however, Sheikh Şâzilî was embraced as the patriarch of coffee in

2 Hafız Hüseyin Ayvansarayî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih (ed. Fahri Ç. Derin-Vahid Çabuk), İ.Ü. Edebiyat
Fakültesi Yayınları, Istanbul 1985, p. 429. In the introduction of the same work, Ayvansarayî
gives the date H. 1000 (1591-1592) for the arrival of coffee in Istanbul. See, ibid., p. 18.
3 Ralph S. Hattox, Kahve ve Kahvehaneler: Bir Toplumsal İçeceğin Yakındoğu’daki Kökenleri
(trans. Nurettin Elhüseyni), Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, Istanbul 1996, p. 23.

10
the Ottoman world. In fact, inscription plates bearing the following verses
were hung in coffeehouse throughout the centuries:
Her seherde besmeleyle açılır dükkânımız
Hazret-i Şeyh Şâzilî’dir pîrimiz üstâdımız4
Evliya Çelebi adds a “Veysel Karanî” detail to the legend. In recounting
“Esnâf-ı tüccâr-ı kahveciyân” (coffee merchant guilds) in his Seyahatname
(Book of Travels), he associates Sheikh Şazilî’s role as the patriarch of coffee
by way of his affiliation with the futuwwa order through Veysel Karanî.5
Often confused with the founder of the Shadhili Sufi order Sheikh
Shadhili, the legends of Sheikh Ali b. Ömer eş-Şazilî must be regarded as
the efforts to legitimize coffee, which was met with strong opposition from
the onset.6 The gist of the legend often recounted in various sources and
virtually by every researcher working on coffee is as follows: Sheikh Şazilî
departs from the Maghreb to make pilgrimage, his ship drifts off to Yemen
during a storm, and the Sheikh ends up in Muha. After building himself
a thatched hut, the Sheikh settles down in Muha and attains great fame
once he begins to heal with prayers the locals suffering from an epidemic.
One day, the breathtakingly beautiful daughter of the Amir of Muha is
brought to the Sheikh for the same reason. However, when the Sheikh
keeps the young girl in his hut to heal for several days, he is slandered
and unjustly exiled to Mount Aswab. The Sheikh and his disciples find
nothing but coffee trees in the area; for nourishment, they eat
the coffee cherries, boil the seeds, and drink the juice to
survive. Soon, a mange epidemic breaks out in Muha;
when some locals attribute the misfortune to the
slandering of the Sheikh, a few people
travel to Mount Aswab, apologize from
the Sheikh, and ask for his prayers
to end the disease. The
Sheikh prays into
the coffee

4 “We recite basmala (in the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful) every
time we open shop; Hazret-i Şeyh Şâzilî is our sage and master.” (T.N.)
5 Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi I (eds. Robert Dankoff, Seyit Ali Kahraman, Yücel Dağlı), YKY,
Istanbul 2006, p. 276.
6 For further information on and interpretation of these legends and rumors, see Ralph S.
Hattox, ibid, pp. 10-22.

11
 water and offers it to the
sick. Once healed, the Muha
locals deliver the good news to
town. In the end, the Amir of
Muha apologizes from the Sheikh
and implores the Sheikh to cure the
townspeople. When the coffee he boils for the
locals boils over and spills, the surprised Sheikh
interprets this as a sign that drinking coffee will
become widespread.
Summarized from the account in Kâtip
Çelebi’s Cihannüma with several important
changes and additions, this story is recounted in
the annotation of a manuscript (H. 1250/1834-
35) transcribed into the new alphabet and published by Sabri Koz.7
The reality behind this legend and other similar ones is that although
coffee as a plant originated from Abyssinia and coffee drinking was
popularized among the mystic circles, as a drink, coffee spread to the
Islamic world from Yemen. Regarded as “the dark beauty of Yemen” by
certain aficionado-poets, coffee appears as the “Gentleman of Yemen” in
a graceful riddle:

Sitil cloth

7 Sabri Koz, “Kahvenin Tarihine Derkenar”, Tanede Saklı Keyif, YKY, Istanbul 2001, p. 156.

13
 Ben ne idim ne idim / What was I, what was I
Yemenli bir beğ idim / A gentleman of Yemen
Felek beni şaşırttı / Fate confounded me and
Fağfuriye düşürttü / Dropped me into chinaware
First reaching Mecca and later
to Cairo in early 16th century, as
coffee spread across a wide
geography, it also gave
rise to opponents; the
controversial fatwas
issued by certain
Faqihs (experts in
Islamic Law) thus led to
interminable discussions.
The campaign initiated in
1511 by Hayır Bey –Mamluk State’s
muhtasib (supervisor of bazaars and trade) in Mecca– upon seeing a
group of Meccans drink coffee one night in candle light on the corner of
a mosque; the fatwas issued by a committee of leading Maliki, Shafi’i, and
Hanafi scholars based on the views of two doctors; the burning down
of coffee stocks in public squares; and the beating of coffee drinkers
as a deterrent to others constitute the first important incidents in the
history of coffee.8 Coffee consumption around Al-Azhar in Cairo was also
met with considerable opposition from the same
neighborhood.
Behind the fatwa of Ebussuud
Efendi that led to the piercing and
sinking of the ships with their sacks of
coffee at the Port of Tophane in 1543
possibly lies the repercussions of these
debates and fights, which found their way
to Istanbul.

8 Ralph S. Hattox, ibid, pp. 27-31.

14
 COFFEE AND
II MYSTICISM

A
lthough Sheikh-ul Islam Ebussuud Efendi gave fatwas
declaring coffee to be haraam (forbidden by religion), he was
not quite strict about their implementation. In fact, according
to Hammer, he had refrained from issuing fatwas to close to coffeehouses
in the ensuing years. We are not certain if the widespread consumption
of coffee among Sufi orders was instrumental in changing the views of
great religious scholars. Had Ebussuud Efendi continued his opposition,
the opening of numerous coffeehouses during the reign of Sultan
Süleyman I would have been impossible. Nor would Doctor Bedreddin
Kaysunî1 submit to the Sultan a report in favor of coffee. Although Sultan
Süleyman had abolished the Emirate of Hamr in the final years of his reign
and shut down all the taverns, this move was partly encouraged by the
spread of coffeehouses. A poet in Epicurean spirit, Sânî complained of the
circumstances in his famous verses as follows:
Hûmlar şikeste cam tehî yok vücûd-ı mey
Kıldın esîr-ı kahve bizi hey zamâne hey
(The wine jar is broken, the glass empty, there is no trace of wine;
Lo and behold, you have enslaved us to coffee, oh present times!)

1 C. van Arendonk, “Kahve”, İA, v. 6, p. 98.

15
An early 17th-century coffeehouse in a miniature album (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library)
 The fact that
the word coffee
also denoted
wine2 and that
it was passed
around and
drunk from the
same cup –like
wine– troubled
Ebussuud Efendi
and other
religious scholars.
A couplet from Poet Neylî’s Hasan Çelebi Tezkiresi reveals that the
Epicureans mocked people who drank coffee in this manner. In this
couplet, Neylî questions how many times the cup must be passed from
hand to hand in social gatherings before coffee can liken itself to rose-
colored wine.3
In some of his gazels (odes) in Divan-ı Kebir, Rumi clearly uses coffee
to denote wine. Based on these gazels, some researchers mistakenly claim
that Rumi drank coffee.4 For example, the couplet in which coffee is
mentioned alongside almond halva is noteworthy:
Devletimiz geçim devleti, kahvemiz arştan gelmede;
Meclise badem helvası dökülüp saçılmış5
(Our State is one of sustenance; our coffee arrives from the Ninth
Heaven;
Almond halva is spread all over the gathering.)
Another gazel contains the following verses:
A hanımım, fincanımı kahveyle doldur, birbiri ardına sun bana.
Seni ayık olarak ziyaret edenin vay hâline; o da sakınsın bundan, sen
de sakın.6

2 Hafız Hüseyin Ayvansarayî notes that coffee is also one of the names given to coffee and
speaks of a hadith that declares coffee as forbidden by religion (“El-kıhvetü’n haramün”).
See ibid, p. 18.
3 Namık Açıkgöz, Kahvenâme, Akçağ Yayınları, Ankara 1999, pp. 36-43.
4 Nevin Halıcı, Mevlevi Mutfağı, Metro Kültür Yayınları, İstanbul 2007, p. 196.
5 Mevlânâ, Divân-ı Kebîr I (trans. Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı), Remzi Kitabevi, İstanbul 1957, Gazel
(Ode) 146, verse 1338.
6 Mevlânâ, ibid, Gazel 69, verse 631.

17
 (O dear wife, fill my cup with coffee and serve it one after the other.
Woe betide anyone who visit you sober; he shall avoid that, as
should you.)
Coffee would indeed enter the Mevlevi dervish lodges and become
an integral part of the culture formed around this sect. However, a careful
study reveals that Rumi used the word kahve not as the name for coffee,
but to denote wine. In fact, during the time of Rumi, coffee was not yet
known as a drink. The prevailing view is that this delicious drink was used
by dervishes –due to its stimulating effect– as of the early 15th century
in order to stay alert and awake during worship and dhikr (invocation).
Legends pertaining to when, where, and how coffee was consumed for
the first time point to this fact.
Spread across the entire Islamic world through various sects, coffee
derived its legitimacy largely from mysticism. According to the entry
entitled “Coffee” that Arendonk wrote in the Encyclopedia of Islam, the
Aidarussiya sect held a dhikr called râtib, which was practiced by drinking
coffee. Either a Fâtiha or four Yâsin prayers were recited before the râtib,
followed by a hundred Salawat (Peace Be Upon Him) pronouncements
for Prophet Muhammad, and coffee would be consumed during the one
hundred and sixteen “Yâ Kavî” invocations. Based on enumeration by
the letters of the alphabet, 116 is the numeric value of “Kavî,” one of the
beautiful names of Allah (Al Asma-ul Husna). Adding the numeric values
of the letters in the word kahve yields the same number: 7
k v y
100 + 6 + 10 = 116
k h v h
100 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 116
This ritual reveals that in
mystic circles, a sacred character was
attributed to coffee. In the same entry,
Arendonk transmits an interesting
aphorism ascribed to Ali b. Ömer eş-Şâzilî
in classical sources: “Like Zamzam, it serves
the intention with which it is consumed.”
The words of a 16th century Sufi are even more
surprising: “A person that dies with a trace of

7 Ayvansarayî, ibid, p. 18. Also see, Arendonk, ibid., p. 97.

19
coffee in his bloodstream will not go to hell.”8 Ralph
S. Hattox conveys the writings of someone called
Ibn Abdul Gaffur on a coffee-involving dhikr
ceremony of the Yemeni Sufis in Al-Azhar.
According to this individual, Yemeni Sufis
gather every Monday and Friday night. The
Sheikh takes the coffee he puts in a red clay pot
and distributes it to the dervishes with a ladle.
While the ladle is passed clockwise, the dervishes
invoke “Lâ ilâhe illâllahü’l-hakku’l-mübîn” (in the
name of God, the most manifest) in unison as
they drink the coffee.9
It appears that the conviction in coffee’s
sanctity was also transferred to the Ottoman
world along with the beans. Mysticism was the
source coffee’s legitimacy among the Ottomans as
well and Sheikh Şâzilî was embraced as the sage of coffee
from the onset. In poet Aynî’s words, coffee:
Nefes almış cenâb-ı Şâzilî’den
Siyeh hırka giyinmiş ol velîden
(Drew its breath from His Majesty Sheikh Şâzilî
Wear the black dervish coat from the hands of that saint.)
The coffee hearth held a great significance in dervish lodges; the sect
member chosen from the senior dervishes of the lodge and appointed
to coffee service was called kahve nakibi10 and almost all sects
had a kahve nakibi. As one of the most widespread sects
of the Islamic world, the Khalwati order used the
stimulating effects of coffee during khalwa
(isolation from the world for mystical
purposes), whereas in the Bektashi
lodges, the first of the twelve
pelts spread on the central hall
was named “Şeyh Şâzilî Sultan
Kahveci Postu”.11

8 C. V. Arendonk, ibid, p. 97.

9 Ralph S. Hattox, ibid, p. 66.
10 Mehmet Zeki Pakalın, Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüğü II, MEB Yayınları, İstanbul 1971, p.
139.
11 A. Yılmaz Soyyer, 19. Yüzyılda Bektaşîlik, Akademi Kitabevi, İzmir 2005, pp. 221, 245, 246.

20
 According to Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, in the lodges of the Bektashis
and Sufi orders that have adopted the invocation of names, the door that
came after the main gate opening to the garden was the door of the lodge.
The room located in the entrance section behind this door was known
as Kahve Ocağı (coffee hearth) and the actual coffee stove was placed
immediately across from the door. The room also included a wooden
divan upholstered with kilims, rugs or carpets. The pelt immediately next
to the coffee stove belonged to kahve nakibi. A guest (mihman) visiting
the lodge was first taken to Kahve Ocağı and served coffee. If the guest had
arrived to visit the Sheikh, informing the Sheikh and taking the guest to his
audience was also the duty of kahve nakibi.12
The popularity of coffee in Sufi circles can be seen from the verses
of –quite possibly Sufi– poet Mehmed Efendi, who, in reference to the
Hadith, “I smell God from Yemen,”13 wrote that he could sense the smell
of God (bûy-i Rahman) in Yemeni coffee:
Nefsinden senin ey kahve meşâm-ı câna
Bûy-ı Rahman erişir belki Yemen’den geldin14
(O coffee, perhaps the smell of the Compassionate (Rahman)
reaches the heart and soul from your essence, for you came from Yemen.)

12 Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, Tasavvuftan Dilimize Geçen Deyimler ve Atasözleri, İnkılap ve Aka

Kitabevleri, İstanbul 1977, pp. 182-183.
13 “İnnî ecidu nefese’r-Rahmânî min kıbeli’l-Yemen.”
14 Ahmet Talat Onay, Eski Türk Edebiyatında Mazmunlar (ed. Cemal Kurnaz), Türkiye Diyanet
Vakfı Yayınları, Ankara 1992, p. 235.

21
 A piece from the set of coffee cups owned by Sultan Abdülaziz’s
daughter Refia Sultan. The name of the sultan is inscribed on the cup
and cup holder.
 COFFEE IS THE
III EXCUSE

H
H
istoriographer Peçevî İbrahim Efendi points to 1554 –
three years later than the date offered in the anonymous
verse that Ayvansarayî cites– as the year in which the first
coffeehouse in İstanbul was opened.1 In 1554, two Arab coffee makers,
Hakem of Aleppo and Şems of Damascus, arrived in İstanbul and opened
a coffeehouse in Tahtakale. Some sources reveal that Şems arrived earlier
and the two men opened separate coffeehouses.2 These new venues
soon became a popular gathering place for hedonistic intellectuals. Some
were busy with books, while others played backgammon or chess, and
poets recited to each other the new odes they wrote; in short, they had a
pleasant time drinking coffee in exchange for two silver coins (“iki akçe”).
Often frequented by discharged qadis (judges) and professors, as well as
unemployed statesmen, the coffeehouses soon began to accommodate
officers and dignitaries, thus running short of places to sit.
A 13-14 year-old boy at the time the first coffeehouses were opened,
Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli (1541-1600) must have closely followed the
discussions on coffee and coffeehouses during his fifty-nine year-long life.
The chapter entitled “On Coffeehouses” in his Mevâidü’n-nefâis fî kavâidi’l-

1 Tarih-i Peçevî, İstanbul 1281, v. I, pp. 363-364.

2 İsmail Hami Danişmend, İzahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Krnolojisi II, Türkiye Yayınevi, İstanbul 1971, p.
299.

23
mecâlis is of particular importance in this respect. Offering the date H.
960 (1552) for the first coffeehouses, Âli did not seem to oppose coffee or
coffeehouses. It appears that he had also taken a liking to coffee, which he
described as the “elixir of the various beverages that good people drink,”
adding that initially a black poet from Yemen, coffee soon came to loved
by everyone thanks to the good fortune in the gaze of Sheikh Hasen
eş-Şâzilî, a lover of God. According to Âli, coffeehouses were useful, for
they were the places in which dervishes and wise men would gather and
converse, and the poor would seek shelter. However, he is also bothered
by janissaries and cavalrymen settling in coffeehouses and gossiping all
day long, individuals who attempt to show off with words like, “I was an
aga back in time, or the chamberlain of so and so,” as well as inappropriate
figures who were only concerned with playing chess and making gamble
money.”3

Sandor Alexander Swoboda (1826-1896) Shopping in the Harem (National Palaces Collection)

Kâtip Çelebi also recounts that the prohibitions and fatwas against
coffee yielded no results, that coffeehouses were opened one after the
other, that people eagerly gathered in these places to drink coffee, and
that they “even to the risk of losing their lives over a cup of coffee they
found extremely pleasurable and invigorating.”4
Nevertheless, the uncontrollable rise in the number of coffeehouses
and coffee aficionados led to discomfort among the religious and political
authorities. According to Peçevî, religious fanatics soon began to spread
3 Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli, Görgü ve Toplum Kuralları Üzerine Ziyafet Sofraları (Mevâidü’n-nefâis
fî kavâidi’l-mecâlis), ed. Orhan Şaik Gökyay, Tercüman 1001 Temel Eser, İstanbul 1978, pp.
180-181.
4 Kâtip Çelebi, ibid., p. 40.

24
word that “ever since the public took a liking to coffeehouses, no one visits
the mosques or masjids anymore! ” and that preachers delivered sermons
mosques against coffee and coffeehouses. They solicited fatwas from
muftis that coffee was prohibited by religion, to the extent that some even
proclaimed, “Frequenting a tavern is better than going to a coffeehouse!”
As asserted in Ebusuud Efendi’s fatwa, religious scholars insisted on the
view that eating or drinking a substance roasted on coal was prohibited by
Islam and that the coffeehouses were the abode of conspiracy. In Orhan
Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red, Dog recounts the discomfort of clerics
as follows:
I don’t want to burden you with my own problems, my dear friends who
have come to hear a story and ponder its moralto be honest, my anger arises
out of the esteemed cleric’s attacks upon our coffeehouses (…) but I do regret that
I can’t sit down like a man and have a cup of coffee with you. We’d die for our
coffee and coffeehouseswhat’s this? See, my master is pouring coffee for me from
a small coffeepot. A picture can’t drink coffee, you say? Please! See for yourselves,
this dog is happily lapping away. Ah, yes. That hit the spot; it’s warmed me up,
sharpened my sight and quickened my thoughts. Now listen to what I have to
tell you: (…) 5

If we leave the exaggeration aside, “we’d die for our coffee and
coffeehouses” in fact reflects the truth. Frustrated by the monotony
and boredom of social life, the public did not intend to give up coffee
or coffeehouses. Although large coffeehouses were shut down due to
the increasing pressures during the reign of Murad III, underground
coffeehouses with separate entrances were opened in secluded areas
and in the backs of shops; these were run comfortably so long as
police superintendents and chief policemen were compensated for. We
don’t know when and by whom it was written, but the stanza, which
includes the famous couplet on the panel hanging virtually in all the old
coffeehouses, clearly expresses what these venues meant to social life.
Mademki gelmişiz köhne cihâne
Derdimizi çeksin şu vîranhâne
Gönül ne kahve ister ne kahvehane
Gönül ahbâb ister kahve bahane

(Now that we are born into this old world

This ramshackle house shall endure our burden
The heart desires neither coffee, nor coffeehouse
The heart only desires companionship; coffee is only the excuse.)

5 Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red, translated by Erdağ Göknar, Vintage 2002, pp. 13-14.

25
 As its opponents arduously worked against coffee, the aficionados
kept busy as well. The participation of coffeehouse owners in the
guilds parade of the 1582 meant that the ban on coffee was removed
towards the end of Murad III’s reign. The section on the procession of
coffeehouse owners in Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli’s poetic surname Câmiü’l-
buhûr der mecâlis-i sûr is quite interesting in this respect. Prepared on the
occasion of the birth of Murad III’s son Prince Mehmet and documenting
this magnificent feast with miniatures, the surname also describes a
performance by coffeehouse owners, who, along with coffee enthusiasts
arrive at the public square and immediately build a small coffeehouse.
Coffee is roasted and ground in this miniature coffeehouse; a handsome
young man offers coffee to aficionados reciting poetry to one another.
Moveable on wheels, the coffeehouse is attacked by several prohibitionists
as it passes in front of the Sultan. The coffeehouse owners run away
and the drinkers stand aghast. The cups are broken, the coffeehouse is
demolished, and the hands of the patrons in the coffeehouse are tied.
Thereupon, the aficionados call out to the Sultan:
“O just Sultan, this is what we encounter day and night. As we enjoy our
coffee, we are attacked. Spilling our coffee is like pouring water on fire. We are
forever grateful to our benefactor and sovereign. That being the case, why are we
exposed to this interminable torture?”

Looking affectionately at the miserable condition of the coffee

aficionados, the sultan issues a decree to lift the ban on coffee, possible
in honor of his son’s birth. It is not difficult to surmise the joy of coffee
aficionados. Mustafa Âli ends this chapter of his Surnâme as follows:
Bir zaman âsûde-ahvâl oldılar
Havf ü haşyetten biraz kurtuldular 6
(For some time, they were in a tranquil state
They were partly relieved of this fearsome oppression)
This couplet seems to imply that the liberties granted to coffee during
the festival were revoked after a while. Indeed, suffocated by the coffee
ban in the ensuing years, a preacher named Emir of Štip delivered a twelve-
couplet poetic petition to Sheikh-ul Islam Bostanzade Mehmed Efendi in
late 1591 or early 1592, listing the justifications of coffee opponents and
asking if they had any validity. The petition can be summarized as follows:
“Is coffee against religion and harmful to human health? ” Perhaps he was a
patron at Hakem and Şems’ coffeehouses in Tahtakale in his younger days,

6 Mehmet Arslan, Osmanlı Saray Düğünleri ve Şenlikleri 1, Manzûm Sûrnûmeler, Sarayburnu

Kitaplığı, İstanbul 2009, pp. 485-486.

26
or perhaps he had been acquainted with coffee during the years in which
he served as qadi in Cairo, Bostanzade, replied to Emir Efendi with a long
answer of fifty-two couplets.7 The second couplet of this poetic fatwa,
thirty-three couplets of which describe the benefits of coffee, is in fact a
summary of his entire answer:
Kahve hakkında zikrolunan şübehât
Vehmdür cümlesi medâr-ı riyâ

(The doubts expressed about coffee Are nothing more than

unfounded suspicion and hypocrisy)

The procession of coffee makers and sellers as illustrated in “Surname-i Hümayun,” which describes the circumcision
ceremonies Sultan Murad III held at Atmeydanı (Sultanahmet Square) in honor of his sons. (Topkapı Palace Museum
Library)

The detailed fatwa of Bostanzade relieved coffee aficionados

and led to an increase in the number of coffeehouses until the reign of
Murad IV. Peçevî İbrahim Efendi notes that after the fatwa was issued,
preachers and muftis began saying, “It is not in a state of coal; drinking
coffee is permissible! ” and that all “clerics and sheikhs, viziers and nobles”
were drinking coffee. However, on 2 September 1633, a fire that broke
out in Cibali during the caulking of a ship turned one fifth of İstanbul,
along with cultural assets and art works, into ashes. Using this great
fire as an excuse, all the coffeehouses were demolished, and coffee and
tobacco were prohibited once again. Afterwards, rumors circulated that

7 For the complete texts of İştipli Emir Efendi’s petition and Bostanzade’s reply, see Namık
Açıkgöz, ibid., pp. 36-43.

27
this radical decision was made to “eliminate the possibility of disorder” on
the grounds that coffeehouses facilitated political gossip or “discussions
about the state.”8 Peçevî İbrahim Efendi, on the other hand, argued that
coffeehouses caused several big fires in İstanbul. Hence, the coffees were
always kept under observation. In one of her letters, Lady Montagu
writes, “A minister of state is not spoke to but upon the knee; should a
reflection on his conduct be dropped in a coffeehouse (for they have spies
everywhere), the house would be razed to the ground and perhaps the
whole company put to the torture [sic].”9
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa author Potocki, who visited
İstanbul in 1784, informs us that viziers, the High Admiral, and even the
Sultan would go into disguise and occasionally frequent the coffeehouses
–mostly built like pavilions– in order to hear what was said about them.10
Potocki’s observation is accurate; it is known that Sultan Abdülhamid
I, who was on the throne at the time, would conceal his identity, visit
coffeehouses with his retinue to hear what was thought of him and that
he would have the coffeehouse demolished and punish the offenders
whenever he witnessed a disturbing “conversation about the state.”11
Archive documents indicate that during the reign of Selim III, the
opposition against Nizam-ı Cedid (The New Order) was largely organized
in the coffeehouses and that some of the coffeehouse owners and clients
were punished because of this.12
The prohibitions enforced during the reign of Murad IV were
loosened over time and coffeehouses reassumed their place in social life in
the early years of Sultan İbrahim’s reign. However, it should be recalled that
some of the coffeehouses, particularly the ones opened by janissary bullies
as of the mid-18th century, were a source of trouble. Described in detail in
various works by Reşat Ekrem Koçu, these coffeehouses were the places
where undisciplined and socially disquieting janissaries or swashbucklers
would spread out on straw mats or benches, smoke opium, listen to
epopees and ballads during daytime, and use the coffeehouses as barracks

8 Târih-i Na’îmâ (ed. Mehmet İpşirli), Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, Ankara 2007, v. II, pp. 755-
757.
9 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters, Little, Brown Book Group, 1994
edition, p. 66.
10 “Fantastik Edebiyatın Öncüsü Bir Leh Soylusu Potocki’nin Türk Mektupları 1984”, İstanbul
İçin Şehrengiz, YKY, İstanbul 1991, p. 188.
11 Fikret Sarıcaoğlu, Kendi Kaleminden Bir Padişahın Portresi: Sultan I. Abdülhamid, Tarih ve
Tabiat Vakfı Yayınları, İstanbul 2001, p. 249.
12 Mehmet Mert Sunar, “Ocâk-ı Âmire’den Ocâk-ı Mülgâ’ya Doğru: Nizâm-ı Cedîd Reformları
Karşısında Yeniçeriler”, Nizâm-ı Kadîm’den Nizâm-ı Cedîd’e III. Selim ve Dönemi (ed. Seyfi
Kenan), İSAM Yayınları, İstanbul 2001, p. 526.

28
at night.13 Opened with
ostentatious “insignia”
parades, which the
rich residents of the
neighborhood were
forced to subsidize,
each janissary
coffeehouse had
a Bektashi “baba.”
Each coffeehouse
bore the insignia of
the janissary corps to
which the bully-owner
belonged. In general, these
coffeehouses were located in Sitil cloth
areas with the best views of İstanbul, e.g.
on the city walls overlooking the sea. If no such location was available,
they were set up on piles embedded on the seabed and meticulously
decorated. Reşat Ekrem Koçu continues his account as follows:
Depending on the socioeconomic level of their patrons, the coffeehouses
featured wooden or stone benches, straw mats, a bench for the “baba,” the details
of which were wooden, engraved, painted, gilded, embroidered and carved in
floral relief. The central floor was made of marble; there was always a marble
jet pool at the center decorated with pots of flowers and basilica in particular.
The benches were upholstered with kilims, prayer rugs, pelts of sheep, lamb, and
bear, as well as mattresses and cushions; Bektashi panels were hung on the walls.
The coffee hearth (kahve ocağı) was decorated like a bridal room; Turkish coffee
pots –some lidded, others not– in various sizes, cupboards full of cups, gold and
silver cup holders, crystal hookahs at least several which had gold and silver lids,
jasmine çubuks (long-stemmed tobacco pipes), and the most precious of pipe
bowls constituted an immense wealth.

The coffeehouses also had their share of the havoc during the
bloody abolition of the Janissary Corps by Sultan Mahmud II. It is known
that the leading janissary coffeehouse of the period was “Avurzavur’un
Kahvehanesi” (The Coffeehouse of Avurzavur). Established at the
Balıkpazarı İskelesi (Fish market Pier) from which caïques carried passengers
from Eminönü to Galata across the Golden Horn, and frequented by the
riff-raffs settled in Balıkpazarı, Asmaaltı and environs, this coffeehouse was

13 Reşat Ekrem Koçu, Yeniçeriler, İstanbul 1964, pp. 296-299; Koçu, Tarihimizde Garip Vak’alar,
İstanbul 1952. pp. 41-45.

29
opened by a Janissary bully who was solely remembered by his moniker.
Initially shut down as part of the precautions to maintain the order and
safety of the community in 1829 on the grounds that it was a “pest nest,”
“Avurzavur’un Kahvehanesi” was completely demolished later. Ebüzziya
Tevfik Bey notes that this coffeehouse, which was reopened much later
at the same location and with the same name, continued to be in service
until the early 1900s and was often frequented by rowers, bargemen, as
well as porters from the pier.14
Even after “Avurzavur’un Kahvehanesi” was completely removed
from the stage of history, its name survived in collective memory for quite
some time. Until recently, the name of the coffeehouse was used as an
expression to define places with lots of commotion and a string of visitors,
though it was forgotten over time. Fahri Celâl Göktulga, one of the leading
Turkish short story writers, has a short story entitled, “Avur Zavur Kahvesi,”
as well as a book named after this story.15

14 Ebüzziya Tevfik, “Kahvehaneler”, Mecmua-i Ebüzziya, no. 129, pp. 15-21; no. 130, pp. 44-49;
no. 131, pp. 65-70; İstanbul 1914.
15 F. Celâlettin (Fahri Celâl), Avur Zavur Kahvesi, Ahmet Sait Kitabevi, İstanbul 1948.

30
 IV
TAHMISHANE

I
t appeared that the administration realized the futility of
prohibitions; they had failed to put an end to coffeehouses and
the public’s penchant for coffee. Moreover, as there was no tax
on coffee entering the country in various ways, the prohibitions caused
the state to suffer serious losses. Attempting to disincline the public
from coffee consumption by laying heavy taxes as a last resort, the state
recognized the serious income derived from these taxes and thus imposed
new ones. Hence, coffee sales were monopolized and the “tahmishanes,”
namely the establishments were coffee was roasted and ground, were
regulated. A “Tahmishane Eminliği” (Superintendence of Coffee Roasting
and Grinding) was established to run coffee trade within the scope of
laws and regulations.1
Evliya Çelebi speaks of two tahmishanes in İstanbul; one located in
Tahtakale, and the other near Yeni Cami. Comprising three furnaces and a
hundred mortars, the tahmishane in Tahtakale employed three hundred
workers. Supervised by a cook from the Janissary Corps to prevent possible
fights, this tahmishane roasted and ground the coffee distributed across
İstanbul. Evliya Çelebi likens the sound of coffee grinding simultaneously
in a hundred mortars to the sound of thunder. The other tahmishane
accommodated fifty mortars and a single furnace.2
1 Mehmet Zeki Pakalın, Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüğü, p. 375.
2 Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi I, p. 29.

31
 In early 17th century, coffee was introduced to Europe and
coffeehouses were opened across all the important cities. This pointed
to an increasing demand for the coffee produced in Yemen. Christian
merchants transported the coffee they bought from Egypt to European
markets by way of sea. When coffee export caused shortages and an
increase in prices, the sale of coffee to European merchants was banned
in Egypt. Consequently, they directly contacted Yemeni coffee producers
and began purchasing coffee at high prices. This endeavor led to a decrease
in the coffee quantities imported from Egypt and a further upsurge in
prices. There was only one solution: To prevent European merchants from
buying coffee from Yemen… In 1719, Kapıcıbaşı İbrahim Ağa, who was
in charge of taking the Sürre Alayı3 to Mecca, was also assigned to meet
with the imam of Yemen. Traveling from Mecca to Yemen, İbrahim Ağa
delivered an imperial letter from Sultan Ahmed III, which prohibited the
sale of coffee to European merchants under any circumstances. The same
command was also given to the governors of Egypt and Jeddah, as well as
the Sharif of Mecca.4

Kurukahveci Cevat Efendi and Sons ((Yusuf Çağlar Archives)

The decrease in coffee import prompted tahmishane workers and

ground coffee sellers to exploit the circumstances. It is inconceivable to
imagine that coffee aficionados would not notice the change in the taste
of coffee blended with roasted chickpeas, barley, and ash. As complaints
multiplied during the reign of Selim III, the pressing need for a new
regulation was felt. Following a review by Head of Ottoman Treasury

3 Procession of gifts sent annually to Mecca by the Sultan (T.N.)

4 Talat Mümtaz Yaman, “Türkiye’de Kahve ve Kahvehaneler”, Ehlikeyfin Kitabı (ed. Fatih Tığlı),
Kitabevi Yayınları, İstanbul 2004, p. 25.

32
Reşit Mustafa Efendi, it became evident that coffee grinders and herbalists
added foreign substances to coffee due to shortage and high taxes,
and that they insisted on doing so even at times when coffee import
was on the rise. While the new regulation and the precautions served
their purpose for some time, it was impossible to completely prevent
exploitation. Hence, the demand for tahmishane-ground coffee lessened;
having grown accustomed to pure coffee, the public leaned towards
coffee beans instead. By then, most İstanbulites were grinding their coffee
in mortars or hand mills. As mentioned in Lütfî Tarihi, once the state’s
income from tahmishane plummeted, in 1828, the public was cautioned
against using any coffee other than what was produced in tahmishanes.5
There is no doubt that European merchants, who were prevented
from buying coffee from Egypt and Yemen, found ways to procure coffee
and sought ways to grow this plant in their own land. Legend has it that
the first person to take coffee seeds or coffee seedlings outside of the
Arabian Peninsula was an Indian hajji called Budan. Brought to Amsterdam
in 1661, coffee plant was soon taken to Dutch colonies and coffee
cultivation began in Sri Lanka and Java in 1658 and 1699, respectively. Next
came Sumatra, Bali, Timor, Celebes and, as of 1718, the Dutch Guiana –or
Suriname– in South America… The French were able to acquire viable
coffee seedlings as late as 1714; within a few years, they began to cultivate
coffee on the island of Bourbon, to the east of Madagascar. Finally, it
became evident that the climate and soil of Brazil, which the Portuguese
bought from the Dutch, was ideal for coffee agriculture. Brazil began to
grow coffee in the second half of the 18th century; by the 19th century,
Brazilian coffee was unrivalled.6
As for the Ottoman world, records in the qadi registries indicate that
the Ottoman began importing “European Coffee” towards the end of the
18th century to overcome coffee shortages and that special shops were
opened to market this coffee. Ottoman Wali of Egypt Kavalalı Mehmed
Ali Paşa’s interference with coffee export from Yemen to İstanbul to
strengthen his power in Egypt against the Ottoman state instigated coffee
import from South America, thus condemning the locals of İstanbul to
European Coffee.7 Although coffee aficionados paid little attention to
anything other than Yemeni coffee, there was hardly anything else they
could do.
5 Talat Mümtaz Yaman, ibid., p. 28.
6 For further information, see Ulla Heise, Kahve ve Kahvehane, Dost Yayınları, İstanbul 2001,
pp. 43-49.
7 François Georgeon, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğunun Son Döneminde İstanbul Kahvehaneleri”,
Doğu’da Kahve ve Kahvehaneler (eds. Hélène Desmet-Grégorie, François Georgeon), YKY,
İstanbul 1998, p. 56.

33
 V
WATER OF LIFE

T
he debates that began once coffee arrived in İstanbul were
inevitably reflected in Turkish poetry. A careful study of the old
divan poems instantly reveals the ongoing fight between poets
against coffee and coffeehouses and those who enjoyed drinking coffee
and regarded coffeehouses as the meeting point of intellectuals. At the
time when coffee was introduced to İstanbul, Belîğî did coffee justice in
the gahzel he wrote with the word “coffee” repeated at the end of every
couplet. However, he was irate that this mischievous and hot-blooded
beauty, which traversed Egypt, Aleppo, and Damascus before it reached
Anatolia, had taken over the wine cup; he compared coffee to a prostitute
skilled at provoking her clients.1
Belittling those who regarded coffeehouses as the gathering place
of refined and well-read people and believing that true refinement was
never having to set foot in one of these places, Poet Sai was one of the
strong opponents of coffee; according to him, coffeehouses were the
abode of infamy and caused their regulars to fall from grace. Extremists,
such as Manastırlı Keşfî, said that they would rather drink haraam wine
than halal coffee. Agehî resented the replacement of the wine glass by the

1 About this ghazel by Belîğî, see Âşık Çelebi, Meşâiru’ş-Şuarâ (ed. Prof. Filiz Kılıç), İstanbul
Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Yayınları, İstanbul 2010, v. I, p. 427.

35
coffee cup, “O fate,” he wrote, “is
this how you and I took an oath?”2
According to Şeyhî Mustafa, a black
crow had perched on the nest of the red
parrot; in other words, the dark coffee had
confiscated the throne of the burgundy
wine.3 In his work entitled, Sakiname, Atayi
likened coffee to poison and regarded the
vagrant-infested coffeehouses as traps set up
for pleasure seekers. Coffee caused drowsiness,
whereas wine aroused joy and vitality; hence, the
cupbearer was obliged to serve wine, and not
coffee.
An unknown poet ascribed all evil to coffee. Arguing that no true
pleasure seeker would drink that black liquid, the poet was convinced
that this acerbic drink, which caused constipation (kabız u yabis) in his
opinion, triggered the diseases in the body, that it was as fatal as venom,
and that it looked like foul water. Those who frequented this meeting
place of sinners and drank coffee were not benevolent looking; the ones
who stepped foot in a coffeehouse had to listen to interminable gossip.
This heavy criticism was reciprocated. Apparently a serious coffee
aficionado, Amasyalı Sülûkî opined that in labeling coffee as acerbic, the
aforementioned poet was in fact attributing the sickness of his own nature
to coffee. Unable to notice the delectable taste of coffee hidden like the
water of life (âb-ı hayat) out of ignorance and not realizing that coffee-
drinking tradition was initiated by Şeyh Şâzilî, a great lover of Allah, this
“debauched”, this “heedless” person had shown nothing but ignorance by
reproaching coffee enthusiasts.
Other poets also compared coffee to water of life (âb-ı hayat); as
testimony to those who doubted this comparison, one such poet pointed
to the darkness (color) of coffee.4 A coffee-loving poet named Lebib
wrote the following verse for coffee’s native land Yemen:
Hâkinde biten kahveye fincan oluversem5
(Wish I were a cup to the coffee grown in Hakin)

2 Namık Açıkgöz, ibid., p. 7.

3 Ahmet Talat Onay, ibid., p. 235.
4 A. Süheyl Ünver, A. Süheyl Ünver, “Türkiye’de Kahve ve Kahvehaneler”, Türk Etnografya
Dergisi, no. 5, 1962, Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, Ankara 1963, p. 70.
5 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., p. 72.

36
 In the historical poem he wrote for a new coffeehouse, a poet
named Macunizade compares this unparalleled coffeehouse, which
brings together men of hearts, to heaven. The verse in which the heaven
simile is used offers the opening date of the coffeehouse by enumeration
with letters of the alphabet: “Cennet-âsâ bu cây-ı bî-hemtâ” (H. 991/1583).6
According to early 17th-century poet Nağzî’s poetic work in
which he had coffee debate with wine, coffeehouses had patrons of all
socioeconomic levels, ranging from scholars to the ignorant, villagers to
urban dwellers, young to old, dervishes to atheists –who did not believe
in the afterlife–, gentlemen to slaves, and Damascans to Aleppons. Clearly,
both coffee and coffeehouses had become an indispensible part of
daily life. In a stanza he wrote possibly on the days during which coffee
and coffeehouses were abolished, Poet Nev’i (d. 1599) was pointing to
this fact. Even professors could not read books at night or lecture in
the morning without drinking two cups of coffee. So, why would the
muhtesib (inspector) treat coffee sellers like the enemy, as if a Muslim
drinking coffee would become a heretic?
Muhtesib kahve-fürûşa ne ta’addî eyler
Yoksa kâfir mi olur içse Müselman kahve
İrte derse çıkamaz gice kitâba bakamaz
Eğer içmezse müderris iki fincan kahve7

(Why does the inspector

oppress coffee sellers
Does the Muslim become a
heretic when he drinks coffee
The professor cannot attend
class during day or look at a book at
night
Unless he drinks two cups of coffee)
One must recognize the fact that even its worst
enemies grew accustomed to coffee, which entered the
Palace in the 17th century, and that the intoxicated began
to drink coffee to sober up. Indeed, hostility against
coffee did not last very long; this water of life became
a symbol of Ottoman lifestyle and hospitality. Virtually
all the European travelers who visited Turkey at the time
recount stories of coffee and tobacco offering. As there
were no more poets reviling at coffee, few others felt the need
6 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., p. 53.
7 M. Nejat Sefercioğlu, Nev’î Divanı’nın Tahlili, Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, Ankara 1990, p. 88.

37
to belaud it. However, several poets complained of the occasional coffee
shortages or high prices. Poet Aynî, for example, booed a coffeehouse
owner serving a blend of chickpeas and barley as coffee, telling him that
it was not coffee, but “black water.”8 Another poet named Sadullah İzzet
cursed the ones augmenting the fixed prices of coffee, telling them to
“suffer like coffee.” This suffering included burning and roasting, grinding,
and drowning in water (cooking): “Hem yanıp hem rû-siyeh hem hurd ola
hem gark-ı âb”.9
Defrauders who complained about the rising prices of coffee and
sold barley water instead, could not escape the satirical arrows of poets.

8 Ahmet Talat Onay, ibid., p. 234.

9 Ahmet Talat Onay, ibid., p. 235.

38
 VI
FROM MORTAR TO CUP

V
V
arious tools and utensils were needed to roast, cool, grind,
preserve, cook, and serve the green coffee beans arriving from
Yemen. Hakem and Şems may have brought along some of the
utensils they used at their coffeehouse in Tahtakale. Initially pans, mortars,
and bowls possibly produced for other purposes were used for coffee
making. Overtime, more practical and aesthetic utensils were developed
to make and serve what came to be known as Turkish coffee in the world
due to its unique taste and brewing method. Catering to tastes of all levels
and suitable for household use, new forms of these utensils were designed
as well. It is thus only natural that as coffee offering evolved increasingly
into a ceremony, the utensils used in this ceremony were diversified and
generated their own aesthetic.
The fresher the coffee, the more delicious it is; therefore, coffee
household utensils measure four of five cups at the most. This means
that, depending on need, coffee is roasted and ground fresh, making
coffee utensils an indispensible part of Turkish kitchens. The first process
is performed on the kahve tavası (coffee skillet). The size of the skillets
varies according to their areas of use—home, coffeehouses with large
consumption, or pavilions and palaces. Resembling a ladle in form, these
metal skillets have long handles, some of which are foldable to extend
when needed. Skillets with small wheels attached to their handles to

39
provide flexibility can also be encountered in museums and private
collections. Both in terms of their graceful forms and their ornate handles,
some skillets constitute unique works of art.

Coffee pan with articulated handle

The secret to the delectable taste of Turkish coffee is hidden in the

way and the degree with which it is roasted. If it is not roasted enough, or
over-roasted like charcoal, coffee loses much of its flavor and smell. It is
crucial to roast all the coffee beans equally and wait until they turn golden;
in order to achieve this, the skillet must be constantly rotated on fire or
stirred and tossed with a spatula. As this is difficult to do with open skillets,
over time, lidded skillets and cylindrical boxes with sliding lids were also
developed. Coffee beans are roasted perfectly in these rotating skillets that
are constantly tuned over fire by holding the curved handles.
After it is roasted, coffee must be aired and cooled. There are special
wooden vessels for this process. Known as kahve soğutucusu (coffee
cooler), they are produced in various ways from different kinds of wood.
Apart from plain forms, some are carved and encrusted with mother of
pearl, ivory, and various precious stones. In order to facilitate the transfer
of cooled coffee beans to a mortar or mill, the coolers feature narrowing
spouts, some of which may be lidded.
Next is the grinding process: It is known that before mills were
developed, coffee beans were ground in wooden mortars (dibek); even
after the emergence of coffee mills, mortars were still opted by a large
number of coffee aficionados and special guests were offered dibek
kahvesi (mortar-ground coffee), as it was considered the most palatable of
its kind. Quite possibly, multi-purpose mortars were used for grinding
coffee at first. Over time, special wooden mortars and metal pestles were
manufactured for coffee. Similar to coffee
coolers, some mortars were ere also inlayed
nd encrusted
with bone, ivory, silver, and
with iron clouts.
We do not
know when the
first wooden
Coffee cooler

40
 coffee mills were produced. The wooden mill, in which a metal wheel
replaces the pestle, is comprised of a cubic or cylindrical body made of
solid woods such as walnut, boxwood, or ebony, and a relatively long
wooden tray (tabla) for
coffee grinders to press the
mill against their knees. A
metal wheel mechanism is
set inside the body, which
features a wide-rimmed iron
oor copper bowl with a hole in
the mmiddle where the coffee beans
Coffee cooler
are placed. Rotated with a metal crank handle,
the mandrel is placed above the bowl.1 As the handle is cranked, the
beans go through the hole, turn into powder, and fall into the wooden
container below the wheel. This container is a small, sliding drawer on the
tray side of the mill.
As wooden
coffee mills were
bulky, smaller and
more practical hand
mills (el değirmeni)
without trays that
could easily be used at home were
developed. Wooden mills ills in similar forms that
allowed the transition into the now-familiar
cylindrical metal mills were also manufactured.
The foldable iron
crank handles of
metal mills can be
placed inside the
mill
m ill by removing the
cover. WhenW needed, the
cover is opened, the crank
handlee iss taken out, and
roasted
roasteed coffee beans are
placedd in the same place. After
the cover is i closed,
l d the
th handle
h dl iis Coffee mill
attached to the mandrel of the
wheel an and rotated. The body is small enough to be
grabbed by hand. The ground coffee accumulates in

1 Celâle Ergene, “Ahşap Gövdeli Kahve Değirmenleri”, Antika, no. 12, March 1986, p. 11.

41
Coffee jug
the drawer that can be pulled out from the lower section of the body.
ompact sizes that can easily be
Hand mills are also produced in compact
taken along on journeys; some hand mills feature simple
lines and decorations, whereas others are ornate with
orful stones, Qur’anic
magnificent hand carvings, colorful
verses, and aphorisms. While thee
graceful and priceless hand mills
manufactured in İstanbul,
Coffee mill
Kayseri, Mudurnu and Bursa
are no longer used, they are preserved in many homes as memorabilia and
decorative objects.

Special boxes known as coffee containers

tainers
(kahve kutusu) were also designed to store
tore
ground coffee. Wooden coffee mills haveave
containers produced from the same wood od
and decorated in the same manner. More
precisely, the mill and the coffee
container constitute a set.

Comprised of two
separate compartments
for coffee and sugar,
some of the containers
feature sliding lids or
covers rresembling the lid of a pot.
Coffee aficionados
a prefer wooden
containers
containe to protect coffee against
humidit 2 In terms of material
humidity.
a
value and workmanship, coffee
containers th
that would cater to different
budgets and tastes were made of copper, brass, silver,
porcelain, or tombac…
remi
At this point, we would like to remind mind
nd our
ur readers
readeers of a coffee
container tekerleme in one of Kavuklu
Hamdi’s playful folk narratives. In
ortaoyunu, a traditional Ottoman
comic theater form, Kavuklu narrates ates
eka
karr
absurd stories to a naively listening Pişekar
the
to prepare the audience for the play. In the
2 Celâle Ergene, ibid.

43
Sitil (brazier) tray
end, the stories all turn out to be a dream; tekerleme is the name given to
these stories. In this particular
tekerleme, Kavuklu begins to
work at Ahmet Ağa’s
coffeehouse as an apprentice;;
with a cloth around his waist,t,
he serves coffee. One morning, g,
after he gets up early, prepares the
ething
coffeehouse, and looks for something
else to do, he notices a diamond cutter
hookah waving at him. The dialogue continues as follows:
PİŞEKÂR- Yes, but Hamdi, how can a hookah wave at a person?
KAVUKLU- Well, it waved at me!
PİŞEKÂR- That’s something else.
KAVUKLU- Then, when the other hookah began complaining, “My!
You want him and not me,” I pocketed the diamond cutter part of that
hookah, and the amber bits of the pipes that have been begging and
pleading for a long time!
PİŞEKÂR- Hamdi, you are practically stealing.
KAVUKLU- Come on, what do you mean I’m stealing? They begged
me, so Iook them out for a stroll.
PİŞEKÂR- What if your boss walked in when they are still in your
pocket?
KAVUKLU- That’s exactly what I was concerned about! Anyway, I
opened the door and just as I was about to leave, I suddenly ran into my
boss and went straight back in!
PİŞEKÂR- Now, this is the exciting part.
KAVUKLU- Thank God for his
morning coffee pleasure, my
boss, without noticing the
hookah and the pipes yelled,
“Hamdi, make me a cup of
coffee!” So, just as I opened
the lid of the coffee contained
and stepped on the ladder to take
down a coffee pot, my legs trembled with
fear, I slipped, and fell right into the coffee container!

45
 PİŞEKÂR- Come on, Hamdi, can a man fit into a
coffee container?
KAVUKLU- Oh, our coffee container is quite large;
in fact, it can hold an oke of coffee.
PİŞEKÂR- So, then what? Didn’t they take you out of
the coffee container?
KAVUKLU- How could
they? As soon as my
boss appeared before the
container, we hid into a
corner. Each time he swung
the spoon, we scampered
away to the other side. But
this is a spoon after all, so
when he finally scooped us up, we fell into the coffee pot!
PİŞEKÂR- This is the first I’ve heard of a man falling into a coffee pot.
Let’s see where that leads.
KAVUKLU- Just at that moment, my boss poured hot water over us;
I was scalded, but we didn’t make a sound not to alert my boss.
PİŞEKÂR- Which means, you were practically wretched in the pot.
KAVUKLU- Absolutely! And from there, plop we fell into a large cup,
which my boss handed to a customer!
PİŞEKÂR- O woe is me!
K AVUKLU-
One
On swig, two swigs,
then in the third swig, we went
into the man’s mouth,
mo down his throat,
through some narrow str street, and finally ended
th stomach.3
up in the place they call the
In order to serve the
t coffee you roasted,
ground, and brewed, you neednee the cezve (pot) and
fincan (coffee cup) mentio
mentioned in Kavuklu’s story
or utensils known as sitil
s takımı (brazier set).
An Arabic word in origin
origi meaning “ember” or
“semi-burnt wood,” cezve attained an entirely new
meaning in Turkish and came to denote a coffee pot with a long handle.

3 Cevdet Kudret, Ortaoyunu II, Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, Ankara 1975, pp. 192-193.

46
 The expression “cezveyi sürmek” means putting
the pot on fire to brew coffee. Cleverly described
in the riddle, “sürdüm kustu çektim küstü” (I put
it on fire, it sizzled; I pulled in back it fizzled), cezve
is placed on the brazier or oven by holding the long
and slightly erect handle. The base is larger than the
rim to take maximum advantage of fire; the
mouth features a
spout on the left
side of the handle
to facilitate pouring. Made
of metals and alloys such as copper, silver,
and tombac, the different sizes of the cezve
range from a single cup to five cups. It is
possible to obtain graceful cezves ornate with fine
hand carvings. Some of these cezves are unique
works of art. Some larger forms feature small
wheels on the handles to be easily placed on
the fire. Some have lids, whereas others have
foldable handles to carry easily during travel.

Coffee jug

47
 Special vessels were also designed
to carry large quantities of brewed
coffee before it began to cool. Filled
with coffee, a special, twelve-cup ibrik
(ewer; the larger ones were called
kahve güğümü or coffee jug) is placed
on sitil, a footed brazier with a special
central compartment for burning coal.
The Turkish coffee ewer is lidded; from its lid
to its handle and spout, it has very graceful lines.

Sitil tray

49
 Sitil is carried
by chains on
three points that
converge on top.
In order to claim
that you own an
entire sitil set, you
must also acquire
a large circular tray, as well as two smaller trays with handles, made of
beaten silver. The smaller trays should be ovular in form.
You must also possess twenty cup holders to complete
the set. Similar to other coffee utensils, sitil sets
made of copper, silver, and tombac feature
exquisitely artistic examples decorated with
hand-carved motifs.4 Commonly used in
palaces and large mansions where coffee
was consumed in large quantities, sitil
sets gave rise to the birth of a coffee offering
ceremony with its own traditions and
intricacies.

4 Nureddin Rüştü Büngül, Eski Eserler Ansiklopedisi, İstanbul 1939, p. 208.

51
 VII
THE COFFEE CUP

V
V
irtually all the words reflecting Turkish coffee culture are
splendidly beautiful: Kahve, dibek, cezve, telve, fincan... Taken
from Arabic and used without any change, the word fincan
(cup) does not sound foreign in Turkish. On the contrary, with its sound
and connotations, it reflects a fine sensitivity and a rich culture. The
second syllable of this word, “can,” (meaning spirit) seems to point to the
elixir in coffee’s chemistry. That elixir lends joy and health to those who
drink coffee. Every time the word “fincan” is pronounced, the first thing
you visualize is a cup –with or without a handle– filled with steaming,
frothy Turkish coffee.
One cannot imagine a Turkish house
without one or more sets of elegant fincans. In
he
earlier times, apart from cups for daily use, the
China in the household included valuable cups ps
reserved for guests, as well as special cups useded
only by the man of the house. Some aficionados dos
bought separate cups for the month of Ramadan; adan;
they enjoyed drinking their coffee from thesee cups
after breaking fast. Perhaps the most valuable uable
possession of the nomadic Yuruk people was the
ded
fincans they meticulously kept in a bag with -glided

53
and coral tombac cup holders- and only used for guests.1 It should be
remembered that back in those years, fincan sets were quite expensive and
difficult to own and that those who possessed them preserved these cups
as one of the most valuable objects of the house. Price registries dated to
1640 reveal that some families preferred to buy cracked cups at a lower
price. Depending on whether the cracks were two- or three-pronged, the
prices would be reduced to a third or fourth of the original.2 The Turks,
who wish to offer their guests this “dark faced” but “face-brightening”3
“treat for gentlemen” in a beautiful –albeit cracked– cup describe a cup
full of coffee with charming riddles such as this one:
Bir küçücük fil taşı (A tiny piece of ivory.
İçinde beyler aşı With a treat for gentlemen inside
Çanağı beyaz (Its cup is white
Çorbası kara Its soup is black)

A tiny piece of ivory.

Valuable cups were made of jade, agate, hematite, aventurine,

ebony, and even rhinoceros horns. Beautiful old cups made of pipe clay in
Tophane style can also be encountered in museums or private collections.
However, the most common types are made of tile or porcelain. Starting
with İstanbul, İznik, Kütahya, and Rhodes, tile cups, –as well as kallâvi
(large) cups for serious aficionados– catering to different tastes were
manufactured in a number of cities.
Paralleling the decrease of tile use in architecture towards the end of
the 18th century, the decline in the tile industry -and by extension the
1 Nureddin Rüştü Büngül, ibid., p. 95.
2 Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi ve 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri,
Enderun Kitabevi, İstanbul 1983, pp. 203, 204, 304, 305, 311.
3 “Kahvenin yüzü kara amma yüz ağartır” (Proverb: “The face of coffee is black, but it
brightens the face”.)

54
demand- led to an escalation in all ceramic goods, including fincan sets.
Noticing this opportunity, European manufacturers begin to produce and
export porcelain fincan sets that would meet the taste and demands of
the Turks. The cups with elegant decorations and illustrations produced
pular in
in the cities of Saks and Sevr were highly popular
particular. Abdülaziz Bey notes that the most
desirable cups were the kinds known as eski ki
maden (old metal) produced in Saxony forr
Turks; these cups were either plain white or
decorated with flower motifs on white, as well
as brown and camel in color; the ones made
of rhinoceros horns were preferred as they
were thought to repel poison.4
As the goods imported from Europe were relatively less expensive
than their locally produced counterparts, the local industry unfortunately
began to disappear altogether. In order to take advantage of the
techniques developed in Europe and to revive the almost extinct ceramic
art in Anatolia, the Yıldız Porcelain Factory was established and began to
operate in 1892.5 In terms of quality, the porcelain goods manufactured
here rivaled the ones imported from Europe.
Since aficionados sought ingredients that enhanced the smell and
taste of coffee such as such as cardamom, coriander, musk, ambergris,
violet, and jasmine, tiny, cage-like boxes were screwed into the bottom of
some of the cups produced in Europe and at the Yıldız Porcelain Factory.
Generally made of silver, these boxes featured holes and could be opened
and shut after the spices were placed inside. Museums and some private
collections preserve beautiful examples of these kinds of cups.
In the Turkish
Tu coffee tradition, fincan
has no hand
handles. Some miniatures reveal
that kallâvi cups with no
handles were used both
with and without a saucer.6
Designed
De to avoid burning
the hands with a cup full of
hot coffee, cup holders (zarf,
literally “envelope”) entered our
4 Abdülaziz Bey, Osmanlı Adet, Merasim ve Tabirleri I (eds. Kâzım Arısan-Duygu Arısan
Güney), Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, İstanbul 1995, p. 211.
5 For further information, see Önder Küçükerman, Dünya Saraylarının Prestij Teknolojisi:
Porselen Sanatı ve Yıldız Çini Fabrikası, Sümerbank Yayınları, İstanbul 1987.
6 Nurhan Atasoy-Julian Raby, İznik, TEB Yayınları, London 1989, pp. 34, 36, 45.

55
lives at an unknown time. However, it can be said that their use became
widespread as of the mid-17th century. Made of metals such as gold, silver,
brass, and copper, fragrant trees like ebony, coconut, aloe, and substances
including tortoiseshell, ivory, and rhinoceros horns, some of the cup
holders are breathtakingly beautiful. Inlay, hand carving, and filigree were
the three main techniques used in the productions of metal holders.
Apart from these, cup holders were also produced with niello, coral, and
precious stones. Few examples of this kind have survived to date due to
the perishability of wood. According to Abdülaziz Bey, possessing
beautiful and valuable cup holders was once a competition among the
genteel; some even made it a point of honor to own a similar cup holder
they had seen in someone else’s possession. “An object of this kind was
evidence of both refinement and wealth.”7
The technique applied in the production of tortoiseshell, ivory,
and horn cup p holders is intrigui Based on the
also intriguing.
accounts of masters who still apply this
technique today,day, firs
first the male-
female moldss of
o the cup holder
are produced of metal or hard
wood. After the sheet of
horn or shell is softened in
hot water, it is pressed
between the molds
and allowed to cool. Such
materials can bee in
inlayed with gold
or silver, if desired.
red. Ivory cup holders are
manufactured with ih the
h same technique used
in wooden holders; however, because ivory is a precious material,
special attention must be paid in applying embossed decorations.8
In one of his books, Reşat Ekrem Koçu mentions books -without
citing a source- a cup with holder that Serasker Hüsrev Paşa gave to
Enderun Tarihi author Tayyarzade Atâ Bey as a circumcision present.
During a time of financial difficulty, Atâ Bey sold this cup and holder and
not only redeemed his house from mortgage, but paid back all his debts
as well.9

7 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., p. 210.

8 M. Zeki Kuşoğlu, “Fincan Zarfları”, İlgi, No. 35, January 1983, pp. 25-28.
9 Reşat Ekrem Koçu, Osman Gazi’den Atatürk’e 600 Yılın Tarih Panoraması (supplement of
Cumhuriyet newspaper) İstanbul, n.d., p. 92.

56
 It is not difficult to surmise that
a fincan set with cup holders was a
very valuable possession transmitted
from one generation to the next and was
thus meticulously preserved and used in
traditional homes. Nevertheless, it should be
remembered that such priceless memorabilia
of families disintegrated for various reasons
have been passed into the possession of others.
One such example is as follows: As he sips his
sugarless coffee from a handle-free kallâvi fincan
resembling a yogurt bowl in a shanty coffeehouse
in Kanlıca, poet Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel notices the contrast between the
sordid coffeehouse and the fine workmanship of the fincan and its saucer.
The rim of the cup and the saucer are lined with gold, and the lower
sections are decorated with graceful flowers. A coat of arms executed in
wash gilding stands between the flowers. When the coffeehouse owner
comes to collect the empty cup, Faruk Nafiz tests the waters: “This must
be a valuable cup! ” Showing no modesty, the coffeehouse owner informs
the poet that the cup is indeed valuable, that he purchased it from an
auction at the adjoining seaside mansion. The coat of arms on the cup,
which he refuses to sell to many demanding customers, belongs to the
Sultan.
The coffeehouse owner relates that the selamlik section of the
mansion had long been demolished and the harem section had been
expropriated for the expansion of the asphalt road. He adds that mansion
belonged to an Egyptian pasha from the Khedive family and that he could
only afford to purchase this cup among the possessions auctioned off
once the family disintegrated, noting that the rest of the pieces were “sold
or stolen.” Offering coffee to reputable customers in this cup that once
belonged to a coffee set the Sultan had presented to the Egyptian pasha,
the coffeehouse owner prepares to bring coffee to yet another influential
client in the same cup.
As Faruk
Nafiz watches
the coffeehouse
owner wash
the handle-free
kallâvi cup with
the coat of arms
of the Sultan

57
and fill it up with a freshly made coffee to bring it to a retired marine, he
conveys his thoughts as follows:
This cup must have experienced a continuous reign in the seaside
mansion of the Egyptian pasha. Perhaps the viziers of the period discussed
the Egypt problem, the Crimean War, and the Congress of Berlin while
drinking coffee from this cup. Yet, in my mind, this cup evoked humorous
anecdotes, rather than serious discussions. Keçecizade found his most
eloquent epigrams over this cup, the Sovereign let out his loudest laugh
across from this cup; as the cup listened to the witty remarks of the
humorist of Kanlıca, it witnessed the pouch of gold the late Egyptian
had extended, being passed from the hands of one minister, to the lips
of another ambassador. It had catered
to the pleasures of Ramadan
guests and eid visitors; with these
thoughts in mind, this single cup
appeared before me as the history
of pleasures of a century.10
The continued use of damaged
cups demonstrates the preciousness of
fincan sets. Keçecizade Fuad Paşa’s father
Keçecizade İzzet Molla, whom Faruk Nafiz
imagined to utter eloquent epigrams while
drinking coffee with the cup of the Egyptian
pasha, was exiled to Sivas in early 19th century. As he passed through
Tokat, he was offered coffee in a cup with a broken handle. The witty
remark of the clever poet as he took a swig of coffee from this cup is quite
famous: “You shall send this cup to İstanbul; there, they put a handle on
everything! ”11
Cups with handles, which also had elegant saucers, emerged in the
19th century and rapidly became widespread. Yet, true coffee aficionados
always preferred to drink the dibek-ground Yemeni coffee in cups with no
handles. Just imagine what the old coffee-aficionado-cum-poets dreamed
of as they looked at a steaming, frothing cup of coffee. Suffice it to say,
Enderunlu Fâzıl likened the cup to the sky and the coffee inside it to the
night.

10 Hilmi Yücebaş, Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel: Bütün Cepheleriyle, İstanbul 1974, pp. 369-372.
11 In Turkish, the idiom “kulp takmak” (to put a handle on) means to find fault with
something. (T.N.) Figuratively speaking, kulp means excuse. In a verse, Keçecizade İzzet
Molla writes, “Bulmadık kulpunu kolayını biz/ Herkese kulpu kolay taktı felek” (We could
not find an excuse or an easy way out / Fate easily put a handle on everyone).

58
 VIII
COFFEE CEREMONY AT THE PALACE

P
eçevî İbrahim Efendi relates that following the fatwa of
Bostanzade, all the elites of İstanbul began drinking coffee,
and that even the mightiest of viziers opened coffeehouses to
generate income. Nonetheless, coffee opponents did to give up their
fight and provoked, with every opportunity, the political authority to
shut down coffeehouses. Yet, banning coffee as a beverage had become
impossible, as the individuals expected to make this decision had already
become coffee aficionados who began the day with coffee and referred
to the food they ate in the morning to have a cup of coffee afterwards
as “kahve altı”. Abbreviated and becoming one of the loveliest words
of Turkish over time, the word kahvaltı (breakfast, dejeuner) clearly
demonstrates how coffee became an indispensible part of our lives.
In his travel journal, Jean Thévenot, who visited İstanbul and lived
there for nine months nearly a hundred
years after the first coffeehouses in
Tahtakale were opened and twenty
years after Sultan Murad IV demolished
all the coffeehouses (1655), speaks of coffee
as a distinctly Turkish beverage consumed
at all hours of the day. The accounts of this
curious traveler reveal that despite all pressures

59
and bans, coffee had become an inextricable part of daily life over a
hundred years.
Thévenot begins his account by describing how coffee beans are
roasted in a pan or a similar utensil, ground until they turn into fine
powder, boiled in a vessel with a long handle known as cezve, and drunk
afterwards. He also adds that after coffee is boiled over ten-twelve times,
it is poured into cups lined on a wooden tray and offered before it cools.
Particularly noting that coffee should be consumed hot, but without
haste, as one would fail to savor it, Thévenot’s observations are quite
intriguing:
This beverage is bitter and black, and smells slightly burned. It is taken
in small swigs for fear of burning one’s mouth, such that as you
walk into a coffeehouse, a lovely music of slurping rings in
your ears. This beverage is good for preventing the
intoxication in the stomach from reaching the head,
serves as a cure for the discomfort in creates
and thus causes sleep deprivation. When
our French merchants have numerous letters
to write and wish to work through the night, they
drink one or two cups of coffee; coffee relaxes the stomach and
acts as a digestive. The Turks, on the other hand, claim that it cures every known
disease; truth be told, it has as many fine qualities as tea does. As for its flavor,
after you’ve sampled it, twice at most, you grow accustomed to coffee and it
no longer tastes bland. Some infuse it with cloves and a few cardamom seeds,
whereas others add sugar, yet this process of blending for a better flavor not only
decreases the benefits of coffee, but in fact make it a less healthier drink. Much
coffee is consumed in countries where the Turks live. Yet, rich or poor, there is
hardly anyone who drinks less than two or three cups of coffee—one of the most
basic needs that a husband is obliged to provide for his wife.1

Following these lines, Thévenot speaks of

coffeehouses where “coffee is brewed in large
cauldrons.” Without any discrimination on
language, religion, or social class, these
coffeehouses are open to everyone;
most people prefer coffeehouses to have
a pleasant time. Benches with straw mats
are placed outside some of the coffeehouses;
customers who wish to sit outdoors and watch

1 Jean Thévenot, Thévenot Seyahatnamesi (ed. Ali Berktay), Kitap Yayınevi, İstanbul 2009, p.
69.

60
the passers by assumed their places on
these benches. Musicians play and sing in
numerous coffeehouses. Some of the polite
customers offer coffee to their acquaintances
when they arrive at a coffeehouse.2 Recounted
by A. Süheyl Ünver, Fatih tomb keeper and a
Melami of the Shabaniyya order Ahmed Amiş
Efendi’s words confirm Thévenot’s observations: “If
you are seated at a coffeehouse and someone sits by you, you shall order
him coffee; that is what Ottomanism is all about! ”3
Once the interminable discussions on whether it was prohibited
by religion ended and coffee became an indispensible part of daily life,
it must have entered the Palace as well. The first coffee registries in the
accounting records of the Palace kitchen are dated to the 17th century.
However, these registries are uniquely on the sugar allocations made
to the coffee consumed by the sultan, the sultana, Divan members,
agas, and other members of the court.4 If one can identify the date on
which the kahvecibaşı (person in charge of preparing the Sultan’s coffee)
service began, then the approximate date of coffee’s inclusion –if not the
entrance to– Palace protocol can be determined. It is known that after a
certain date, coffee offering played a unique role in all the ceremonies held

Coffee Ceremony at the Harem

2 Jean Thévenot, ibid., p. 70.

3 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., p. 70.
4 Arif Bilgin, Osmanlı Saray Mutfağı, Kitabevi Yayınları, İstanbul 2004, pp. 210-211.

61
 at the Palace. It was indeed the tradition5 to offer his
audience the coffee made for the Sultan during
a Rikab-ı Hümayun.6 High state officials visiting
the Palace on the last days of Eid al-Fitr and Eid
al-Adha were taken to the sultan’s audience after
they were offered imperial taffy and coffee. During
the Mawlid ceremony joined by the sultan and held at
Sultanahmet Mosque on the 12th day of Rabi-ul Awwal (the third month),
a large coffee tent was set up by the kahvecibaşı in the open square to the
west of the mosque and coffee would be offered to the crowd until the
sultan exited the mosque.7
A prestigious court position like tüfekçibaşı or sarıkçıbaşı, kahvecibaşı
was assigned to talented servants of the royal ward, sometimes with the
duty of chamberlain, and at other times only as a rank. Kahvecibaşı was
in charge of the Sultan’s coffee; he would prepare the coffee after a mid-
morning meal, dinner, or on other occasions the Sultan deemed fit and,
accompanied by the coffee servers under his command, he would present
it to the Sultan with a special ceremony. Comprised of priceless pieces
such as güğüm (jug), sitil, fincan, bejeweled cup holder, and tablecloth
with jewelry, the sitil set was entrusted to the kahvecibaşı in exchange
for a receipt he gave to the Imperial Treasury. In the event that one
of these pieces were lost or broke in any way, the kahvecibaşı
was obliged to compensate it out of his own
pocket.
The coffee servers under the orders
of the kahvecibaşı at the coffee room
organization were clean-cut
and nimble young
men. Embroidered
with silk cord, the
sleeves of their
short jackets were
pulled behind and tucked in the
back; they would carry silk aprons on their waists and towels on their
shoulders. When coffee was requested, they would grab their sitil sets and
begin to serve. The kahvecibaşı would take lead with a brocaded towel
in his hand; he was followed by the coffee server carrying a large tray

5 Tayyarzâde Atâ, Osmanlı Saray Tarihi Târîh-i Enderûn I (ed. Mehmet Arslan), Kitabevi
Yayınları, İstanbul 2001, p. 342.
6 The Sultan’s presence when on horseback on a state occassion (T.N.)
7 Tayyarzâde Atâ, ibid., p. 333.

62
of upward-facing empty cups and cup holders. The third coffee server
would hold a sitil tray with a jug full of hot coffee; his right hand would
be underneath the tray and his left hand would grab its three chains. The
fourth coffee server would follow them with a large and empty tray. The
kahvecibaşı would walk through the door, skillfully fill up all the cups in
one single move, and begin distributing the cups. The fourth coffee server
was required to collect the empty cups once the coffee server bearing the
sitil tray left the room.
In the harem, coffee-serving concubines took over the same role.
Coffee making and offering methods were an important part of the
concubines’ education. Concubines married to statesmen or leaving the
palace for one reason or another helped spread coffee traditions, as well
as other courtly conduct.
Based on the accounts of Leyla Saz and Safiye Ünüvar, who
witnessed coffee offering ceremonies in the harem, coffee was brought
in a golden, covered coffeepot, which would then be placed on a golden,
footed brazier with hot ash
inside. One of the concubines
would hold this sitil from the
three long chains extending from the
rim and connected at the top. Two
concubines would carry the gold tray
lined with cups placed in bejeweled holders.
As these young women carried the tray, they
would hold in their palms a velvet or satin fabric with
cotton lining, magnificently embroidered with gold thread,
pearls, and precious stones. Sitil fabrics were ornate with a diamond-
embroidered motif in the center; golden tassels would hang from the
corners of these exquisite works of art. Slightly folded and surrounding the
gold tray with one end stretching to the ground, the fabric would be held
with the tray. The coffee master would take a cup holder from the tray
and after carefully placing a cup in it, she would hold the coffee pot with a
piece of lined fabric always to be found on the tray, pour the coffee to the
cup, and offer it to the Sultan with utmost grace. This manner
of presentation required skill, because the coffee master
had to carry the cup with the cup holder she supported
with her thumb at the tip of her index finger as she
offered the coffee. Safiye Ünüvar writes, “The way in
which graceful and well-mannered Circassian girls
offered coffee with two fingers left the onlookers in
awe.” The wives of Sultans were also offered coffee –if

63
Sultan Abdülhamid II’s coffee cup bearing the sultan’s coat of arms.
(IMM City Museum Collection)
ordered– in the same graceful manner.
Similar to the ones that belonged to
the sultan, their cup holders were also
delicately ornamented and encrusted
with precious stones.8
Leyla Saz describes the coffee
ceremony held at the Palace in the 19th
century. Considering Safiye Ünüvar
portrays the ceremony in
more or less the same
way, it can be surmised
that this cumbersome
ceremony continued at
the Palace until the very end.
However, Samiha Ayverdi notes that during the reign of Abdülhamid II,
coffee ceremony using a sitil set was only held on occasion of religious
holidays and wedding ceremonies and that cezve and fincan replaced
coffee jugs.9 Ayşe Sultan’s memories of her father confirm this observation.
Only drinking Yemeni coffee, Sultan Abdülhamid would ask for coffee six
or seven times outside of the ones he drank after meals. His kahvecibaşı,
who served him since his days as crown prince, was a man named Halil
Efendi he deeply trusted. Halil Efendi would constantly sit at the coffee
stove next to the guardroom; when he was summoned, he would put on
his white gloves and make the coffee in a silver cezve, place it on a small
gold tray along with two cups bearing the sultan’s coat of arms, personally
take it to the harem door, ring the bell, and deliver it to the treasurer
in charge. Ayşe Sultan notes that the golden tray on which coffee was
brought to the sultan was a family heirloom given to him by his mother
Tirimüjgân Kadınefendi. Abdülhamid would drink two consecutive cups
of coffee with his cigarette; if he were to enjoy his coffee with one of his
official wives (kadınefendi), then a second set of the same cups would be
placed on the tray.10 Ayşe Sultan’s memoirs also reveal that his children
never drank coffee in Sultan Abdülhamid II’s audience and that young
people who smoked and drank coffee were reproved at the Palace.
Ayşe Sultan relates that after Halil Efendi passed away, his son-in-law
Ali Efendi was appointed as kahvecibaşı. Ragıp Akyavaş heard from Ali

8 Leyla Saz, Anılar: 19. Yüzyılda Saray Haremi, Cumhuriyet Kitapları, İstanbul 2000, p. 41; Safiye
Ünüvar, Saray Hatıralarım, Cağaloğlu Yayınevi, İstanbul 1964, p. 82.
9 Samiha Ayverdi, İbrahim Efendi Konağı, İstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti İstanbul Enstitüsü Neşriyatı,
İstanbul 1964, p. 18.
10 Ayşe Osmanoğlu, Babam Abdülhamid, Güven Yayınevi, İstanbul 1960, pp. 28-29.

65
Efendi the story of the way and quantity
with which Sultan Abdülhamid drank
coffee:
The Sovereign had his unique way of
drinking coffee. Based on what I heard from his
kahvecibaşı Ali Efendi, he drank thirty or forty cups of
coffee per day. Two plain white cups were brought to him; after emptying half
of the cezve in the first cup and drinking it, he would drink the rest in the second
cup. His personal coffee was brought from Yemen in small sacks of five kilograms
each.11

Similar to his older brother Abdülhamid II, last Ottoman sultan

Mehmed Vahdeddin VI was addicted to coffee and cigarettes. In her
memoires, Rumeysa Hanım, the maid of honor of Vahdeddin’s official wife
Nazikeda Kadınefendi, writes that two cups of coffee were brought to the
Sultan, that he drank them consecutively with a cigarette, and that he was
served coffee three or four times a day.12

11 A. Ragıp Akyavaş, Üstad-ı Hayat II, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, Ankara 2005, p. 280.
12 Rumeysa Aredba, Sultan Vahdeddin’in San Remo Günleri (ed. Edadil Açba), Timaş Yayınları,
İstanbul 2009, p. 75.

66
 IX COFFEE SERVICE AT
OTTOMAN MANSIONS

A
A
n important character in Midhat Cemal Kuntay’s famous
novel Üç İstanbul, Hidayet’s mansion (konak) in Cağaloğlu
was filled with old and very valuable objects. The Oriental
room in particular was decorated meticulously and Hidayet offered coffee
to his friends in a sitil in this room, as it was done in the old mansions.
In order to reenact the traditional ceremony, he dressed three of his
maids as concubines.1 As seen from the passage in the novel’s chapter
entitled, “The Banquet,” which describes this ceremony in detail, coffee
service with sitil had largely been forgotten at the turn of the previous
century; like Hidayet, those who were interested gathered information
by consulting the elder members of long-established families. A. Süheyl
Ünver learned the intricacies of this ceremony from Reşad Fuad Bey2 he
visited with Painter Hoca Ali Rıza Bey, who harbored a particular interest
in coffee culture.3 It can thus be said that as of the mid-19th century, coffee
service with sitil had largely been abandoned and the cezve had become
widespread.

1 Midhat Cemal Kuntay, Üç İstanbul, Sander Yayınları, İstanbul 1976, pp. 411-412.
2 Reşad Fuad Bey is the son of Keçecizade Fuad Paşa, one of the leading statesmen of the
Tanzimat era.
3 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., p. 79.

67
 According to Abdülaziz Bey, who wrote the most beautiful book
on the old İstanbul life, the basement halls of Ottoman mansions had
a room known as “Kahve Ocağı” (coffee hearth), which featured a stove
with a stone base, tile-covered sides and four burners. Since hot water
was needed at all times, one of the burners of the stove was allocated to
a large copper jug with tap; the other burners were used for placing the
cezves. There was a locked cupboard on one side of the stove; forbidden
to anyone except the kahvecibaşı, the cupboard contained the private
cups and cup holders of the mansion’s owner, as well as exquisite coffee
sets (including trays, cups, cup holders, gold embroidered tablecloths)
provided for guests. The cupboard on the other side held cups and cup
holders in a plethora of shapes and colors, used for other guests and
people who frequented the mansion for various reasons. “Kahve Ocağı”
also served as a waiting lounge; benches with carpet and kilim spreads
were nailed along the wall for guests and the staff to sit.4
Kahvecibaşı was one of the “veteran” agas of the old mansions; he
personally prepared and served the coffee to the mansion owner and
his important guests, had coffee made at the end of every meal and had
it sent to the rooms of the mansion’s inhabitants, and offered coffee to
those who frequented his “hearth.” The coffee of the mansion owner was
roasted and ground under his supervision; after the sufficient amount of
cardamom was added to the coffee, it would be preserved in special jars.
According to Abdülaziz Bey, kahvecibaşı made it his mission to
deliver coffee to the mansion owner and his important guests; this was
a ceremony all by itself. He would place the coffee pot on a trivet at the
center of a graceful, embellished tray made of a precious metal, line the
cups and cup holders around it, throw a gold embroidered cloth over
his right shoulder, walk into the room, and wait respectfully by the door.
When he was signaled, he would take the cup filled with coffee in his
right hand, keep his left hand five fingers below his chest, slowly take the
cup to its destination, stand briefly in front of the person being offered,
and when the mansion owner or guest stretched his/her hand to take the
coffee, he would do a semi-bow, deliver the cup, take a few steps back,
turn around and wait by the door, and finally collect the empty cups in
the same manner. Kahvecibaşı would not deliver the coffee to just any
guest; he would assign two of the coffee agas to do the task.5
In her work entitled, İbrahim Efendi Konağı, Samiha Ayverdi notes
that selected young women in the harems assumed this task performed

4 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., p. 180.

5 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., p. 189.

68
by agas in the selamlık. Depending on the number of guests, the sitil cloth
was brought by one or two concubines. Another concubine carried the
tray. The duty of the third concubine was to offer guests the cups she
filled from the coffee jug on the tray. Coffee-serving concubines did not
leave the chambers when coffee service was over; they waited in a corner
to refresh the coffee and collect the empty cups. According to Ayverdi,
coffee service with sitil proceeded in the Ottoman mansions as follows:
In a sitil set of three, the cloth was placed not on the hand but
over the shoulder. The round sitil cloth was velvet or satin, embroidered
with gold thread, silver and gold sequins, with a golden fringe around
it. Some featured jewels or pearls. Always folded in two diagonally, they
were hung down from the shoulder to the waist. The outfits of the
coffee servers changed over time as well. During the reign of Selim III, the
young concubines wore shalwars under long silk dresses with the back
divided from the two front panels by vertical gores. During the reign of
Sultan Mecid, on the other hand, they wore front-slit dresses with the
hems pulled up to their waists; they put bejeweled brooches on their
headdresses. After the Tanzimat’ era, the agas of the selamlık were dressed
in a long, button-down frock coat known as stambouline.6

In speaking of some of the old traditions in Ottoman mansions,

Abdülaziz Bey mentions adding ground cardamom to coffee. Today, some
people still make coffee in this manner. Others added flower water to the
coffee or steamed their pot with ambergris fumes. We should note that
coffee infused with musk was known as mümessek kahve and perfumed
with ambergris as muanber kahve.
Abdülaziz Bey relates another style he defines as paşa kahvesi: water
and coffee are placed together in the pot. After they boil, a small amount
of ash is added to the mixture and coffee is drunk only after the coffee
grounds sink to the bottom.7
6 Samiha Ayverdi, ibid, p. 18.
7 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid, p. 278.

69
 We also learn from Abdülaziz Bey a list of inappropriate behaviors
while drinking coffee. These include, nosily sifting coffee through the
mouth, offering a second cup of coffee to a guest before the appropriate
time has elapsed, and, when the coffee arrives, pointing the guest to the
servant with one’s hand to tell him/her to give the coffee first to the
guest…8 A comic story of such an over-hospitable host and his guests is
beautifully portrayed in a play by Kel Hasan, one of the greatest names of
Turkish improvisational theater. According to Malik Aksel:
Kel Hasan walks in with a coffee tray in his hand and extends the coffee
cup first to the host. Without speaking, the host signals Hasan to give it to the
guest. He turns to the guest, but this time, the guest begins to mimic, “The host is
older, you should give it to him first.” Hasan returns to the host, and this time, the
host slightly frowns, as if to say, “What are you waiting for? ” He turns back to the
guest, the guest gesticulates with his arm, signaling, “You are so dim-witted! Didn’t
you understand what I said? Is it not disrespectful to give me coffee when he is
sitting right there? ” After oscillating several times between the host and the guest,
Kel Hasan wipes his seat, sits on the floor, drinks the first, then the second coffee,
and licks the coffee grounds from his fingers. As he does all this, one can read the
expressions of rage and admonition in their faces, mimics, hands, and eyes; Kel
Hasan’s indifference is a local play, a pantomime in the truest sense.9

8 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid, p. 277.

9 Malik Aksel, İstanbul’un Ortası, Kapı Yayınları, İstanbul 2011, p. 29.

70
 X
COFFEE IN DOMESTIC LIFE

F
rom asking for the bride-to-be’s hand to weddings, coffee was once
an integral part of the ritual of marriage. In his book in which he
details all the Ottoman customs and ceremonies, Abdülaziz Bey
remarks that families seeking for a bride for their sons are always be taken
to the guest room during family visits to prospective candidates and
would be offered coffee and long-stemmed tobacco pipes. As the guests
enjoy their coffee, the prospective bride is beautifully dressed and coifed in
a separate room. At this stage, a green dress must be worn; as “green” is the
symbol of “wish,” a young girl dressed in green means that she has attained
her wish. After the girl is prepared, she stands at the door of the guest
room; it is now time to serve coffee. As the guests are offered a second
round of coffee, she enters the room, salutes the guests and sits in the
chair across from them. While the guests drink their coffee, they inspect
the marriageable girl; as they need time to watch her carefully, drinking
coffee in a prolonged manner is not considered rude. Per tradition, the
ones who bring coffee remain standing.1 After the coffee is finished and
the cups are collected, the girl gets up and leaves the room. In Anatolia,
the girl may express her unwillingness by mixing salt instead of sugar to
the prospective groom’s coffee. In some regions, if the coffee is brewed
without any froth, it means, “You have to chance! ”

1 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., p. 107.

71
The inscription on the coffee cup preserved at the IMM City Museum reads,
“Bir fincan kahvenin kırk yıl hatırı vardır”
(A cup of coffee commits one to forty years of friendship.)
 In Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s famous novel Kuyruklu Yıldız Altında
Bir İzdivaç (A Marriage under the Comet), the guests who visit such a
marriageable young girl expect such a ceremony, but face disappointment;
the girl is modern and well-educated and does not take such traditions
seriously.
It is customary
to place a chair at the
center. The girl comes in
with the coffee and sits
down. Once the cups are
handed back, she leaves.
This was the kind of
marriageable-girl visit we
were accustomed to…
They offered us coffee
long afterwards. We
handed back the cups. Coffee Ceremony at the Harem

The girl never got up and left. She spoke to us more comfortably than her
mother did. She made fun of the women scared of comets. We stood up
to leave. She accompanied us all the way to the middle door. She was so
comfortable that as we departed, I thought she would say, “Greetings to
the gentleman who will marry me.”2
Ceremonies similar to the one described above still survive in
Anatolian cities; the expression “having drunk someone’s coffee” indicates
that the young girl is betrothed by her family.3 However, in Anatolia, the
marriageable girl prepares and serves the coffee with great care; the guests
closely observe how she makes the coffee and whether or not she abides
by traditions.
If the girl is approved, the men of the two families have to convene
after a certain while. Senior family members who ask for the girl’s hand
in marriage and visit to complete the betrothal are also welcomed with
coffee and long-stemmed tobacco pipes.
Before performing a marriage ceremony in the girl’s house, it is
important to restock the pantry and prepare the sherbet and coffee sets
in particular. Following the marriage prayer, the guests are offered dinner,
coffee and tobacco pipe. Similarly, it is important to arrange for coffee,
tobacco, and sherbet service in the women’s section. Also mentioning

2 Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, Kuyruklu Yıldız Altında Bir İzdivaç, Hilmi Kitabevi, İstanbul 1958,
pp. 147-148.
3 Müjgan Üçer, Anamın Aşı Tandırın Başı, Kitabevi Yayınları, İstanbul 2006, p. 263.

73
when and how coffee and tobacco is offered when he details the wedding
ceremony, Abdülaziz Bey identifies the coffee set as a separate item
among the objects that must be included in the dowry of a marriageable
girl from an affluent family.
Coffee set. 40 old metal cups in sets of ten; 10 gold, 10 enamel on
gold, and 10 silver cup holders, 30 in total; 5 silver sitil and ewers. 10 coffee
trays, 5 of which are silver and the other 5 velvet-covered and ornate with
silver embossed flowers.4
A careful reading of the novels of Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, who
was skilled at writing about the daily life of old İstanbul, reveal how coffee
and coffeehouses were an inextricable part of this lifestyle. The same
is also valid for all the different regions of the Ottoman Empire. As the
expression of an ascetic modesty, “Please, have a cup of our bitter coffee,”
or “Would you like a cup of our bitter coffee? ” were often used as a means
of invitation. Empathetic guests who kept their visit brief were shown
courtesy with the phrase, “But dear sir/lady, the cup is not even cold! ” The
famous proverb, “A cup of coffee commits one to forty years of friendship”
is an exaggerated expression of gratitude and also points to the prominent
place of coffee in welcoming guests.
Although coffee appears to have relinquished its throne to tea as of
the early 20th century, it still maintains its prestigious place as a protocol
drink. The first question to be directed at a guest is: “What would you like
to drink? Coffee or tea? ” It should also be remembered that after sending
off their husbands to work and their kids to school, housewives, who get
together at one of the neighbors’ houses, drink coffee, and have their
fortune told, have generated a “Morning Coffee” culture that resembles
the “Five o’clock tea.”
In her article entitled, “Tek Kalan Fincan” (The Only Cup Left),
prominent Turkish novelist and storywriter Sevinç Çokum recalls how
coffee was brewed in tinned, wrought copper coffee pots over the
incinerating coal on the brazier in the days she refers to as “Put on the
cezve, I’m on my way! ” According to Çokum, Turkish coffee is all about
“relaxation, mingling, sharing”; after the coffees are finished, the cups are
turned upside down to relax and receive pleasant news about the future.
Why else would anyone make out “a windfall, loaded camels, bundles
of money, blessings, luminous doors, commodious roads, and powerful
animals such as lions, horses, and eagles” from the figures coffee grounds
leave on the cup and saucer?

4 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., p. 117.

74
 Sevinç Çokum’s following lines describe the meaning of coffee for a
Turkish house in an excellent manner:
There came a day when people suffered from the absence of coffee, yearned
for it and even settled for roasted chickpeas. In fact, they even made coffee from
the leftover grounds, joined queues during shortages. At one point, sold-by-hand
coffee beans entered the households. I used to take great pleasure in stirring and
roasting these beans in a tinned copper pot with a wooden spoon. The teal color
gradually turns to light brown, the smell of coffee pervades the air, the oil begins
to shine on the beans; you can’t help but crunch a few of them in your mouth.
Then, you grind the roasted and darkened beans in your yellow brass hand mill
in small amounts. The beans strain you as they break and grind; however, once
the pulverized coffee spills onto the plate. Oh, what a difference the freshly-ground
beans make!

Morning gatherings aside, one cannot imagine “visiting days” of

women without coffee. When talking about the coffee shortage of the
late 1950s in his essay entitled, “Bir Fincan Kahve” (A Cup of Coffee),
renowned Turkish novelist Selim İleri describes how his mother made it a
prerequisite to offer coffee to her daily visitors. A cezve or two of coffee
was kept ready on the gas oven in the kitchen; some of the ladies took it
sweet, whereas others preferred it with little or no sugar. After marveling at
how his mother made them all in time, and, more importantly, made sure
that they had enough froth with bubble “rings”, and occasionally gave
café-au-lait –but not Nescafé, Turkish coffee– to kids, he continues as
follows:
Suddenly, Turkish coffee vanished from sight. How and why in the world
did it disappear?
Sometimes a small
quantity arrived at
the coffee store and
people would wait
in line for hours. It
was quite possible
that they’d run out
of stock by the time
it is your turn.

Women Drinking Coffee

75
 Then, there is that time when coffee was on the black market. It was
bought under the counter, at incredible prices.
Coffee was among the most precious gifts during that period. Our
neighbor Müeyyet Hanım would bring us coffee in a small paper bag. An
air of joy and even squeals of delight would fill the hallway. On such nights,
my parents would slurp their coffees after dinner.5
People who like coffee, not just enjoy the taste, but everything else
about it, from its smell to its utensils, from its conversation to literature;
they even take the risk of suffering in order to get a fine cup of coffee. For
such people, coffee is not just any beverage, but a kind of elixir that needs
to be respected and consumed with due etiquette. Distinguished Turkish
essayist Ali Çolak regards coffee as the “drink of “mellowness, tranquility,
causerie—a private moment of pleasure.” The following sentences in his
essay entitled, “Kahveye Saygı” (Homage to Coffee) are like the manifesto
of the coffeeophile:
Coffee should be drunk slowly, with much relish. It requires to reflect on the
moment and on life; to wander across high ideas and overflowing emotions. It
makes one forget what came before it; once it is imbibed, coffee unites the setting,
the friends in company. Do the juvenile, who are ignorant, unreflecting, and even
disdainful of all this, have the right to drink coffee?

I must say, right off the bat, that what I consider “coffee” is the
genuine “Turkish coffee,” as the name implies. Of course, we are familiar
with the name and taste of Nescafé, espresso, or cappuccino. We’ve sat at
a Starbucks in New York and sampled European flavors. Yet, none of these
can replace the true Turkish coffee. Neither the smell, nor the flavor... What
you call coffee is to be consumed in small cups like ours, which point to
the unattainability, the intransience of that taste. Treasuring a limited and
scarce savor means appreciating its value, multiplying it in a limited time,
and making it eternal. What people, such as the Americans, guzzle by the
gallon in paper cups like fruit juice is not what I call coffee! Long story
short, coffee is no ordinary drink. Someone who respects coffee should
abide by its rituals. Otherwise, s/he should not drink it at all.6

5 Selim İleri, Ay Hâlâ Güzel, Kaf Yayıncılık, İstanbul 1999, pp. 64-65.
6 Ali Çolak, Bilmem Hatırlar mısın?, Kapı Yayınları, İstanbul 2009, pp. 43-45.

76
 XI
COFFEE ADDICTION

I
n one of his essays, Malik Aksel describes the coffee aficionados
gathered at the outdoor coffeehouse in front of the Horologe
Room of the Hagia Sophia. As he wallops his hookah, a tiryaki
(coffee aficionado) refuses his coffee and scolds the apprentice bringing
his coffee, “Did I not tell you that the forth should not be cracked? Go
on, take this back and bring me a new one! ” On the contrary, another
tiryaki demands a non-froth, long-boiled coffee; this time, the apprentice
is admonished for boiling the coffee over. Yet another one barges into
the coffee room and has his pot washed, for he has no tolerance for
the smell of sugar in his cezve. Some order coffee brewed over hot ash,
others demand little coffee and plenty of water… Referring to coffee as
“ehl-i irfan şerbeti” (sherbet of the master of wisdom),
the majority of these coffee aficionados is also
addicted to cigarettes, hookah, or snuff and
are skilled conversationalists. Their pleasure
is “complete” once “coffee and tobacco”
come together.1
There are some addicts, who have
become fixated on coffee. According
to Ahmet Cevdet Paşa’s account in his

1 Malik Aksel, İstanbul’un Ortası, p. 191.

A plate illustration depicting a Greek and
a Turk drinking coffee together (Çetun Tukek Archives)

77
Warwick Goble, Coffee Hearth
famous Tarih (History), Chief Military Judge Mollacıkzade Ataullah
Efendi –an incorrigible tiryaki– suddenly wakes up from his catnap
during an important meeting and, thinking he is at his mansion, claps
his hands and shouts, “Bring me my coffee! ” In order to save the Judge
from embarrassment, Provincial Governor Şakir Ahmet Paşa responds,
“Truth be told, we are tired as well; let us take a small coffee break! ”2 Ragıp
Akyavaş claims to know aficionados that cannot awaken unless they slurp
a cup of coffee as soon as they get up in the morning, adding their minds
do not function without coffee, they are fixated on coffee no matter
what else you offer them, and always feel like there is something missing.
Akyavaş was a coffee aficionado himself; even when he was on the line of
fire in Rumania, his aide-de-camp prepared him his coffee and came to his
rescue with a fincan in one hand and a cezve in the other.3
Ercümend Ekrem Talû describes the coffee and cigarette pleasure of
a “pasha efendi” in an old mansion as follows:
Pasha efendi has his own way, as usual. As soon as he returns to
the mansion from the office in the afternoon, he rolls that fine Grand
Prix tobacco in JOB rolling paper, as thick as a stuffed vegetable, inserts
the fringy cigarette in the jasmine, long-stemmed tobacco pipe with the
amber tip and lights it.
- Girl! Is my coffee ready?
After devouring a few greedy gulps from the large, wide-rimmed
Viennese cup of coffee flavored with coriander or cardamom, he heaves a
sigh of relief. Ah, the pleasure!
Is his mind clear now? Absolutely. Bring on the conversation…4
Old aficionados who cannot get a clear head before they smoke
and slurp their frothy coffee from cups as large as bowls are beautifully
described in Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s novels. Hekim Senai Efendi of
Cehennemlik is one such character. In one of the scenes from the novel,
the servants of hypochondriac Hasan Ferruh Efendi carry this old man like
a fragile object, pick up him carefully and set him down on his armchair.
After Senai Efendi rests for a while, he lifts up his eyes disappearing behind
the shiny lenses of his spectacles, addresses the servants waiting for his
orders, and says, with a weak and staccato voice, “A glass of water… And
my coffee! ” Quickly, he adds, “My coffee shall be mixed with musk, but

2 Faik Reşad, Letaif (ed. Ahmet Özalp), Kitabevi Yayınları, İstanbul 1995, p. 338.
3 A. Ragıp Akyavaş, ibid, p. 279.
4 Ercümend Ekrem Talû, Gecmiş Zaman Olur ki (ed. A. Karaca), Hece Yayınları, İstanbul 2005,
p. 72.

79
simmered (matbuh), not infused (menku)!” The servants rush to fetch
the coffee. Alone in his room, Senai Efendi mutters to himself, “The art
of cooking retrogressed just as much as medicine has. Where are those
old mansions? The former servants? That ancient way of making coffee?
Nowadays, instead of coffee, they bring a tasteless, flavorless, black
chestnut juice.”
After transmitting these words, Hüseyin Rahmi adds that his
drowsiness does not disappear until the stimulating effects of these three
pleasure-inducing substances can be seen on tobacco and snuff addict
Hekim Senai Efendi’s ninety year-old worn-out patience, that the haze in
his eyes will not fade away and that his senses of hearing and touch will
not function.5 It is interesting to note that Senai Efendi compares the light-
colored, dissatisfactory coffee to chestnut juice. This metaphor appears in
other novels by Hüseyin Rahmi as well. For example, we encounter the
following sentence in Can Pazarı: “Baba, make us two sweet coffees. We
are tired; make sure that they are not like chestnut juice.”6
It is worth recalling the coffee pleasure of Makbule Hanım, a female
protagonist in the novel Sonuncu Kadeh by serious coffee aficionado
Refik Halid Karay.7 In order for her to enjoy her coffee, she always has
the cinereous coals burning on her copper brazier brightly polished with
lemon rind. Whenever she desires coffee, she slightly grubs and crackles
the brazier, and grabs the tray from the shelf; covered with immaculate
pieces of cloth on top and bottom, the tray is always ready with coffee,
sugar, a pot and cups. Still, rinsing the cups once again and drying them
with dishtowel used only for this purpose, Makbule Hanım sets the cezve
on the brazier, though not on medium heat. Let us hear the rest from
Refik Halid:
She never forgets to put a small amount of the heating water into
the cups to take away their coolness. She pours the water, but adds a little
more extra hot water in the cup. As the coffee begins to bubble, that
water is poured back in the pot to re-boil. Who has patience for this ritual
today? Yet, frustrated with the world, Çemit sits on the side, and watches
her make coffee with great pleasure on most mornings.8

5 Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, Cehennemlik, Atlas Kitabevi, İstanbul 1966, pp. 52-53.
6 Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, Can Pazarı, Atlas Kitabevi, İstanbul 1968, p. 70.
7 Waking up every morning at six and making his coffee after eating a single “shimmery
Turkish delight,” if Refik Halid Karay was not hung-over or had decided on what to write,
he would sit at his desk to work, and, after drinking a second coffee at 11 AM; he would
continue to write until noon. See Necmi Onur, “Refik Halid Pullu Lokum Yapıyor”, Hafta, no.
35, 2 September 1955, p. 6.
8 Refik Halid Karay, Sonuncu Kadeh, İnkılâp ve Aka Kitabevi, İstanbul 1965, p. 60.

80
 In Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar’s novel Fahim Bey ve Biz, the greatest
pleasure of Fehim Bey’s wife Saffet Hanım is to smoke her cigarettes with
the consecutive coffees she makes on the brazier that keeps her warm.
She is happiest on the days her husband brings her a new kind of coffee, a
different cup or pot as a gift.9
When out of coffee, one should stay away from aficionados –
almost all of which exclusively drink Yemeni coffee– such as Senai Efendi,
Makbule Hanım and Saffet Hanım. In his memoirs, renowned Turkish
journalist writes that he is not a coffee aficionado and thus does not suffer
during coffee shortages. Reflecting on a period during which coffee had
become a bizarre mixture of chickpeas and barley, he mentions a coffee
aficionado and friend named İzzet. Fuming before his cup of morning
coffee, Kanlıcalı İzzet Bey would ramp and rage when he was told there
was no coffee at home, and turn İstanbul inside out to find coffee. One
day, when Saraçoğlu asked, “Dear sir, just pretend coffee is not to be
found in İstanbul anymore. Instead, wouldn’t you favor perhaps cocoa or
a well brewed cup of bright red tea? ” İzzet Bey opened his eyes wide and
replied with an irritable voice, “My friend, noting in the world could ever
replace a cup of frothy, well-made Turkish coffee infused with musk! True
aficionados know this well; please stop talking nonsense for God’s sake! ”10

Mustafa Kemal Pasha was a coffee aficionado. In this photograph, he is seen drinking
coffee with his wife Latife Hanım, Kâzım Karabekir Pasha and other commanders.

It is known that Peyami Safa, an aficionado-cum-novelist like Refik

Halid, had a strong liking for coffee and cigarettes and that any time he
was in a jovial mood, he would ask his friends, “Come on, let’s have a cup
9 Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, Fahim Bey ve Biz, Varlık Yayınları, İstanbul 1966, pp. 93, 95.
10 Ahmed Cemaleddin Saraçoğlu, Eski İstanbul’dan Hatıralar (ed. İsmail Dervişoğlu), Kitabevi
Yayınları, İstanbul 2005, pp. 233-235.

81
of coffee! ” Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı’s old friend Peyami Safa, whom he spoke of
in the following verses:
Ya kahvesini içtiğim dost
Hepsinin hakkı yok mu bende

(Oh friends whose coffees I drank

Am I not indebted to them all)
suffered considerably due to a lack of coffee during his journey to
Europe in 1937. His notes in Büyük Avrupa Anketi on the Turkish coffee
that a newly arrived Turkish lady at his Paris hotel offered him not only
reveal his passion for coffee, but also speak for other aficionados. The text
is as concentrated as coffee itself:

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk drinks coffee as he meets with İsmet Pasha

In the smell of Turkish coffee, which I have yearned for two weeks
now, is a miracle of taste that completes all the flavors missing from my
life. A miracle that sweeps away all my travel fatigue and concerns about
the world: newspaper, survey, right, left, revolution, the political, social,
spiritual, literary, etc. state and conditions of Spain, France, or the ninth
heaven and the universe. That superbly delicious drop of coffee, that
essence of my homeland spreading between my tongue and my palate,
that hot, bitter, astringent, yet sublime taste brings a breath of fresh air
and dilutes all the constricted cells of my brain, calms my nerves, leaving
no trace of concern or exhaustion.11
In speaking of Peyami Safa, it is important to recall a dialogue on
frothless coffee from his novel Yalnızız (We are Alone). In the novel, Ferhat,
11 Peyami Safa, Büyük Avrupa Anketi, Kanaat Kitabevi, İstanbul 1938, p. 89.

82
who is in strong disagreement with his sister Meral, comes home early one
evening. When he finds out that she is not home yet, he becomes furious
and asks for a cup of coffee from his maid Emine:
As Ferhat reached out his hand to take the coffee, he stopped:
- “What is this? ” he said, “what kind of coffee is this? There is no froth
and it’s pitch black.”
- “Let me make another one.”
- “No need. Give it to me.”
Ferhat spilled some of the coffee on his hand and in the saucer as he
took the cup. He let out an expletive. Looking at him out the corner of
her eye, Emine asked:
- “Are you upset about the letter, young master? ”
Placing the coffee cup on the piano, Ferhat lighted a cigarette and
yelled:
- I’m angry at the letter, Selmin, Meral, you, this that, coffee, myself,
fate, the universe, everything. This house has gone off its hinges. The world
has gone off its hinges.12
The first thing that springs to mind about Turkish coffee is the
froth that accumulates at the top. The coffee of an influential guest is
prepared with great care to make sure it has plenty of froth. In Midhat
Cemal Kuntay’s novel Üç İstanbul, Hacı Kâhya goes to great pains to add
extra froth to the coffee he prepares for the great scholar Ali Emirî Efendi,
from whom he hopes to solicit information about the ancestors of the
protagonist Adnan. However, as soon as he hears Adnan’s name, Emirî
Efendi becomes annoyed and desists from drinking the coffee grounds.13
One must be very careful when making coffee, for a moment of
distraction may cause the pot to overflow and the froth to disappear.
This is exactly why meticulous housewives pay attention to the way they
make coffee for their husbands or guests. This brief passage from Halide
Edip Adıvar’s novel Seviye Talib contains fine clues about Turkish coffee
indulgence and culture:
A little further ahead, by the brazier, Macide was seated in her white
nightgown, taking some things from the coffee set with the immaculate
table cloth in slow, greedy movements, pushing back the little ringlets

12 Peyami Safa, Yalnızız, Ötüken Neşriyat, İstanbul 1976, pp. 295-296.

13 Midhat Cemal Kuntay, ibid., p. 172.

83
curling underneath her thick braid. Yet, all the while, her concentration
was focused on not boiling the pot over…14
The same is true for Sabire Hanım, a character from the same
author’s novel Handan; as she prepares her husband’s frothy coffee, she
pays as much attention as possible, for his greatest pleasure is to drink -in
bed- the two cups of coffee she made.15
Coffee aficionados do not even glance at frothless coffee, scoff at
split foam, and, if they are in a foul mood like Ferhat, they establish a
connection between the froth and their misfortune. It requires skill and
experience to make that frothy Turkish coffee the French call Café à la
Sultane. For that one must opt for a copper cezve if possible; the size of
the cezve must be chosen according to the number of servings. It might
be difficult to froth the coffee if a single coffee is made in a large cezve.
Measured by cup, the water must be cold, non-calcareous, chlorine-
free, and previously boiled and cooled, if possible.
Two heaping teaspoons of coffee is added per cup;
enough sugar is added depending on the desired
level of sweetness. This mixture is well stirred with
a wooden spoon before the cezve is placed on fire;
initially, it is boiled slowly over low
heat. If the coffee is impatiently
boiled over high heat, it loses
much of its flavor. The next
step is to distribute the froth
formed in the first boil, place the
cezve back on fire, and boil it for the
second time before completely filling
the cups with it. Thus, the essence and
juice of the coffee mixes with water
and the coffee grounds are set in the
bottom of the cup, yielding a delicious
and aromatic blend in the color of dark
beer.
Of course, there may be different
ways of making coffee; however, the
aforementioned is the most common way
to do it. Unfortunately, today, Turkish coffee
is prepared only in four different ways in

14 Halide Edip Adıvar, Seviye Talib, İstanbul 1342, p. 10.

15 Halide Edip Adıvar, Handan, İstanbul 1342, pp. 69-70.

84
Turkey: plain, with little sugar, with medium sugar, or sweet. Yet, in former
times, epicurean coffee aficionados demanded special care for their coffee
and fussed over the amount of coffee, the degree of heat, and the time of
boiling. Elias Petropoulos has identified forty-six ways of drinking Turkish
coffee in Greece. These include: plain strong, plain boiled, plain light, plain
light-ish, plain half boiled, plain semi-strong, plain light semi, plain light-ish
semi, strong with little sugar, boiled with little sugar, light with little sugar,
strong with medium sugar, boiled with medium sugar, medium light, or
medium half-boiled.16
Petropoulos may have exaggerated her list; however, it is known
that Turkish coffee drinking tradition is not so poor to be confined to
plain, or with little, medium, and plenty of sugar. What we described
above based on Malik Aksel and Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar indicates that
the various ways of drinking coffee are more diversified than we know
today. The manner of offering coffee requires etiquette and refinement.
Scrupulous housewives and coffeehouse owners rinse the cups with hot
water in order to preserve the heat of the coffee. A few sips of water must
be drunk before the coffee to eliminate other flavors from the mouth,
which is why coffee is always severed with half a glass of water. Drinking
the water afterwards is impolite, as it signals that the coffee is not enjoyed.
In describing the coffeehouses of İstanbul, Théophile Gautier reminds
readers that Turks drink the water first and the French afterwards and
describes the astonishment of a European who fluently spoke eastern
languages and assumed he would be taken for a local due to his Muslim
attire. When the European demanded a bedoin, who addressed him as
“European” how he made the distinction, he received the following reply:
“Because you drank the water after the coffee! ” 17
It is traditional to place a piece of Turkish delight (lokum) next to
the coffee cup. Although some insist that one can only enjoy the flavor
of coffee by slurping it, it should be remembered that this sound might
be offensive to others. For instance, renowned critic and writer Nurullah
Ataç was often discomforted by his uncle’s visits, because, without brining
the cup to his lips, the poor man would suck on his coffee with a loud
“slurrrpp” for almost an hour, without realizing how this frustrated his
nephew.18

16 Elias Petropoulos, Yunanistan’da Türk Kahvesi (trans. Herkül Milas), İletişim Yayınları,
İstanbul 1995, pp. 16-17.
17 Théophile Gautier, İstanbul (trans. Çelik Gülersoy), İstanbul 1971, p. 121.
18 Meral Tolluoğlu, Babam Nurullah Ataç, Çağdaş Yayınları, İstanbul 1980, p. 58.

85
 Coffee crowns the meal at a Turkish table; few Turks refuse a cup of
well-made Turkish coffee after a lovely meal or not fret when their coffee
is late. When his coffee is delayed by a few minutes, Enişte Bey (uncle-
in-law), the protagonist in Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar’s novel Çamlıca’daki
Eniştemiz, reproaches the waiter as follows: “Waiter! Where is the coffee?
I’ve been waiting for an hour and it’s still not here! No, you have gone too
far! I’ll split your head open right this instant! Just so you know!” 19
A vivid banquet scene takes place at the beginning of Halid Ziya
Uşaklıgil’s novel Mai ve Siyah (Blue and Black): It is the end of the banquet
thrown for the writers of the newspaper at Tepebaşı Garden by its
owner Hüseyin Baha Bey to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his
newspaper Mir’at-ı Şuun. The scene, which details the miserable view of
the table after the banquet, brightens when Ali Şekip, one of the seven
guests, shouts, “Coffee! Won’t we have coffee? Coffee!..” Suddenly, the
guests realize that something its missing and that they are still there
because they are waiting for that something. So, they begin to chant with
Ali Şekip: “Coffee!.. Coffee!..”
Thereupon, Hüseyin Baha Efendi points to the waiter brining the
coffee from afar; however, the young writers have no intention of calming
down; they stomp their feet, gesticulate, and call out the same reprise until
the waiter gets to their table:
“Coffee!.. Coffee!..”20

19 Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, Çamlıca’daki Eniştemiz, Varlık Yayınları, İstanbul 1967, p. 151.
20 Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil Mai ve Siyah, Özgür Yayınları, İstanbul 2001, p. 17.

86
 XII
BRAZIER
AND ASH COFFEE

T
he brazier pleasure of Makbule and Saffet Hanims was indeed
quite widespread among the Turks. Whenever there were guests
involved or the heart desired coffee, the cezve would be placed
over the hot ashes on the side of the brazier. The ancients delightfully
explain how one cannot get enough of the pleasure of the brazier,
particularly on winter days. This pleasure is summarized in the following
verse by an anonymous poet:
Mangal kenarı kış gününün lâlezarıdır
(The brazier-side is the rose garden of the winter day)
The brazier as an inextricable pleasure of life in İstanbul is most
beautifully expressed in the following verse from Necip Fâzıl’s poem
“Canım İstanbul”:
Boğaz gümüş bir mangal, kaynatır serinliği
(The Bosphorus is a silver brazier, boiling the chill air)
In one of his poems, Nâzım Hikmet describes how the sheet metal
braziers of İstanbul wake up from their ashes:

87
A Mobile Coffee Seller
 Koparmış ipini eski kayıklar gibi yüzer
kışın, sabaha karşı rüzgârda tahta cumbalar
ve bir saç mangalın küllerinde
uyanır uykudan büyük İstanbul’um.

(Free from their ropes, the wooden oriels

float in the wind like old caïques in the winter at dawn
And on the ashes of a metal brazier
Wakes up my grand İstanbul from her sleep.)
Upon hearing these verses by Nâzım Hikmet, a reader familiar with
Turkish poetry would possibly respond with this line from Mehmed Âkif’s
poem “Seyfi Baba”:
Üşüyorsan eşiver mangalı, eş, eş de ısın
(If you are cold, poke the brazier; poke it so you can keep warm)
Poking the ashes of the brazier with tongs was one of the routine
pastimes of daily life during the winters of old İstanbul. Imagine Makbule
Hanım waking up on a winter’s day; of the first things she’d do would be
to poke the brazier to jeep warm, fan the cinders if they have flamed out,
and, after nibbling on something as kahve altı, place her cezve on the hot
ashes. In her memoirs, Halide Edip Adıvar, whose maternal grandfather
was the kahvecibaşı of Sultan Mehmed Reşad V, recounts how women
traditionally gathered before the brazier at night in the “house with
wisteria” where she spent her childhood, how prominent family member
Havva Hanım made her coffee on the brazier with a cigarette glued to
her lips, and how she would pour a bit of coffee on the saucer and make
Halide Edip lick it like a kitten.1 Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s novel Gulyabani
describes the pleasure of coffee on the brazier as follows: “The head of
female servants pulled the small brass brazier next to the mattress where
the elderly were seated. She placed the cezve on the brazier and began
shooting the breeze.” 2
There is a widespread belief that the “ash coffee” (kül kahvesi) cooked
slowly on the brazier has a more beautiful smell and taste and yields more
froth. We know that until recently, certain coffeehouses still used braziers
and were thus preferred by true aficionados. At the time A. Süheyl Ünver
wrote his famous article on coffeehouses, the brazier tradition was still
alive at the Paşababa Coffeehouse at the Harem Pier. The owner of this

1 Halide Edip Adıvar, Mor Salkımlı Ev, Atlas Kitabevi, İstanbul 1967, p. 36.
2 Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, Gulyabani, Hilmi Kitabevi, İstanbul 1944, p. 25.

89
coffeehouses insists that coffee prepared on gas stoves lacks flavor.3 While
some attempt to attain the flavor of “ash coffee” by setting the cezve on
a sand-filled pan on the stove, they obtain no results. The public belief in
the better taste of ash coffee is so widespread that it has even been the
subject of a folk poem:

Eriği dalda devşir

Kahveyi külde pişir
Her kahveyi içende
Beni aklına düşür

(Collect the plums from the tree

Make the coffee on ash
Each time you drink coffee
You must think of me)

Abdülaziz Bey talks at length about the different kinds of braziers,

once used as heating devices in homes. While there are extremely artistic
braziers made of precious metals like silver for palaces and mansions, the
most commonly used kinds are manufactured of copper and brass. More
durable than copper, brass braziers include numerous types. The kind
known as sarı (yellow) is the brass brazier. For instance, the hexagonal
brazier with short feet and a brass oval tray known as erkân minderi
mangalı was highly popular among women. You can rest assured that the
small brazier upon which Makbule Hanım heartily placed her coffee pot
was of this kind. According to Abdülaziz Bey, the foremost types of “yellow
brass” braziers were as follows: the large and circular sarı mangal with flat
sides; to be placed at the center, the large, thick-cast, Süleymaniye mangalı
with lobed edges; the circular, tall Edirne mangalı with yellow brass plates
welted to the edges; the lobed Thessalonica-made yüksek orta mangalı
(hall brazier) resembling a flower pot; the büyük sarı mangal (large yellow
brass brazier), the edges of which are decorated with thick yellow brass
wires like a fruit basket...4
According to the accounts of Nureddin Rüştü Büngül, the majority
of the “yellow” brass braziers were manufactured in Süleymaniye.
Although Eski Eserler Ansiklopedisi (The Encyclopedia of Antique Works)
includes numerous old braziers as antiques, the Süleymaniye braziers are
the most famous among these. Büngül attests to the presence of a brazier
manufactured in Kastamonu, with an encomium that starts with the verse

3 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., pp. 78-79.

4 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., p. 213.

90
“a brazier burned with the fire of love” inscribed, though he admits that
the brazier in question has a poor workmanship.5
Abdülaziz Bey also mentions other types of braziers. The copper
oda mangalı (chamber brazier), resembling a flower pot, with a round
base and a pan inside; kısa bakır mangal (short copper brazier), the lower
body of which is made of brass, with a fire pot placed inside; küçük sarı
mangal (small brass brazier) designed to keep tobacco pipe fire ready
during summer days; Edirne mangalı (brazier) with a walnut tree edge,
short feet, and a brass or copper frying pot inside; the long, metal sheet
yemek mangalı (dining brazier), which has iron grids on top to place pots;
the copper kahveci mangalı (coffeemaker’s brazier) with a sheet plate-
covered back and set on a tripod… According to Abdülaziz Bey, the pans
of the brass braziers used in the spacious and high-ceilinged rooms of
large mansions were produced in larger sizes to accommodate more fire.
These brazier pans had four rings on the edge; after the charcoal was
placed on the brazier, the hooks of the four brass chains would be slipped
through these rings and a bar would be put through the ring at the top.
The charcoal-filled pan would be shouldered by two attendants to be
taken to the room where the brazier was set.6
Having spent his childhood in an old İstanbul mansion in Üsküdar,
Prof. Dr. Ahmet Yüksel Özemre describes braziers as follows in his book
entitled, Hasretini Çektiğim Üsküdar:
Another heating device was the brazier. It was made of brass or copper.
The braziers comprised seven different types: konak mangalı (mansion-type
brazier), Süleymaniye brazier, Selanik (Thessalonica) or Manastır brazier, Bursa
brazier and Siirt brazier. They were each distinguished from one another by
their heights, ornamentation, and the number of parts they featured. As the
most ornamented braziers were produced in the Süleymaniye district, they were
known as Süleymaniye mangalı.7

It is important to note that as there were coffee hearths at

the palaces and mansions, braziers were largely used in homes and
coffeehouses for making coffee. One should also remember that burning
charcoal on the brazier is toilsome and finding a brazier to make coffee
in any given place is also quite difficult. Therefore, spirit stoves known as
kamineto have traditionally been quite popular among coffee aficionados.
Through it might not yield the unique flavor of ash coffee, it is possible

5 Nureddin Rüştü Büngül, ibid., pp. 160-162.

6 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., p. 213.
7 Ahmet Yüksel Özemre, Hasretini Çektiğim Üsküdar, Kubbealtı Neşriyatı, İstanbul 2007, p.
104.

91
to make coffee with these portable stoves anywhere and at any place. In
speaking of old İstanbul fires in his work entitled, Beş Şehir, Ahmet Hamdi
Tanpınar recounts that İstanbulites keen on watching fires would take
their kaminetos along to the fire site and would make themselves coffee as
they witnessed these unfortunate events.8
There is yet another short story on portable coffee stoves.
Accompanying Sultan Abdülaziz during his journey to Egypt, Ömer Faiz
Efendi carried along his coffee set, including the stove, as he was a serious
coffee fiend. Strolling aboard the ship one day, the Sultan saw the stove
burning and -terrified of fires- had it immediately put out. Known as witty
and quick at repartee, Ömer Faiz Efendi is reported to have said, “Good
God! His father had gotten rid of the ‘Janissary Hearth’ and now he did the
same with our coffee hearth! ”9

8 Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Beş Şehir, MEB 1000 Temel Eser, İstanbul 1969, p. 199.
9 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., p. 75. For further information on braziers and the brazier culture,
see Münevver Alp, “Eski İstanbul Evlerinde Isıtma”, Türk Folklor Araştırmaları Dergisi, no.
175, February 1964; Gündağ Kayaoğlu, “Mangallar I”, Antika, no. 7, October 1985, pp. 14-21;
“Mangallar II”, Antika, no. 8, November 1985, pp. 19-23.

92
 XIII
COFFEE SHORTAGES

I
magine the grief of aforementioned coffee aficionados in the
absence of coffee. The history of Turkish coffee is a “bitter history”
during which the aficionados struggled not only with coffee bans,
but with shortages as well. Occasionally vanishing into thin air and thus
making way for profiteering and fraud, coffee has always been a valuable
commodity. A riddle mentioned earlier contains the phrase “treat for
gentlemen” (beyler aşı) to indicate that coffee is not for everyone. In a
koşma (free-form folk song), Karacaoğlan says that “agas” and “begs” drink
coffee.1
As the prices skyrocketed during times of shortage, the perplexed
aficionados knocked on every possible door in order to find pure coffee
and when they could not, they hardened their hearts and quit drinking
coffee rather than drinking the chickpea blend. It is known that during
such times, the cheap chickpea coffee was immediately put on the
market. When some aficionados began drinking chickpea coffee out of
despair during a shortage at the turn of the 18th century, this following
couplet by Osmanzade Tâib spread from mouth to mouth:

1 Ağalar, beyler içerler

Kahve de kara değil mi? (Agas and begs drink it / Isn’t coffee black after all?)

93
Jean Baptiste Vanmour - “Coffee Seller”
 Olalı kahve-i Rûmî nümâyân
Nohudî-meşreb oldu cümle yârân

(Ever since Anatolian coffee appeared

All our friends began drinking chickpea coffee)
This couplet reveals that at the time, chickpea coffee was referred
to as “Kahve-i Rumî”, or “Anatolian coffee.” Another poet of the times
remonstrated against the stiff prices of Yemeni coffee, complaining that it
was sold little by little “like time” and that some of the refined Anatolians
began drinking chickpea water instead of coffee.2 It is known that during
times of shortage, coffeehouse owners dried and reused coffee grounds,
which came to be known as cavcav.3 Records indicate that certain shabby
coffeehouses served cavcav even when there was no shortage and that
tightfisted housewives offered cavcav to their guests.
Coffee spread across the
world over a period of two
hundred years and became
an indispensable drink
in every country it was
introduced to. Consequently,
the demand for coffee rapidly
increased; as the production
in Yemen was unable to meet
this demand, frequent coffee
shortages occurred and thus efforts
were made to grow coffee in other
countries as well. The coffee grown on
the Dominican Island in the first half of the
18th century and later in Brazil would enter the Ottoman world under
the name “Kahve-i Efrencî” (European Coffee) and although it could not
replace Yemeni coffee, it was inevitably preferred to chickpea coffee.4 The
allure of the Ottoman coffee market prompted European manufacturers
to produce artificial coffee as well. When, in the late 19th century, the
coffee of the Heinr Franck Söhne Company in Lins was not admitted

2 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., p. 49.

3 We do not know if this connected to Karagöz’s way of addressing Hacivat as “Hacı Cavcav.”
Ahmet Vefik Paşa explains the word telve as follows: “Coffee residue, grounds, dull, bland
man, irremovable smear, ugly, addict. Otherwise known as pulp, sediment, or residue.”
Accordingly, cavcav means coffee grounds or residue. See Lehçe-i Osmanî I, İstanbul 1306, p.
303.
4 Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, “Osmanlı Ülkesinde Avrupa Sun’i Kahvesi”, Kaynaklar, no. 6, Winter
1988, p. 44.

95
through customs, the incident became an international issue. Unable
to resist the pressures of foreign embassies to revoke the decision, the
Tanzimat administration took a step back. However, since artificial coffee
types known as “Franck Kahvesi” and “Sultan Fîcan” did not appeal to the
palate of the public, they were not in demand. The analysis of these coffees
yielded equally interesting results: “Sultan Fîcan” coffee was predominantly
comprised of the seeds of figs produced in the Aegean Region.5
The worst shortage occurred during the years of World War I; as
imports had completely ceased, blended and imitation coffees took
over the market. Chickpea was the most commonly used substance in
imitation coffees. It is told that beans, shelled broad beans, barley, figs, and
even nutshells were ground and sold as coffee to a public that knowingly
purchased it. Tea emerged as a serious rival to coffee during the years of
shortage and ousted coffee from “kahvaltı” (breakfast) menus, through
not from its name. Although not as grave as the previous war, the years of
World War II also witnessed a serious shortage and coffee was rationed,
just like bread.

A Coffeehouse at the Grand Bazaar

Suffering from lack of coffee poet and professor of texts explanation

(“şerh-i mütûn”) Ferit Kam, traveled from Hereke to İstanbul one day and
went from door to door to find a small amount of coffee, but to no avail.
Just as he lost hope and decided to return to his hometown, he ran into
Dr. A. Süheyl Ünver in Beyazıt and explained his tribulations. Thereupon,
Süheyl Bey gave the old professor the two hundred and fifty grams of
5 For forther information, see Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, ibid., pp. 45-49.

96
raw coffee, which he received as a gift but kept in his office, as no one
in his household drank coffee. Ecstatic, Ferit Kam prayed for the young
doctor and recited a couplet, the second verse of which stresses the
near impossibility of finding coffee in those days: “Finding coffee is more
difficult than conquering Yemen.”6
Coffee shortages not only devastated aficionados, but also instigated
the decline of Turkish coffee culture. According to writer Halil Erdoğan
Cengiz, who lived during the years in question, coffee disappeared from
coffee shops, coffeehouses, and coffee jars for years and made its fiends
suffer; the blessed thing was like a precious metal—it was only a matter
of time before someone finding a sack of coffee would strike gold. Those
who were able to procure a mere 50 grams of coffee from the black market
would blend it with ground barley, chickpeas, acanthus seeds, hackberries,
and even nutshells to increase their stock, as long as there was a whiff
of coffee smell and flavor. It is best to read this “bitter” story from Halil
Erdoğan Cengiz’s entertaining pen:
Being able to leave the house of certain ladies, who were rumored to dry
the used coffee ground and re-serve them for subsequent guests, was considered
a success worth of the grand prize in competitions among women. While
coffeehouse owners offered the almost-pure coffee kept in a special box for
their regular or influential customers, they served a black water called coffee to
foreigners and other clients under the guise of plain (or bitter), or coffee with little,
medium, and lots of sugar. Known for never stepping foot outside their homes,
many have become coffeehouse regulars for the sake of a cup of coffee they
couldn’t find at home. Numerous coffeehouses sold “out” to coffee demanders
and those who were able to stock coffee became famous. Countless aficionados
were forced to abandon the coffee-less coffeehouses and migrate to those where
they could find coffee. Some had to overcome their reluctance to demand a
favor and ask for a cup of coffee from friends and acquaintances. The business
of fortunetellers was in the doldrums; honored at house visits and known to have
a “gift,” fortunetellers had fallen a bit from grace, as coffee was no longer served to
guests. Conversely, café-au-lait, which had no grounds to read and was disdained
by our ancestors, gained prestige in certain regions. Per common practice, coffee
was added milk as a precaution for brats that insisted on drinking coffee along
with adults, so that their faces wouldn’t turn dark. According to true aficionados,
it was born from the poor taste of non-aficionados or the snobbery of those who
wished to live to a ripe old age and could not drink their milk without wasting
one or two spoonfuls of coffee. For, it was neither milk, nor coffee... This is why
some called wimpy and effeminate types “café-au lait.” What brought this type
of coffee to the fore was not a new taste or fashion, but plain old shortage. Five
6 A. Süheyl Ünver, ibid., p. 50.

97
or six cups of café-au-lait were made from a cup of Turkish coffee, more people
could be served with less amount of coffee, and the coffee jar was kept full. Since
coffee was not even available on the black market for exorbitant prices during
the years in which patched socks and trousers, resoled shoes, reversed fabrics
and jackets were frequently encountered, not being able to offer coffee was not
considered rude or improper. Yet, when it was indeed served, it made a splash
and was much appreciated.7

The 1950s also witnessed considerable coffee shortages that pained

aficionados. In 1956, a news piece about a Turkish citizen producing
artificial coffee and another one about Israel’s desire to sell artificial coffee
to Turkey for 60 Pounds per ton, not only made the headlines for some
time, but also became a heated topic of discussion among the public.
The article entitled “Kahve Problemi” (The Coffee Problem) appearing in
the daily Yeni İstanbul notes that since World War I, pseudo coffees made
of chickpeas, nuts, nutshells, broad beans, acorn, figs, and watermelon
seeds had failed, that coffee aficionados began complaining, “We were
already discontented with the quality of real coffee, and now there is the
artificial version! ” and that in Turkey, coffee was not merely appealing for
aficionados, but that it was used by everyone as a means of welcoming
guests.8
Released from State Monopoly (Tekel) in 1942 upon these criticisms,
the import and sales of coffee was assigned to the General Directorate
of Tekel (then known as İnhisarlar Umum Müdürlüğü) in 1957 with the
issuing of decree number 1088 based on the Law of Turkish National
Security. It was thus decided that Kızılay (The Red Crescent Society)
would distribute the coffee cleared from customs.
An associate professor of “texts explanation” at İstanbul University
at the time, Ali Nihat Tarlan was discontent with the coffee shortages
of the 1950s. Unable to live without coffee, Tarlan always carried along
his kamineto, cezve, and fincan. One day, when he failed to procure any
coffee despite his efforts, he wrote a petition in verse, entitled “Atabe-i
vilâyet-penâhîye arz-ı hâl-i manzûm”9 and presented it to Fahrettin Kerim
Gökay, then-Governor of İstanbul. In his petition comprised of ten stanzas
with the repeating verse “Kahve lütfet varsa imkânın eğer” (Please grant
us coffee, if you have the means) at the end of each stanza, Ali Nihat Bey
complained that he was devastated from the coffee shortage, that his
knees had no strength, that he once enjoyed coffee brands such as “Afiyet”
7 Halil Erdoğan Cengiz, “Kahvenin Kirli Çamaşırları”, Tarih ve Toplum, no. 101, May 1992, pp.
282-283.
8 Hasene Ilgaz, “Kahve Problemi”, Yeni İstanbul, 18 October 1956.
9 Ali Nihat Tarlan, Kuğular, İstanbul 1970, pp. 90-91.

98
 and “Tiryaki”, but that the current
coffee brand “Keyif” on the
market bore no trace of
their flavor. The petition
continues as follows:

Kahve kuvvet kalbe, dermandır dize

Kahve ruha neşvedir, ferdir göze
Şairim ben isterim bir caize
Kahve lütfet varsa imkânın eğer

(Coffee brings strength to the heart, vigor to the knees

Coffee is joy to the spirit, light to the eyes
I am a poet; I desire a gift for a poem of praise
Please grant us coffee, if you have the means)

Kahvenin pek başka zevk u lezzeti

Meyden üstündür bunun keyfiyyeti
Anda buldum zevk u şevk u sıhhati
Kahve lütfet varsa imkânın eğer

(Coffee gives a unique pleasure and taste

We enjoy it much better than wine
I find pleasure, zest, and health in haste
Please grant us coffee, if you have the means)

99
 In the ensuing stanzas, Ali Nihat Bey quips that his thirst can only be
quenched if he is offered coffee by the ton, adding that his mind stopped
functioning due to caffeine deficiency, that he is depressed and unable
to work. As part of this attempt to arouse pity for himself, he references
the similes of divan poets he is familiar with: due to its color, he compares
coffee to the world of darkness hiding the water of life and the mole on
Layla’s cheek. Thus, he is like Alexander in search of eternal life, or Qays,
who falls madly in love with Layla. In yet another stanza, he compares
himself to Veysel Karani, as a mad lover in pursuit of coffee in the Yemeni
desert. His concern was to convey how lack of coffee made him desperate
and arouse the mercy of “Vali Paşa” (Governor Pasha). The two-verse
postscript at the end of the poem humorously threatens Fahrettin Kerim
Gökay, who was a psychiatrist by training.
Kahve lûtfetmez isen Vali Paşa
Eylerim darüşşifâna ilticâ.

(If you do not grant us coffee Governor Pasha

I shall seek refuge in you hospital)

100
 XIV
FORTUNE IN A CUP

W
W
e do not know when the interest in reading fortune from
coffee cups was born. Some say that it was a kind of game
devised by black female servants, nannies, and nurses to add
color to the monotony of home life, have a pleasant time, and make
the coffee-drinking ceremony more enjoyable.1 Overtime, this “pastime”
generated its own symbols. It can indeed be debated whether coffee cup
reading is a kind of fortunetelling in the real sense, as the intention of this
reading is to convey good news, make life more livable, and offer a hopeful
outlook on the future. Although coffee fortune is traditionally comprised
of good wishes, advice, and warnings of the reader, some fortunetellers
deliver unfortunate news as well.
As I stated above, coffee reading generated its own symbolism.
This symbolism encompasses the art of interpreting the figures created
by coffee grounds as soon as the cup is turned upside down and placed
on the saucer; it is the art of deriving meanings from the figures on the
cup’s interior and saucer in line with the expectations of the person who
drank the coffee. As telve (coffee grounds) is unique to Turkish coffee,
fortunetelling from coffee grounds can be regarded as one of the exciting
subjects of Turkish culture. Although the word telve is associated with
the Persian word telvasi in Ahmet Vefik Paşa’s Ottoman lexicon Lehçe-i

1 Deniz Gürsoy, Sohbetin Bahanesi Kahve, Oğlak Yayıncılık, İstanbul 2005, p. 103.

101
Discovering the Future with Coffee Grounds
Osmanî (1306), its absence from subsequent dictionaries indicates that
this view was not entirely adopted. In the Turkish and English Lexicon by
Redhouse, Sir James William notes that this word is Turkish in origin. Sevan
Nişanyan’s etymological dictionary Sözlerin Soyağacı (2002) has a question
mark next to the world, whereas Kubbealtı Lugatı bears the note “origin
unknown.”
In Üç İstanbul, Cemal Kuntay’s depiction of the way Ali Emirî Efendi
drinks his coffee reveals that some of the serious aficionados, who took
an aversion to coffee reading, even drank the coffee grounds. Even today,
some coffee fiends stir and shake their cups to leave no grounds behind as
they drink their coffee. Several authors note that children scared with the
words, “if you drink coffee, you’ll turn dark,” furtively licked off the coffee
grounds in the kitchen. For example, the following lines in Ayfer Tunç’s
Bir Maniniz Yoksa Annemler Size Gelecek are worthy of note: “ [...] the
kids were desperate to drink coffee, so they were told the lie, ‘don’t drink
coffee, or you’ll turn dark.’ So, the child of the host would either lick the
grounds or drink the coffee from the bottom of the pot in the kitchen.”2
For those who wish to have their fortunes told, telve holds a different
meaning. As certain figures in the upside-down cup or on the saucer are
interpreted in the same way by those who know how to read coffee
grounds, it can be argued that a common language, or a kind of telve
symbolism developed over the years. However, fortunetellers with vivid
imaginations, sharp minds, and strong instincts can discover new figures,
procure more interesting metaphors, and ascribe new meanings to known
figures. If the person, who makes the coffee, has a gift for fortunetelling,
then s/he can start from the froth: for example, s/he can interpret the
large air bubbles as evil eye and say, “Oh, my dear Ayşe Hanim, there is so
much evil eye upon you, I’m exhausted from popping them! ”
According to those who have
mastered the art of coffee reading, if
the person stirs his/her cup clockwise,
with the words, “whatever my fortune shall hold,
should be told” then s/he wishes to have his/her
fortune told, whereas the person who stirs his/her
coffee counterclockwise wishes to have the fortune
of someone else’s read. At this point, the reversed
saucer should be placed on the cup and cooled.
Some tap or cross their fingers on the bottom of
the cup to make a wish. The half-side of the cup

2 Ayfer Tunç, Bir Maniniz Yoksa Annemler Size Gelecek, YKY, İstanbul 2001, p. 323.

103
facing the person who has his/her fortune told is their “abode,” whereas
the other side is the “abode” of others. First making interpretations based
on the color and thickness of the coffee grounds, the fortuneteller begins
to carefully “read” the figures formed inside the cup. For example, the
piece of telve stuck to the cup when its turned upside down may be
interpreted as property, whereas a flat line with three dots at the end can
be a sign of “travel in a period three (days/months/years).” If there is a
bulge at the bottom of the cup, that points to “a troubled heart,” whereas
the darker color on the circumference may represent “worry.” A stain
on the peak of a bird-like figure signifies good news. Splotches of coffee
heralds gossip. Figures of horse and fish are taken as good fortune, whereas
a double-humped camel points to wealth, and the serpent to enemies
and animosity… If there is a moon-shaped white patch in the saucer or at
the bottom of the cup, it means good things are about to happen, leading
to this cliché: “The moon will rise above your home! ”

Once positive prospects are seen

and the reading is completed, the cup
must stay upright. Otherwise, it is
believed that the fortune will be
ruined.

Some attempt to determine

the symbol system of coffee reading
by drawing the figures appearing
on the cup and saucer once they were
turned upside down. Kurukahveci Mehmet
Efendi and Sons has a mini catalogue comprised of twenty-four figures.
The book entitled, Kahve Telvesiyle Keşf-i İstikbal (1338/1922; Discovering
the Future with Coffee Grounds) Ragıp Rıfkı translated from the work of a
writer named F. Garnier includes three different tables in which the figures
of telve are interpreted. The first table carries the heading “Well-being”,
whereas the second is titled “Harm.” We learn from the first table that a
short flat line indicates “calm, relaxed, monotonous, happy, mediocre life,”
whereas a long flat line points to “a disturbed life, voyage with benefits.”
In the second table, an interrupted, short line is interpreted as “dangerous
illness, death risk,” and a curved line is read as “deceitful friends, hypocrisy,
disingenuousness, manipulation, and machination.”3

3 Kahve Telvesiyle Keşf-i İstikbal was later published in Latin letters in Ankara as Fennî Aile
Eğlencelerinden Kahve Falı (1946) by its translator Ragıp Rıfkı, who took on the last name
Özgürel.

104
 In her book entitled, Yunanistan’da Türk Kahvesi, Elias Petropoulos
presents the drawings and possible explanations of the symbols that can
be discerned from coffee grounds.4 As narrated by Reşat Ekrem Koçu in
İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, after a love affair that ends in disappointment, Agâh
Bey, an art teacher at Darüşşafaka, draws the figures he sees in numerous
coffee cups he reads and writes his own interpretations next to the figures.
Noting that an unprecedented work has thus come to life, Reşat Ekrem
hopes that this “invaluable” work preserved by Agâh Bey’s grandchildren,
must be donated to the Turkish National Library.5 Unfortunately, today the
whereabouts and owner of this work remains unknown. In his novel The
Black Book, Orhan Pamuk uses Agâh Bey’s story with small modifications:

Think of the left-handed calligrapher—who so loved reading fortunes

in coffee cups that he felt drive to produce a three-hundred-page manuscript
in which reproduced the fortunes ha had found in the grounds of the many
thousands of cups of coffee he had drunk in his lifetime, writing out the fortunes
they illuminated in his beautiful handwriting in the margins—what to make of
his obsession with order and symmetry? 6

In the “Fortune telling, Fortunetellers” item in which he narrates

this story, Reşat Ekrem Koçu says that amateur fortuneteller Âşık Râzi of
Üsküdar married off a prematurely widowed relative named Binnaz Hanım
to a young man named Bilal, whom he picked from a coffee reading, and
directs the reader to the item, “Binnaz Hanım, Telli.” This item includes a
long epic in which he describes how Râzi picked a suitable husband for
Binnaz Hanım by reading her future from a cup.7
While some truly believed in coffee fortunetelling and had their
fortunes read in order to receive good news every time they drank coffee,
others were quite disturbed by having their fortunes told. Nurullah Ataç’s
daughter Meral Tolluoğlu recalls that although her father was serious
coffee aficionado, he was terrified of having his fortune told, never trusted
words like, “Don’t be afraid, I swear I will only tell you positive things,” stirred
his coffee grounds with a matchstick in case someone else would turn
over his cup without his knowledge, and sometimes took the cup into the
kitchen and rinsed it.8 In his poem “Otobiyografi” (Autobiography), Nâzım
Hikmet admits that he never set foot in a mosque, church, or synagogue
or visited a clairvoyant after 1921 and adds:
4 Elias Petropoulos, ibid., y. 68-71.
5 Reşat Ekrem Koçu, “Fal, Falcılar”, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, v. X, p. 5508.
6 Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book, trans. Maureen Freely, Vintage, Rep Tra Edition, 2006, p. 393.
7 Reşat Ekrem Koçu, “Binnaz Hanım, Telli”, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, v. 5, p. 2803.
8 Meral Tolluoğlu, ibid., p. 70.

105
 List of symbols from Kahve Telvesiyle Keşf-i İstikbal

9
But I did have my coffee cup read.
While coffee fortunetelling is a pastime often enjoyed at home,
particularly among women, professional clairvoyants also existed and
read futures in coffee cups in exchange for money. In his short story “Fal”10
(Fortune-telling), Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar describes such a clairvoyant
with great mastery. The story involves two people who visit a clairvoyant
to have their fortunes told; the author feels no need to introduce
them. First, the shabby house where the madam “practices her art” is
described in detail through the eyes of one character. Next, the madam’s
assistant brings two coffees on a tray. Both characters regard the cups
with suspicion, but relax once they realize they are clean. Moreover, the
coffee is well made. “Evidently, this was a prerequisite, or better yet the
only means of this art. The coffee utensils in this house were meticulously
treated, like the way a leveler takes care of his level, a doctor handles his
sphygmomanometer, or a chemist adjusts his scales; they made sure that
everything was clean and functioned well.”
After some time, the door opens and first the madam’s cat and later
the madam herself walk through the door. Resembling a madwoman with
small turtle shells hanging from her right shoulder, her short skirt, blue
jacket, and strange demeanor, the clairvoyant offers a brief welcome, scans
the clients with her blue eyes, asks for their names, and shakes their hands
with her sweaty palms. After carefully eyeing them again from head to toe,
she recites bismillah and reaches for the cup on the right:

9 Nâzım Hikmet, Şiirler 7: Son Şiirleri, YKY, İstanbul 2001, p. 105.

10 Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, “Fal”, İstanbul, no. 70-71, 1 November 1946, pp. 21-23.

107
 “Whose is this? ”

After sitting upside down for ten or fifteen minutes, the cup was stuck to
the saucer. The blue gaze turned back on us, wrapping us up in a bundle of wet,
dirty rags:

“You are affected by the evil eye, son…”

She scrutinized the coffee grounds on the edge of the saucer as if looking
into eternity; perhaps she was looking with a kind of sadness that she wanted
us to emulate.

Neither of us moved. Is there anyone who has not experienced the

effortlessness of speaking about the ambiguous, the indeterminate? Yet, the
clairvoyant was right. Why not believe in evil eye, if you believe in fortune telling?
They are the beads of the same rosary.

“You know anyone named Cemal? ”

Although it was asked with an increasingly hardening look that seemed

to be veiled by mystery, the question left us indifferent. There are hundreds of
Cemals. Yet, the woman continued to probe like a gold-digger that hit a good vein.
If not Cemal, then Cemile, Cevat, Cevdet, Cahit... In a few fell swoops, the letter
C transformed into a sack emptying out a pile of faceless, figureless people right
before our eyes. The first futile attack did not deter the woman. She was at the
doors of fate; she possessed the secrets of the past and the future; she spoke with
that language. She could say anything, make any prediction. She was looking at
our lives from such a high point and with such wide perspective that she could
see things that did not even exist in our imagination and memory.

The clairvoyant madam had been wrong about every guess she
made by looking at the figures appearing in the cup and saucer, but within
a matter of ten minutes, she had narrated numerous stories about life, and
summarized a heap of drama. After exchanging meaningful glances, the
two friends gave her the money and left. When the woman called out, “If
your wish comes true, I want a box of sugar,” the narrator began to laugh,
but his friend stopped him. “What more do you want? ” he asked, “In ten
minutes, she recounted the novel of the world. Isn’t that enough? ”
In fact, if the cup is stuck to the residue, it means the person having
his fortune told will attain his/her desire, which is why the clairvoyant
madam should have said “I can’t read this fortune! ” Instead, she kept
her clients waiting for a long time and wanted to increase the impact of
her predictions by trying the patience of her clients. People who wish to
have their fortunes told are often impatient; in fact, they sometimes place
a ring on the reversed cup to cool it faster –and to bring good luck–.

108
In his poem “Fal” in his only poetry book Cehennem Meyvası comprised
of prose poems, Prof. Kaya Bilgegil –renowned for his important research
on modern Turkish literature– demands a quick reading from “the woman
who has others sip patience from her cup of coffee”:
Kahve fincanından yudum yudum sabır içiren kadın; falıma çabuk
bak!
Ağzındaki düşünce posaları dudağımı yakmada; cezvende merak ne
kadar da kaynamış kadınım, ne kadar da kaynamış!
Fincanından tabağa bir şehir kalabalığı boşanıyor.
Dibinden tortu tortu umutlar sökün etti.
Kenarında saç mı toplanmış? Muhakkak tuzaktır.
“Yol” deme; yolum yarıda kaldı.
“Sana açılmış el var” diyorsun; elim geride kaldı.
Deste deste kâğıtlar mı var? Muhakkak cezvene alın yazılarım
dökülmüş olacak.
Kalabalık görüyorsun: Fincanıma zihnimi boşalttımdı, bu az mı?
İstemem, istemem, fincanın senin olsun; zihnimi geri çevir! 11
(“Woman who makes me sip patience from a cup of coffee; quick,
read my fortune!
The pulps of thought in your mouth burn my lips; how boiled is
patience
In your pot, my woman, how boiled!
The crowds of a city pour from the cup to the saucer.
Grounds and grounds of hope descend to the bottom.
Is that hair swept on the rim? It must be a trap.
Don’t say “path; ” my path is interrupted.
“A hand begs for you,” you say; my hand is left behind
Bundles and bundles of paper?
Surely, my fates have fallen into
your pot.
You see a crowd: I
emptied my mind
into the cup, isn’t
that enough?
No, no, keep
your cup; reverse
my mind!)

11 Kaya Bilgegil, Cehennem Meyvası, İstanbul 1944, pp. 55-56.

109
 Yes, people who wish to have their
fortunes read are impatient. Although
the pessimistic protagonist of Tarık
Buğra’s short story “Fal” never opens
his cup after turning it over
with the words, ““whatever my
fortune shall hold, should be
told,”12 those who are curious
about the future with the hope of
receiving good news from the coffee grounds will want their cup to cool
as soon as possible. As poet Arif Nihat Asya says:
Bir izbe ki kalmıştır umut telvelere
Kül bağlar ocak, kahve biter, fal bitmez.13

(A dark hope clings to coffee grounds

The stove turns to ash, the coffee runs out, but fortune never does.)

12 Tarık Buğra, Oğlumuz, İstanbul 1949, pp. 56-63.

13 Arif Nihat Asya, Kova Burcu, Ankara 1967, p. 115.

110
 XV
COFFEE SCENES FROM
OLD ISTANBUL

A
ccording to the accounts of Ignatius Mouradgea D’Ohsson
in his three-volume Tableau general de l’Empire Othoman
published in 1787, there was no mention of the bans
on coffee and coffeehouses in the 18th century. Despite its eternal
opponents, coffee seemed to have declared victory. It was possible to
encounter coffeehouses on every avenue and street; in fact, the majority
of these coffeehouses were built as pavilions and located in scenic areas.
Countryside coffeehouses, on the other hand, were set up under colossal
trees and grapevine pergolas. People would gather at these locations
at all hours of the day and play checkers or chess, drink coffee, smoke
tobacco, and chat. During winter months, public storytellers (meddah)
and magicians displayed their talent at the coffeehouses, which some
frequented only to have a cup of coffee and rest.
According to D’Ohsson, the East’s passion for coffee was beyond any
estimation. Coffee was the protocol drink in all levels of the state; men,
women, and even children drank coffee, not only at breakfast, but during
all hours of the day. Without fail, coffee was offered in all the visited places;
if the visit lasted long, second or third rounds ensued. In recounting these
observations, D’Ohsson also mentions that the cups were much smaller
than the ones used in Europe and that since they had no handles, they
were placed in copper or silver cup holders to avoid burning the hands.

111
D’Ohsson also notes that the cup holders of the rich were made of gold
and often encrusted with precious stones.
After indicating that Yemeni coffee was preferred in the Ottoman
world as it was easier to prepare, he goes on to detail the entire process,
from roasting to service. Accordingly, the coffee beans are to be roasted
and cooled, ground into powder in marble, brass, or wooden mortars,
and kept in tightly shut leather pouches or wooden boxes to preserve
the aroma. Ground coffee is brewed slowly in tinned copper pots; as the
water begins to boil, five or six small teaspoons of are added and the pot is
taken off the fire once it begins to simmer and froth. Coffee is done once
it releases its essence into the water after this frothing process. Since fresh
coffee has better flavor, large households roast as much coffee as needed
every day.
Recording that there are countless shops selling fresh coffee in
İstanbul and across various cities of the Empire, D’Ohsson mentions the
opening of large shops, known as tahmis, which only concentrate on the
roasting and grounding of coffee. He adds that the public often takes
their coffee to these shops and have their coffee roasted and ground in
exchange for a small amount, and that tahmis managers are adamant on
not altering the quality and quantity of the coffee their clients brought in.
D’Ohsson documents another important fact: Unlike the Europeans,
Turks do not add milk, cream, or sugar to coffee in order not to spoil the
flavor; however, offering liquid (sherbet) or solid sweets (Turkish delight)
with bitter coffee is customary. Coffee taken after dinner is never served
with sweets. The health-conscious eat one or two spoonfuls of jam and
drink a glass of water for breakfast and have a cup of coffee afterwards.
Some people prefer to have their coffee after a more hefty breakfast. One
must drink coffee slowly while it is still hot; tobacco fiends double this
pleasure by smoking their pipes with their coffee.1
Having penned his impressions of İstanbul a hundred years after
(1874) D’Ohsson must have misobserved the coffee tradition when he
wrote, “coffee is made fresh for every customer, and is brought to him
already sugared, together with a glass of water”.2 One must recall the
prevailing belief that sweetened coffee was deemed appropriate for
women, whereas men were expected to drink bitter coffee. The emergence
of different ways of making coffee –low sugar, semi-sweet or sweet– over
time must be considered a natural development.

1 D’Ohsson, 18. Yüzyıl Türkiye’sinde Örf ve Adetler, Tercüman 1001 Temel Eser, İstanbul nd., pp.
59-61.
2 Edmondo de Amicis, Constantinople 1878, Cornell University Library 2009, pp. 61-62.

113
 Before moving on to De Amicis’ impressions of coffeehouses, it is
important to review the accounts of Théophile Gautier, who arrived in
İstanbul twenty-two years in advance. This romantic poet, who seems to
have imagined spectacular eastern coffeehouses like the Alhambra Palace
after having read the exaggerated depictions of travelers, was greatly
disappointed at a coffeehouse considered as one of the most beautiful
ones in İstanbul. Gautier describes a coffeehouse with whitewashed walls,
furnished with ottomans and a small, marble jet pool at the center; a
coffee maker constantly prepares coffee in copper pots on the stove with
screen. Similar to other writers, Gautier mentions that this coffeehouse
also functions as a barbershop.3 It is important to note that unlike his
predecessors, Gautier notices the paintings on the walls –which he finds
unrefined– and offers detailed information about them.
It is only natural that Gautier regarded the paintings with disfavor.
Run by merchant janissaries until the Janissary Corps was disbanded,
coffeehouses survived the memory of the Bektashi sect with which the
Corps was affiliated. Executed by folk artists, the naïf paintings reflecting
Bektashi beliefs decorated the coffeehouses. Considering that the
accounts of coffee aficionados in Vehbi Surnamesi included the depictions
on the walls,4 this tradition was quite dated and survived even after the
Corps was abolished. Some of the images that Gautier describes could be
encountered in almost any given coffeehouse in those years. For example,
one such image features a dervish cap placed on a three-legged stool
inscribed with Qur’anic verses. Another displays a sheikh (Hacı Bektaş-ı
Veli) seated on a deerskin, trying to tame a blood-red lion, as well as
calligraphic inscriptions of Allah and Ali, decorated with flowers…5 Later,
images of various folk tales, Şehname characters, and prophet tales, as well
as legends of Prophet Ali, Hamza, and Seyyid Battal were added to these.
With “Ah min’el-aşk” (Oh, love) calligraphic panels in particular, various
inscriptions-images, and couplets of wisdom are indispensible decorations
of coffeehouses.
Artist Malik Aksel, who has a special interest in Turkish folk painting,
details and evaluates coffeehouse paintings in two of his important
books.6 Renowned poet Mehmet Âkif, on the other hand, sarcastically
treats the same subject in his famous poem “Mahalle Kahvesi” (Local
Coffeehouse) in which he drags local coffeehouses through the mud:
3 Théophile Gautier, ibid., p. 119.
4 Mehmet Arslan, Osmanlı Saray Düğünleri ve Şenlikleri 3, Vehbî Sûrnâmesi, Sarayburnu
Kitaplığı, İstanbul 2009, p. 224.
5 Théophile Gautier, ibid., p. 120.
6 Malik Aksel, Anadolu Halk Resimleri, Kapı Yayınları, İstanbul 2010; Türklerde Dinî Resimler,
Kapı Yayınları, İstanbul 2010. Also see, Balıkhane Nazırı Ali Rıza Bey, Eski Zamanlarda
İstanbul Hayatı (ed. Ali Şükrü Çoruk), Kitabevi Yayınları, İstanbul 2001, pp. 37, 271.

114
 Duvarda türlü resimler: Alındı Çamlıbeli,
Kaçırmış Ayvaz’ı ağlar Köroğlu rahmetli!
Arab Üzengi’ye çalmış Şah İsmail gürzü;
Ağaçta bağlı duran kızda işte şimdi gözü.
Firaklıdır Kerem’in “Of! ” der demez yanışı,
Fakat şu “Âh mine’l-aşk”a kim durur karşı?
Gelince Ezraka Bânû denen acûze kadın,
Külüngü düşmüş elinden zavallı Ferhâd’ın!
Görür de böyle Rüfâî’yi: Elde kamçı yılan,
Beyaz bir arslana binmiş, durur mu hiç dede can?
Bakındı bak Hacı Bektâş’a: Deh demiş duvara!
Resim bitince gelir şüphesiz ki beyte sıra.
Birer birer oku mümkünse, sonra ma’nâ ver...7

(Various pictures on the wall: Çamlıbeli takes offense,

Having missed Ayvaz, the late Köroğlu cries!
Shah Ismail’s mace resembles an Arab stirrup;
His eye is now on the girl tied to the tree.
Melancholic is Kerem’s enamored sigh,
Yet who can resist love?
When that vixen named Bânû arrives in Ezrak,
Poor Ferhad drops his iron crowbar!
So appears Rüfâî with a serpentine whip in hand,
Riding on a white lion, can the sheikh stop?
He looks for Haci Bektash, giddyup he says to the wall!
No more paintings, now is the time for verse,
Read them one by one if possible, then make sense...)

7 Mehmed Âkif, Safahat (ed. Ertuğrul Düzdağ), İz Yayıncılık, İstanbul 2009, pp. 109-110.

115
 Gautier also mentions paintings with foreign themes, such as
“Napoleon at the Battle of Ratisbon,” “Spanish Girl”, and “Battle of
Austerlitz” on the walls of the coffeehouses he visited. In the ensuing
years, folk paintings reflecting Western culture were also encountered in
coffeehouses. “Young Moor Coming to Kill the Sultan” (Othello), “Girl-like
Boy Embarking his Lover on the Ship” (Paris abducting Helen), “Shepherd
who Cradles his Lover in his Arms and Crosses over the River” (Paul and
Virginia), and “Beautiful Shepherd Gazing at his own Reflection in the
Pool” (Narcissus).8 Diversified over time, the subjects of coffeehouse
paintings also included current events. For example, images of “Symbol of
Liberty” and “Mother Liberty,” which Enver Bey and Niyazi Bey –regarded
as heroes after the proclamation of the Second Constitution– released
from the chains of despotism, soldiers of the ‘Action Army’ with their felt
caps and cartridges on their shoulders, and ungroomed Namık Kemal
portraits had assumed their places in the coffeehouses. Among other
popular coffeehouse portraits were those of Sultan Mehmed II (Fâtih)
leading his gray horse to the sea, and Sultan Selim I (Yavuz) with his earring
and handlebar moustache.9
It is surprising that a writer as observant as De Amicis failed to
notice the coffeehouse paintings. Although he depicts –in meticulous
detail– the interior of the coffeehouse where he stops by to have four
or five cups of coffee and watch the spectacular view of İstanbul as
he strolls through Kasımpaşa, he never mentions the paintings. Who
knows? Perhaps, there were no paintings in this particular coffee house!
In describing his experiences from that day, De Amicis briefly summarizes
the exciting history of coffee –which undergoes a bloody stage during the
reign of Sultan Murad IV–and notes that this “sources of dream genies
and reveries” against which a strict Muslim scholar fought as the “enemy
of sleep and children,” is now the sweetest consolation of even the poorest
of Muslims. Nowadays, coffee is not only served in coffeehouses, but
everywhere: at the summits of Galata and Serasker Towers, on the ferries,
in the cemeteries, in Turkish baths, and even in the markets. No matter
where you are in İstanbul, all you have to do is yell, “Coffee maker! ” and
within a few minutes, a steaming cup of coffee appears before you.
De Amicis painstakingly describes this small coffeehouse in
Kasımpaşa, which seems to have left an indelible trace in his memory:
Our café was a large whitewashed room, wainscoted with wood to
the height of a man, with a low divan running all around it. In one corner

8 Reşat Ekrem Koçu, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi VII, pp. 3678-3679, 3684.

9 Malik Aksel, Anadolu Halk Resimleri, p. 81.

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there was a stove at which a Turk with a forked (sic) nose was making
coffee in a small copper coffee-pot, and turning it out as he made it into
tiny cups, putting in the sugar at the same time; for, at Constantinople,
coffee is made fresh for every customer, and is brought to him already
sugared, together with a glass of water that every Turk drinks before
approaching the cup of coffee to his lips; upon the wall was suspended
a small mirror, and beside it a sort of rack containing razors with fixed
handles; the greater part of the cafés being also barber’s shops, and not
unfrequently the café keeper is also a dentist and a blood-letter, and
operates upon his victims in the same room where the other customers
are taking their coffee. Upon the opposite wall hung another rack full
of crystal narghilés, with long flexible tubes, twisted like serpents, and
chibouks of earthenware with cherry wood stems. Five pensive Turks were
seated upon the divan, smoking the narghilé, while three others sat in
front of the door on law straw seats without backs, one beside the other,
pipe in mouth, and their shoulders leading against the wall (…).10
Similar to the coffeehouse De Amicis visited in Kasımpaşa, it was
possible to find simple and beautiful coffeehouses at the most unexpected
parts of old İstanbul, from which one could observe the spectacular
views of the city. We know that European travelers had a special interest
in such picturesque coffeehouses. Francis Marion Crawford, who visited
İstanbul in the 1890s, sings praises for the spot on the corner of the first
coffeehouse on the left going toward İstanbul over Galata Bridge. Adding
that this large, airy, and clean coffeehouse unknown to most Europeans
is perfect for sitting for hours in undisturbed enjoyment of coffee and
cigarettes, and watch the busy life of the city, he begins to describe –from
where he is seated– the scene as “dazzling and kaleidoscopic in its variety
of color and quick motion.”11
French writer Pierre Loti’s favorite coffeehouse is located in
Eyüpsultan; stopping by at Rabia Kadın Kahvesi12 upon the hill each time
he visited İstanbul and enjoying the views of İstanbul and the Golden
Horn along with his coffee and nargileh, the wrtier must have eulogized
this pleasure to his friends. Although we cannot identify exactly when
this coffeehouse took on the name “Piyerloti,” we learn from Abdülhak
Şinasi Hisar’s İstanbul ve Pierre Loti that the French who visited İstanbul
always wanted to see the coffeehouse and that other authors particularly
mentioned this spot in their works. According to Hisar, the magical view

10 Edmondo de Amicis, ibid., pp. 61-62.

11 Francis Marion Crawford, Constantinople, Adamant Media Corporation, July 2002, pp. 12-
15.
12 M. Mesut Koman, Eyüp Sultan, Loti Kahvesi ve Çevresi, TTOK Yayınları, İstanbul 1986, p. 8.

118
Loti watched from this location remained mostly unchanged in the
1950s. The historic silhouette of İstanbul on one side, the treeless view
of Okmeydanı and the Jewish cemetery on the other; the remains of the
Byzantine walls, the large sultanic mosques, and, beyond, Galata Tower,
Galata Bridge, and Topkapı Palace...13
During a journey to İstanbul in 1911, in which he visited every
nook and cranny of the city, Le Corbusier stopped by at a coffeehouse in
Mahmutpaşa Bazaar with a friend. He excitedly described this coffeehouse
where coffee is offered in small bowls –in other words, large, kallâvi cups
with no handles–, tea is served in pear-shaped glasses, and delicious
tobacco is smoked.14 What would this famous architect have written,
had he also visited the “Çınaraltı Kahvesi” in Emirgân? During the years
in which he was appointed as ambassador abroad, Yahya Kemal always
longed for this coffeehouse. We have no information on whether or not
he frequented any coffeehouses in Warsaw. However, we
know that while in Madrid, he traversed the streets of the
city in his free time, that he took a rest at cafés when he was
tired, but that he disliked the commotion of the cafés
and the boisterousness of the Spanish.15 Dreaming of
“Çınaraltı Kahvesi” in Emirgân on such a day, he describes
his favorite coffeehouse in his poem entitled “Madrid’de
Kahvehane” (Coffeehouse in Madrid):
Durdum, hazin hazin, acıdım kendi hâlime
Aksetti bir dakika uzaktan hayalime,
Sakin Emirgân’ın Çınaraltı Kahvesi,
Poyraz serinliğindeki yaprakların sesi.

(I stood, ruefully, feeling sorry for myself

For a minute, it flashed on my memory from
afar
The calm Çınaraltı Coffeehouse of Emirgân
The sound of leaves in the cool of the northeast
wind.)
Experiencing the same illusion once more when
he lived abroad and describing it in his poem entitled,

13 Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, İstanbul ve Pierre Loti, İstanbul Fethi Derneği İstanbul Enstitüsü
Yayınları, İstanbul 1958, pp. 176-177.
14 Le Corbusier, Şark Seyahati-İstanbul 1911 (trans. Alp Tümertekin), İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları,
İstanbul 2009, pp. 96-99.
15 Adile Ayda, Yahya Kemal’in Fikir ve Şiir Dünyası, Hisar Yayınları, Ankara 1979, pp. 69-82, 85-
91

119
Hüzün ve Hatıra (Sorrow and Memory), Yahya Kemal was content with
merely recalling Emirgân’s Çınaraltı Kahvesi, the conversation between the
wind and the leaves of the magnificent sycamore, the marble fountain,
and the magnificent Yesâri calligraphy that decorated it.
Similar to Yahya Kemal, Ruşen Eşref also traversed İstanbul and wrote
about the city. In the essay, “Çınaraltı Kahvesi” he wrote after a visit to
Emirgân, Eşref talks about the same coffeehouse, fountain, and the Yesârî’s
ta’lik script as follows:
Its beauty is derived from the harmony
of three simple things: the sycamore,
the marble, and the sea… Four or five
sycamores occupy a slope-like public
square along the water. Large as tree
trunks, the entangled branches extend
to the upper level of the white minaret
of a mosque with marble columns. The
colossal bunch of greens in the blue sky
spread over the wide portico of a hundred and
fifty year-old fountain. The Turkish Rococo fountain resting in the six or
seven-month-long shadow of this sycamore thicker than the columns
of a temple from Antiquity, is as graceful as a water mihrab... Inscribed
on a green background, the tablets on all four sides reflect the golden
calligraphic script of Yesârî’, taken for sparks of sun from afar.16
The Çınaraltı coffeehouse was one of Yahya Kemal’s favorite venues
during the times he spent in İstanbul. His close friend Halis Erginer
recounts that he would get together with Kemal at least four times a
week between 1941 and 1948, adding that their first stop would always
be Emirgân, where the master would talk to his admirers for hours about
poetry and Ottoman history.17

16 Ruşen Eşref Ünaydın, Bütün Eserleri 3, Hatıralar I (eds. Necat Birinci-Nuri Sağlam), TDK
Yayınları, Ankara 2002, p. 281.
17 Halis Erginer: “Yahya Kemal’den Hâtıralar”, Yahya Kemal Enstitüsü Mecmuası I, İstanbul 1959,
p. 85.

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 XVI
LOCAL
COFFEEHOUSES

O
ne Turkish painter, namely, Hoca Ali Rıza Bey of Üsküdar was able
to see the beauties of old Turkish coffeehouses that foreigners
such as De Amicis, Pierre Loti, and Le Corbusier appreciated as
foreigners. Looking at the same beauties from the inside, Hoca Ali Rıza
Bey strived to eternalize these scenes with his brush. A regular of the
Çiçek Kahvesi in Selimiye, as well as the Saraçlar Kahvesi in Haydarpaşa’s
Saraçlar quarter, this grand master was interested in everything about his
favorite drink and would immediately take out his notebook and pen to
begin drawing whenever he was
at a coffeehouse. For example, his
cup after he drank his coffee… He
is known to have scribbled the
note, “One must profit at once
after drinking coffee” below such a
depiction.
Recognized as the founder
of “Üsküdar School” in Turkish
painting and having relentlessly
portrayed the historic and natural
wonders of İstanbul on his canvas
through various techniques like
Süheyl Ünver sips his coffee

121
oil, watercolor, and pencil throughout his life, Hoca Ali Rıza sought to be
a “devoted and true translator” to the life of his country and nation. It
can be argued that his art was a gentlemanly defiance against those who
belittled and degraded the beauties of their country. During the times
in which İstanbul still preserved the garden-city character Le Corbusier
admired, he would loyally transmit to pictorial language the narrow and
shadowed streets, modes wooden houses, masjids, fountains, cemeteries
with cypress trees, the Bosphorus and the spectacular views from its
slopes, moonlit nights, characteristic trees –particularly the stone pines
he so loved– the various objects used in daily life, countryside and
neighborhood coffeehouses, and their interiors with the pens, brushes,
and paints he always carried with him. Yet, his realism was distinct from
any Western painter; he would delve into an object or a scene with a
fine poetic sensitivity and a mystic thrill. The colors on his palette were
transparent; a careful scrutiny of his paintings conveys the sense that he
was able to show the invisible behind the apparent.

A local coffeehouse

In a small book, Hoca Ali Rıza’s student and friend A. Süheyl Ünver
brings together some of Ali Rıza’s watercolors and pencil drawings
that reflect Turkish coffee culture.1 It appears that Hoca Ali Rıza, who
meticulously depicted sea- and countryside coffeehouses he encountered
as he strolled through İstanbul, as well as their interiors and objects such
as coffee cupboard, coffee cooler, coffee box, coffee mill, pot, cup, nargileh
and portable coffee stoves, etc., had a particular interest in small, simple
1 A. Süheyl Ünver, Ressam Ali Rıza Bey’e Göre Yarım Asır Önce Kahvehanelerimiz ve Eşyası,
Ankara Sanat Yayınları, Ankara 1967.

122
 Çiçekçi Kahvesi (Coffeehouse) from Süheyl Ünver’s brush

coffeehouses. For example, Hoca Ali Rıza had hastily sketched an overall
view of a seaside coffeehouse he had discovered in Rumelihisarı, but
returned to the same venue -with more time on his hands- to depict it in
full detail. He was so fond of these coffeehouses that sometimes he would
reconstruct in his notebook a sea- or countryside coffeehouse from his
imagination. If he were to ever open a coffeehouse, he would probably
have designed it to resemble the ones he sketched from his “imagination.”
Through his paintings, we are able to obtain significant information
about some of the coffeehouses that were in operation at the turn of the
pervious century. Among these are the coffeehouses of Kıvırcık Ahmet
Ağa along the Üsküdar coast and of Broş Dayı in Değirmendere, Taşdelen
Suyu Kahvehanesi in Alemdağı, and the coffeehouse right beside İshak
Ağa Fountain in Beykoz …
Carefully portraying the interior of the coffeehouses he appreciated
and regularly frequented, Hoca Ali Rıza also has pencil drawings that
reveal the details of the coffee hearths at Cemal Ağa’s coffeehouse in
Merdivenköyü, as well as a coffeehouse in Doğancılar. The backgammons
Cemal Ağa places on the divan, as well as the cups and glasses on the
shelves can be counted one by one in these drawings. Coffee utensils were
one of the passions of this master, who painted numerous interior and
exterior depictions of the Saraçlar Coffeehouse in the İbrahimağa quarter
of Haydarğaşa where he lived for years. His notebooks are filled with pencil
drawings of cups, pots, coffee boxes, coffee coolers, etc., such as the coffee
and sugar boxes that belonged to coffee aficionado and painter Müfide

123
Kadri’s father Kadri Bey, a coffee jar on a tray, a pot and cup, a coffee
cupboard…
On one such day, for example, Hoca Ali Rıza painted the coffee
mills as he sat in a coffeehouse in the village of Bulgurlu, and included the
narghiles and the coffeehouse regulars in his depiction.

A local coffeehouse

It can be said that the Çiçekçi Kahvesi Hoca Ali Rıza regularly
frequented was a typical local coffeehouse. According to Burhan Felek,
this red ocher coffeehouse in Üsküdar –which is no longer intact– was
located in the middle of the street that ran from Doğancılar to Duvardibi
along the cemetery via Tunusbağı, across from the fountain bearing the
signature of Sultan Selim III, right above the rampart on the corner; it was
accessed by three or four steps.2 A watercolor by A. Süheyl Ünver vividly
portrays Çiçek Kahvesi, which was run by a certain Haci Ahmet, who was
both a coffee maker and a barber in his final years. Çiçekçi Kahvesi was a
kind of club that catered to the men of İhsaniye and Selimiye quarters; one
could enjoy the gentle breeze in the garden during summer days and sit in
the well-heated interior. We do not know why Hoca Ali Rıza never painted
this coffeehouse or, if he had, where that painting is today.
Originally from İhsaniye, writer Burhan Felek describes at length
the interior of Çiçekçi Kahvesi: As you walked through the door, there
was a mirror and a barber seat on the left; the brass washbasins used
during shaving hung close to the ceiling. Hacı Ahmet sat in his chair

2 Burhan Felek, Yaşadığımız Günler, Milliyet Yayınları, İstanbul 1974, p. 81; also see A. Süheyl
Ünver, ibid., p. 65.

125
immediately next to the coffee stove. The coffeehouse was comprised of
two sections; the eighty or ninety cm-high upper section (seat of honor)
was reserved for the notables of the neighborhood. Furthermore, when
poets like Üsküdarlı Talat Bey, calligraphers like İlmî Bey and Necmeddin
Okyay, and painters like Hoca Ali Rıza Bey frequented the coffeehouse,
they were seated in this section surrounded by divans and engaged
deep in conversation. The lower section belonged to the tradesmen of
the neighborhood, who carefully listened to the conversations above.3
Everyone knew his place in this coffeehouse.
There is no doubt that coffeehouses reflected a natural social
structuring that was formed outside the control of the authority.
Neighborhood coffeehouses, coffeehouses frequented by the young,
coffeehouses of the boatmen and porters at the piers, coffeehouses of
cooks and horse carriage drivers in various places, aficionado coffeehouses,
coffeehouses of public storytellers or semai singers, and coffeehouses for
fellow townsmen and the retired provided the opportunity for various
social groups and professions to communicate with and support one
another.
Evidently, not all coffeehouses were innocent; jobless drifters would
sometimes gather at coffeehouses, cause unrest, and disturb the locals.
Ahmet Rasim notes that at one point, not only women, but young men
did not dare walk past the coffeehouses in neighborhoods like Aksaray,
Çeşmemeydanı, Cerrahpaşa, and even Direklerarası.4 Coffeehouse
opponents such as Mehmed Âkif and Fish market superintendent Ali
Rıza Bey strongly condemned such places partly for this reason. From
the perspective of the fish market superintendent, local coffeehouses
were awful, impossibly dirty places with crude paintings, frequented
by tobacco, snuff, and hashish-addicts, coughing, sneezing, downbeat,
gossipy, ignorant, grumpy old men who thought they “had a grasp on the
news of the world.” 5
Ali Rıza Bey, the protagonist of Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s novel Yaprak
Dökümü, was initially an uncompromising coffeehouse opponent
like Mehmet Âkif and his namesake, the fish market superintendent.
During his public service, he kept complaining, “I would shut down all
of them if only I had the power to! ” Once he was retired and began to
nag the members of his household, he realized that coffeehouses were
“irreplaceable corners of consolation” for miserable retirees. He would

3 Burhan Felek, ibid., pp. 82-83.

4 Ahmet Rasim, “Kahve Kahvehanelerimiz”, Akşam, 26 March 1926.
5 Balıkhane Nazırı Ali Rıza Bey, ibid., pp. 37-40.

126
first stop by at a few countryside coffeehouses to rest during his walks to
Çamlıca or the Üsküdar Market, and gradually, he grew accustomed to
local coffeehouses. Let us hear the rest from Reşat Nuri:
At first, he would sit alone in a corner and read his newspaper. He
had still not overcome his repugnance for the regulars of these coffeehouses. He
was determined never to mingle with them. He could be nothing more than a
spectator here. What did he see and hear? There were some elderly men who
would portray the intimate details of their home life without any embarrassment,
detailing what they ate and admitting that sometimes they starved due to lack
of food.

Others constantly played backgammon or cards, stopping occasionally

to pick at each other with dirty cracks, only to continue their game as though
nothing had transpired. In fact, one day, he had witnessed the beating of a retiree
known for his successful career. In Ali Rıza Bey’s mind, this man had to go into
seclusion and even die after such a scandal. Yet, he found him at the same
coffeehouse the very next day, playing backgammon as if nothing had happened.

First, he lent an ear to a couple of helpless souls in search of someone to

chat with. Over time, the acquaintances slowly grew in number. Yet, his pride
was still strong.

Although he always listened to others, he never uttered a word of his own

troubles.

A local coffeehouse

127
 He finally realized that the coffeehouse was the only bastion against the
pains of unemployment and cantankerous families. Without it, retirees had little
else to do but die.6

Abdülaziz Bey did with his pen what Hoca Ali Rıza achieved with his
brush; he was one of the writers to have noticed that the coffeehouses of
that period were not the abode of the lazy, but rather “the only bastion
against the pains of unemployment and cantankerous families.” He thus
strived to bring to fore the positive and useful aspects of coffeehouses.
The “abridged” version of his more than four pages long encomium on
local coffeehouses is as follows:
The venues dismissed as local coffeehouses were Encümen-i Dâniş
(Academy of Science) in form; they acted as institutions of science and
education or associations of social welfare. They assumed the important
mission of strengthening social structure, as well as the bonds between the
public. They continued to serve this purpose as long as I could remember;
unfortunately, however, they first lost their social status and subsequently
vanished among the forgotten, the unknown.7
Çiçekçi Kahvesi that Burhan Felek describes is essentially an
Encümen-i Dâniş coffeehouse like those of Abdülaziz Bey. Despite his
strong opposition to local coffeehouses in his famous poem “Mahalle
Kahvesi,” poet Mehmed Âkif failed to stay away from this coffeehouse
during the years he lived in Üsküdar.

6 Reşat Nuri Güntekin, Yaprak Dökümü, Semih Lütfi Kitabevi, İstanbul 1944.
7 Abdülaziz Bey, ibid., pp. 301-306.

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 XVII
KIRAATHANE

W
e regrettably have no information available on Mehmed Âkif’s
relationship with coffee. However, in his aforementioned
poem “Mahalle Kahvesi,” he likens local coffeehouses to sly
murderers disguised as beggars and waylayers that rob people during
daytime; he regards them as nests of laziness and filth that steal time and
discourage people from working and strives to portray how disgusting
they are by depicting a local coffeehouse in detail. A ruthless opponent
of Âkif and his conception of poetry, literary critic and essayist Nurullah
Ataç would probably only agree with him on their mutual hatred of
coffeehouses. The following sentences in his unpublished essay entitled
“Kahve” (Coffee) are akin to an interpretation of “Mahalle Kahvesi”:
The coffeehouse is the sanctuary of those who do not know how
to organize their lives or homes or how to make friends. In short, it is the
place for those running away from reality. There they find an atmosphere
that soothes their daily worries and inconsolable loneliness, acquaintances
that chance has to offer. Their imagination runs wild: the faces they see as
ghosts in fact imagine an entirely different life for themselves; they count
sorrow and joy, which are nothing more than a delusion or memory, like
the beads of a rosary. Each coffeehouse –whether it permits opium and
hashish or not– is a drug house. They even show life as a dream to those
who watch the crowds on the street from their wide, glass façades.1

1 Nurullah Ataç, “Kahve”, Haber Akşam Postası, 10 August 1937.

129
 Despite these views, Nurullah Ataç frequented İkbal Kıraathanesi
during the years he spent in Yahya Kemal’s entourage, and Küllük Kahvesi
in the 1940s. We know from the laudatory verses he wrote on the cafés in
Berlin that Mehmed Âkif was not opposed to clean, well-lit coffeehouses
in which people could eat, talk, and spend enjoyable time. Furthermore, he
would stop by Hacı Mustafa’s teahouse in Direklerarası, Ârif’s coffeehouse
on Divanyolu, and Çiçekçi Kahvesi in Üsküdar to converse with friends.
From the start, some coffeehouses had been preferred by scholars,
artists, and intellectuals; regarded as “mecma’-ı zurefa” (place of the
witty) and “mekteb-i irfan” (school of learning), the coffee served in such
coffeehouses was known as “ehl-i irfan şerbeti” (sherbet of the master of
wisdom). However, it is clear that not all coffeehouses were of the same
nature. In the short stories and novels of Ahmed Midhat Efendi and
Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, we encounter coffeehouses similar to the ones
Mehmed Âkif lampooned.
As meticulously depicted by artists such as Van Moor, Melling,
Thomas Allom, and Preziosi, the spacious, airy, and pleasant coffeehouses
set up in the most scenic locations of the city were nothing like the ones
Mehmed Âkif criticized. Mostly perished by fires and partly destroyed
by the wrath of developers, these coffeehouses appealed to European
travelers as well. Suffocated in the Pera district during a visit to İstanbul
in 1843, French poet Gérard de Nerval disguised himself as an Iranian on
a Ramadan night, crossed over to old İstanbul and watched a Karagöz
performance in a coffeehouse in Beyazıt and listened to a public storyteller
in yet another coffeehouse.2

Melling- A Coffeehouse in İstanbul

2 Gérard de Nerval, Doğuya Seyahat (trans. Muharrem Taşçıoğlu), Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı
Yayınları, Ankara 1984, pp. 57-68, 95-97.

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 During the time of Nerval’s visit, Divanyolu was still the picturesque
avenue of the old period; with wicker stools scattered in front, the
coffeehouses of “ehl-i keyf” (masters of pleasure) were destroyed in the
great Hocapaşa fire that broke out in 1865 and the expropriation that
ensued. Only four coffeehouses remained; decorated with silk carpets
four lovely coffeehouses, one with a jet pool and the other three with
mirrors… In İstanbul Ansiklopedisi (Encyclopedia of İstanbul), Reşat
Ekrem Koçu conveys the long poem in which a Bektashi poet describes
these four coffeehouses. According to the poet named Nebil Baba, young,
handsome, and immaculately dressed young waiters served in these posh
coffeehouses with elite customers. The stoves were adorned and the
pipes of cherry and jasmine wood were hand carved. With their porcelain
cups and filigree cup holders, these select venues could even host the
Sultan.3 Perhaps the drawings Preziosi executed in the 1850s portray these
coffeehouses that Nebil Baba belauded.
İstanbul coffeehouses conveyed a unique architecture. The
information Dr. Rifat Osman Bey offers in an article4 on the architecture he
thoroughly researched, overlaps with the coffeehouse depictions whose
names are mentioned above. Similar to the audience halls of old mansions,
with walls adorned from floor to ceiling with the aesthetic taste of the
period, wooden ceilings carefully executed in çıtakâri technique, marble jet
pools, graceful, screen ovens, lines of cups, pots, narghiles, and pipes on the
shelves, and spectacular views, the coffeehouses fascinated both local and
foreign visitors alike. The coffeehouses were comprised of two sections:
orta mekan (central space) and başsedir (seat of honor). Accessed by a
narrow staircase of two steps, başsedir resembled the private enclose for
the Sultan in the mosque; it was covered with carpets and surrounded by
divans. Accommodating twenty or twenty five, this section, also known
as köşe or sedirlik, was reserved for privileged customers poet Nebil Baba
refers to as “eşraf, âyan, paşalar” (gentry, notables, and pashas):
Dört aded kahve-i safâ-bahşâlar
Müşterisi eşraf, âyan paşalar
Biri havuzludur üçü aynalı
Cümle döşenmişdir kadife halı

3 Reşat Ekrem Koçu, “Divanyolu Kahveleri”, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, v. IX, pp. 4626-4627.
4 Rifat Osman, “Memleketimiz Tarihinde Mükeyyifata Bir Bakış: Kahvehaneler”, İstanbul
Belediyesi Mecmuası, no. 87, İstanbul 1931. Also, see İbrahim Numan, “Eski İstanbul
Kahvehanelerinin İctimai Hayattaki Yeri ve Mimarisi Hakkında Bazı Mülahazalar”, Kubbealtı
Akademi Mecmuası, no. 2, April 1981, pp. 64-74.

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 (There are four coffeehouses of enjoyment
The clients of which are the gentry, notables, and pashas
One has a pool and the other three have mirrors
They are all decorated with velvet carpets)
It appears that such ostentatious coffeehouses disappeared in the
19th century; they were replaced by simpler versions in which chairs and
tables were used instead of divans. However, some of the coffeehouses
depicted in Hoca Ali Rıza’s paintings maintain their traditional architecture
for some time. The previously mentioned Çiçekçi Kahvesi also had a
başsedir (seat of honor) that accommodated prestigious dwellers of
Selimiye and İhsaniye quarters.
Cemiyet-i İlmiye-i Osmaniye’s (Ottoman Society of Science)
establishment of a kıraathane (literally, “reading room”) demonstrates
that after the Tanzimat era, intellectuals felt the need for quiet, club-
like coffeehouses with books and newspapers. The Society’s kıraathane
operating out of the coffeehouse of Taş Mektep behind Yenicami had
in stock more than thirty different newspapers in various languages.
Furthermore, it was also possible to take advantage of the books in
the Society’s library. According to a news piece in Mecmua-i Fünun, the
kıraathane was open every day from three until eleven o’clock except
Tuesdays; there was no discrimination of ethnicity or religion against its
members. Those who wished to become a member had to be nominated
by a member of the Society or the kıraathane; they were also obliged to
pay upfront a membership fee of six months.5
A. Adnan Adıvar rightfully argues that the kıraathane opened by the
Ottoman Society of Science had nothing to do with a coffeehouse, adding
that the “most evident example of the relationship between coffee and
intellectuals,” in other words, the first kıraathane (Salle de Lecture) in the
most modern sense was Sarafim’in Kıraathanesi in Okçularbaşı. Sarafim
Efendi, who started running his kıraathane immediately across from Koca
Reşit Paşa Tomb in Çarşıkapı by offering his customers the newspapers
Cerîde-i Havâdis and Takvîm-i Vekayi released on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
respectively, soon began purchasing all the magazines and newspapers and
converted his coffeehouse into a reading hall and, by extension, a cultural
center frequented by intellectuals of the period. As these newspapers
and magazines were not thrown out after they were read, over time, they
constituted important archive collections that researchers such as Osman
Nuri Ergin and Adnan Adıvar utilized. Attaining a special status as the sales
and distribution point of all the newly released books and renowned as

5 For further information, see Ali Budak, Batılılaşma Sürecinde Çok Yönlü Bir Osmanlı Aydını:
Münif Paşa, Kitabevi Yayınları, İstanbul 2004, pp. 197-208.

132
an intellectuals’ club, Sarafim’in Kıraathanesi also organized, particularly
on Ramadan evenings, poetry and literature discussions in which
famous figures like Namık Kemal occasionally participated.6 According
to Ahmet Rasim, “consisting of small, clean marble tables set between
long and narrow divans on both sides, a library of newspaper collections
books arranged on shelves in the back, and a coffee stove,”7 Sarafim’in
Kıraathanesi demanded certain rules of conduct and manner of reading
newspapers and books. For example, it was impossible to encounter any
violation of etiquette, such as setting one’s cap by the window, pulling the
legs underneath and spreading out on the divan, banging on the table and
yelling, “Bring me a cup of coffee! ” or talking loudly.8

Thomas Allom- A Coffeehouse in İstanbul

Organized against Abdülhamid II in the Kuledibi coffeehouses

of Thessalonica, members of the Committee of Union and Progress
must have regarded coffeehouses as harmful institutions, for after
the proclamation of the Second Constitution, they sought to ban
the name “kahvehane” (coffeehouse) and replace it with kıraathane.
The most famous of the coffeehouses that inevitably began to stock
several newspapers and use the name kıraathane included Kânunuesasi
Kıraathanesi in Tepebaşı frequented by the Committee members, Fevziye
Kıraathanesi in Şehzadebaşı, also serving as a conference hall at times,
and Ârif’in Kıraathanesi in Divanyolu, which more or less maintained the
tradition of the old, ostentatious coffeehouses.
6 For further information, see A. Süheyl Ünver, “Sarafim Kıraathanesi”, Belleten, v. XLIII, no. 170,
April 1979.
7 A. Adnan Adıvar, Bilgi Cumhuriyeti Haberleri, T Neşriyatı, İstanbul 1945, p. 200.
8 Ahmet Rasim, Muharrir, Şair, Edip (ed. Kâzım Yetiş), Tercüman 1001 Temel Eser, İstanbul
1980, p. 170 et. al.

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 Often frequented by civil servants due to its proximity to their
offices, Arif’in Kıraathanesi was an important kıraathane, the regulars of
which included famous poets and writers such as Şinasi, Namık Kemal,
Ahmed Midhat Efendi, Ebüzziya Tevfik, Muallim Nâci, and Mehmed Âkif.
This kıraathane held an important place in collective memory, as it was
the place where great names such as Meddah Aşkî, Meddah İsmet and
Hayalî Kâtip Salih once performed their art. For example, leading Turkish
actor and director Muhsin Ertuğrul associates his passion for theater with
Ârif’in Kıraathanesi, where his father occasionally took him to watch
Meddah İsmet Efendi perform.9
While the name kıraathane is still used in some of the coffeehouses,
it was never fully embraced. In an article he wrote against the 1988
campaign to convert coffeehouses into kıraathanes, writer Tarık Buğra,
who spent almost all his time at the Küllük Kahvesi in Beyazıt during
his college years in İstanbul, regards this initiative as an “attempt to
destroy one’s right and freedom to kill time.” As someone who has
experienced the golden age of Şehzadebaşı, Vezneciler, Beyazıt, Divanyolu
and Sultanahmet coffeehouses, Tarık Buğra argues that no one at the
coffeehouse would read books unless they are forced, adding that he
has never encountered anyone reading books at such places except
for retirees –who devoured newspapers down to the classifieds– and
students because their accommodations were not well heated and they
could not find any other place to study.10

Thomas Allom- A Coffeehouse in İstanbul

9 Ertuğrul Muhsin, Benden Sonra Tufan Olmasın, İstanbul 1989, p. 64.

10 Tarık Buğra, Bu Çağın Adı, Ötüken Neşriyat, İstanbul 1990, pp. 214-217.

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 XVIII
ENTERTAINMENT AT THE
COFFEEHOUSE

W
e mentioned earlier that Gérard de Nerval disguised himself
as an Iranian on the first night of Ramadan in 1843, crossed
over to the İstanbul side, watched a Karagöz shadow theater
at a coffeehouse in Beyazıt Square and listened to a meddah (public
storyteller) performance at another one. Noting, “Had I not mentioned the
performers who tell admiringly beautiful stories for a living in the leading
coffeehouses of İstanbul, the information I would have conveyed on the
allure and entertainment of Ramadan nights in İstanbul would have been
incomplete,”1 Nerval’s Meddah story sounds similar to a tale from his own
imagination. However, his observations on the vivaciousness of Ramadan
nights in İstanbul and the beautiful stories told at certain coffeehouses
are accurate. This means that coffeehouses were simultaneously used as
performance centers and that theatrical arts were survived in such places.
Certain coffeehouses staged Karagöz shadow plays –particularly on
Ramadan nights– whereas others held meddah performances. Karagöz
players often convened in a coffeehouse located in Tahtakale, where the
first coffeehouses were opened. According to Metin And, who is recognized
for his research on traditional Turkish theater, some of the coffeehouses
that staged Karagöz plays during Ramadan months at the turn of the 20th
century were as follows: Mehmet Efendi, Fevziye and Şems Kıraathanesi

1 Gérard de Nerval, ibid., p. 95.

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in Şehzadebaşı, Ârif’in Kıraathanesi in Divanyolu, Meserret Kıraathanesi in
Sultanahmet, Kıraathane-i Osmanî in Vezneciler, Dilküşa Kıraathanesi in
Yeşiltulumba, Mahmut Ağa Kıraathanesi in Çeşmemeydanı, etc.2

H. Saim Bey, Karagöz Performance at a Coffeehouse

Other special coffeehouses featured meddah performances.3

Thomas Allom, who visited İstanbul nine years before Nerval did and
included coffeehouses in his engravings, depicts a meddah named Kız
Ahmet recounting a story from his seat on a high platform in one of
the large coffeehouses –possibly– in Tophane. This particular engraving
demonstrates that a special place was reserved for meddahs at the
aforementioned ostentatious coffeehouses. John Auldjo writes that as
the meddahs recounted their stories, the audience sat in a semi circle,
adding that the front rows were reserved for high standing clients and the
meddah platform called “koltuk” was placed on a higher level.4
As seen in an engraving by Preziosi, musicians were allocated a
special place in coffeehouses. In this engraving, one can see a group of
musicians playing a baglama-like instrument and zurna in the large niche
immediately next to the coffee stove across from the entrance. On the
2 Metin And, Geleneksel Türk Tiyatrosu, Bilgi Yayınevi, Ankara 1969, pp. 168-169.
3 Metin And, “Eski İstanbul’da Meddah Kahveleri”, Folklor, 1/3, 1969.
4 John Auldjo, Journal of a visit to Constantinople and some of the Greek Islands in the Spring
and Summer of 1833, London 1855 (Cited by Metin And, ibid., p. 77.)

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divan in front of the niche, a Mevlevi dervish drinks coffee, whereas a
roughneck type smokes çubuk.5
It is difficult to estimate when music entered coffeehouses; however,
it can be argued that Janissary coffeehouses staged music performances
from the onset and that after the Janissary Corps were abolished (1826),
these coffeehouses were transformed into âşık kahveleri, as well as semai
kahveleri also known as “çalgılı kahveler” (coffeehouses with music) run
by firefighters. Folk poet-singers (âşık) of Turkish music arriving in İstanbul
from Anatolia and Roumelia would come together with their local
counterparts at the Tavukpazarı coffeehouses near Çemberlitaş, carry
out song contests known as “poetry duels” (atışma) and thus were put
through a test. As researcher Ekrem Işın correctly observes, the Ottoman
countryside culture was represented –to a certain extent– in the urban
life of İstanbul through the semai6 coffeehouses in this neighborhood.7
Once saz poets increased in number and became active in İstanbul
in the 19th century, a guild known as Âşıklar Cemiyeti (Association of Folk
Poets) was established and a renowned âşık was appointed as its warden
(kethüda). In charge of organizing semai coffeehouses and preventing
lowlifes from frequenting these coffeehouses, the “Âşıklar Kethüdası”
received his salary from the state. While there were famous semai
coffeehouses in districts
like Beşiktaş, Unkapanı
and Aksaray in the 19th
century, the coffeehouse
that served as the
headquarters of the
guild was located in
Tavukpazarı. In order
for poets to perform
in İstanbul, they had to
obtain a certificate of
competency from the Painter Muazzez, Karagöz Performance at a Coffeehouse
Tavukpazarı Association (IMM Painting Collection, oil, 101x80 cm)

of Folk Poets. The poets

affiliated with this guild were sent to leading cities as of October of every
year to inform the public on a range of subjects. The great reputation saz
poets earned during the reign of Mahmud II indicates that they were used
as propagandists to introduce the new reforms to the public.
5 Amadeo Preziosi (ed. Begüm Kovulmaz), YKY, İstanbul 2007, pp. 42-43.
6 A form special to vocal music with a rhythmic pattern of three beats (T.N.)
7 Ekrem Işın, İstanbul’da Gündelik Hayat, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul 1995, p. 242.

137
 A coffeehouse by Preziosi

Dertli, one of the great names of saz poetry, was put through a
serious test at the aforementioned coffeehouse in Tavukpazarı. Legend
has it that when he arrived in İstanbul as a reputable poet, others became
jealous and put together a difficult riddle to solve in order to discredit
this countryside poet. Dertli had two options: He would either use all his
intelligence to solve the riddle or leave İstanbul, never to return. Glancing
at the riddle framed riddle written in celî sülüs script hanging from the wall,
Dertli relaxed, took the saz given to him by the warden, and after playing
a few keys, he masterfully resolved the riddle in a song. The kethüda put
his arm through Dertli and accompanied him to the seat of honor in the
coffeehouse. Dertli broke the ice once he shared the award money with
the poets in the coffeehouse.

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 It was possible to listen to saz poets at âşık coffeehouses on every day
of the year; semai coffeehouses, on the other hand, were only set up during
the month of Ramadan. In the “Çalgılı Kahveler”8 (Musical Coffeehouses)
entry he wrote for Ekrem Koçu’s İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, Vasıf Hiç, who
opened a semai coffeehouse in Üsküdar on every Ramadan for twenty
years, notes that semai coffeehouses were particular to İstanbul and were
opened in coffeehouses frequented by the tulumbacı (firefighters). More
importantly, it was not necessary to own a coffeehouse to open a semai
coffeehouse; acquaintanceship with firefighters was sufficient. Someone
with enough courage to run a semai coffeehouse reached an agreement
with a coffeehouse owner in exchange for a certain share and began
preparations the day after Sürre Alayı9 sets out to Mecca. Next, the ceiling
was decorated with chains and roses made of colorful paper, the walls
were plastered with pictures and photographs, and a high platform was
set up for musicians in one corner. A minimum of four musicians –playing
klarnet, darbuka, çifte nakkare and zurna– were necessary for a semai
coffeehouse.
Looking forward to these coffeehouses throughout the year,
the regulars would assume their places immediately after the tarawih
prayer on the first night of Ramadan. According to Vasıf Hiç, the crier
of the coffeehouse first recited a semai or divan, followed by a few mani
poems, and later announced by whom the coffeehouse was prepared.
This constituted a kind of opening ceremony in which the coffeehouse
was presented to customers. It was necessary for the coffeehouse crier
to be a lofty, handsome firefighter. Although the musical coffeehouses
were open to customers of all social classes, youngsters with no facial hair
(“şab-ı emred,” which literally means “beardless young man”) were not
admitted. With a wide selection of regulars ranging from swashbucklers
and ruffians ready to make a scene, to the serious and distinguished,
and from bureaucrats to porters, semai coffeehouses gave rise to poets,
singers, and story tellers of considerable renown. However, the majority
of these performed works written by others, in other wolds, great saz
poets like Dertli, Gevherî, Emrah, Âşık Ömer, Seyranî and Bayburtlu Zihnî.
Nevertheless, it is said that those trained in semai coffeehouses have
mastered the art of reciting ayaklı mani. Among mani10 readers, the rhyme

8 İstanbul Ansiklopedisi VII, pp. 3683-3687. For further information on Semai Kahveleri, see
Ahmet Rasim, “Semai Kahveleri”, Resimli Tarih Mecmuası, Yeni Seri, no. 4 (76), April 1956,
pp. 248-251; Osman Cemal Kaygılı, İstanbul’da Semai Kahveleri ve Meydan Şairleri, Eminönü
Halkevi Dil Tarih ve Edebiyat Şubesi, İstanbul 1937; Tahir Alangu, Çalgılı Kahvehanelerdeki
Külhanbey Edebiyatı ve Numuneleri, İstanbul 1943.
9 See footnote 40 (T.N.)
10 The smallest verse form of Turkish poetry (T.N.)

139
and radeef11 of a mani is called “ayak.” Ayaklı mani begins with “Adam
aman” format and is assigned an ayak. This ayak determines the radeef
with which the mani would be recited. Once receiving the ayak, the mani
teller often recites a punned (“cinaslı”) rhyme. For example,
Adam aman “sürüne”
Madem çoban değilsin ardındaki sürü ne?
Beni yârdan ayıran sürüm sürüm sürüne
The ayak may not require a pun, but, as seen in the example below,
it should be repeated exactly in the rhyme:
Adam aman “-çe midir”
Nefesin gül kokuyor, içerin bağçe midir
Beni baştan çıkaran, yârimin perçemidir
Recited with a unique rhythm and style, manis were also a means
through which poets competed against one another in the semai
coffeehouses.12 Vasıf Hiç notes that some of the mani readers simply
repeated known manis in parrot fashion, so that when they ran through
their repertoire, they were both defeated and forlorn. Master mani poets
extemporized manis of quick wit and thus never ran short of material.
Ahmet Rasim, Osman Cemal Kaygılı and Vasıf Hiç have recorded the
names of numerous mani masters. Renowned for his works on old
İstanbul Sermet Muhtar Alus opens his novel Onikiler with a mani poet
known by the pseudonym Etyemezli, who recites a mani in “yara bir” ayak
at a semai coffeehouse in Çukurçeşme.13
During a visit to Eyüpsultan in the Ramadan of 1922, Yahya Kemal
stops by at a semai coffeehouse at the Defterdar pier, run by chief
firefighter Sami known by the moniker ‘Bilâder’ and listens to a songster
that goes by the pseudonym Ayrancı.14 The day brings good news from
Anatolia. The large square extending from the street to the sea is filled
with music and the red flags hang from trees, heralding the imminent
victory in Anatolia. Yahya Kemal and his friends sit at a table under the
trees in front of the coffeehouse. Possessing all the subtleties of İstanbul’s
spirit and running around with the agility of firefighters, the coffeehouse
servers order tea, coffee, or narghile from the stove with melodious tunes.
With much pleasure, Yahya Kemal watches the swanky young men who
11 Word or phrase repeated at the end of every couplet of a poem (T.N.)
12 For further information on mani and various mani examples, see Ahmet Rasim, Muharrir
Bu Ya (ed. Hikmet Dizdaroğlu), MEB Yayınları Devlet Kitapları, Ankara 1969, pp. 135-143.
13 Sermet Muhtar Alus, Onikiler (eds. Eser Tutel-Faruk Ilıkan), İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul 1999,
p. 13.
14 Yahya Kemal, “Saatler ve Manzaralar”, Tevhîd-i Efkâr, no. 3359-331, 10 May 1922.

140
carry trays of eight or
ten tea glasses on two
fingers. Next, a high and
touching improvisation
emerges from the clarinet.
Suddenly, four hundred
year-old memories of
Kâğıthane begin to pour
into the square.
As he listens to the
improvisation, Yahya
Kemal journeys into the
past and shivers with the
excitement of a child.
As the çiftenara (kudüm
or double drum) and
darbuka join the clarinet
and a bass voice Thomas Allom- “Meddah/Storyteller”
begins to recite divan Kız Ahmet at a Meddah Coffeehouse

poetry, the group goes

inside. Roughnecks, braggarts, rascals, firefighters, in other words, all the
jovial figures of Turkish İstanbul are there. The ceiling and the walls are
decorated with small flags and paper lanterns; a picture of Mustafa Kemal
hangs on one side and the picture of wrestler Kara Ahmed on the other.
Although the presence of Yahya Kemal and his friends is foreign to the
coffeehouse, no one bats an eye. Yet, from time to time, they scrutinize
these uninvited guests from the corners of their eyes and smile with the
knowing look of roughnecks when they recognize the pleasure of music in
their faces. After divan come the semais. When the old songster known as
Ayrancı begins his semai with a touching voice, Yahya Kemal is overcome
by a flood of emotions. Having come from a wealthy family and choosing
instead to become a firefighter, selling ayran15 and singing semais in
musical coffeehouses, this graceful İstanbul man and a graduate of Law
School hides an entire civilization in his voice.
It was possible to watch Karagöz plays and listen to meddah
performances and incesaz in some of the coffeehouses during the month
of Ramadan. For example, Meddah Aşkî would tell stories and Hayalî Kâtip
Salih would set up a screen and light a wax-taper at Ârif’in Kıraathanesi.
Sermet Muhtar Alus’ essays contain a plethora of information about Kâtip

15 A yogurt drink, hence the moniker “Ayrancı”, meaning ayran vendor (T.N.)

141
Sâlih’s performances at Ârif’in Kıraathanesi.16 In his memoire (Hatıralar),
composer Lem’i Atlı writes that a saz group under the direction of
Memduh and Tatyos played music day and night on Fridays and Sundays
at Ârif’in Kıraathanesi. It is known that a noteworthy composer himself,
Tatyos Efendi formerly played at Fevziye Kıraathanesi, but he was fired
because his drinking and disorderly conduct caused him to fall out with
his musician friends.17
Ahmet Rasim notes that violinist Tatyos Efendi, whom he watched
for the first time at a kıraathane in Direklerarası had attained considerable
fame during the time he played at Fevziye Kıraathanesi.18 Fevziye
Kıraathanesi, where he and his group played music on Fridays and Sundays
for many years, was the most famous of musical coffeehouses in İstanbul
during the reign of Abdülhamid. Featuring a large garden, this coffeehouse
transformed into an attractive arts center during the month of Ramadan
and it would be possible to listen to all the great musicians and singers of
the period, including Tanburi Cemil Bey, at this location.19 Large enough
to accommodate one hundred and fifty people, the coffeehouse was also
used as a convention hall during the period following the proclamation
of the Second Constitution. Unfortunately, the exact opening and closing
dates of this coffeehouse remains unknown.
Possibly in operation until the Armistice, Fevziye Kıraathanesi was
replaced by Darüttalim Kıraathanesi located in the ground floor of Letafet
Apartment during the years of World War I. The coffeehouse was duly
named as it was used by the music association “Darüttalim-i Musiki” (Music
School) Fahri Kopuz and friends established in 1916. The coffeehouse was
preferred by a group of intellectuals that referred to themselves as “Esafil-i
Şark” and made literary history with Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s novel
Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (The Time Regulation Institute).
Starting with Darüttalim Kıraathanesi, Darüttalim-i Musiki
introduced a higher form of music to the public by organizing concerts
at various coffeehouses in Şehzadebaşı; however, the association was
resolved in 1931, only to leave its name behind to a coffeehouse. By then,
the gramophone had become widespread, radios were established, and
music performed live at coffeehouses had become obsolete.

16 Sermet Muhtar Alus, İstanbul Kazan Ben Kepçe (ed. N. Sakaoğlu), İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul
1995, p. 103 et. al.
17 Lem’i Atlı, “Hâtıralar”, Canlı Tarihler IV, İstanbul 1947, p. 118.
18 Ahmet Rasim, Cidd ü Mizah, İkbal Kütüphanesi, İstanbul 1326, p. 146.
19 Reşad Mimaroğlu, “Fevziye Kıraathanesi”, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi (Koçu), v. X, p. 5727.

142
 XIX
LITERARY COFFEEHOUSES

T
he coffeehouses of Sultanahmet, Divanyolu, Nuruosmaniye
Beyazıt and Şehzadebaşı were quite lively during the final period
of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Turkish
Republic. Due to the presence of Babıâli, the university (Darülfünun) and
the press in these neighborhoods, they had become venues in which
intellectuals of the period came together to discuss art, literature, and
politics. University students who flocked to such coffeehouses at every
opportunity learned much from the veteran frequenters, to the extent
that they named one of the terraced coffeehouses in Sultanahmet
“Akademi” (The Academy). Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, for example, made
the acquaintance of numerous literary figures and young artists –such as
Zeki Faik İzer and Elif Naci– at this coffeehouse. In fact, on a Ramadan
night, he had witnessed Rıza Tevfik perform imitations and do a zeybek
dance in front of a crowd mostly comprised of his own students.1
According to Peyami Safa, who interpreted the name “Akademi” as
“respectful mockery,” the reference very well expressed the function that
Beyazıt, Divanyolu and Nuruosmaniye coffeehouses assumed:
Indeed, during that period the coffeehouse assumed, to the best of
its ability, all the duties of an academy, a professional guild, a club, a hall,
and a council of ideas and art, around the small wooden tables. Only then

1 Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Beş Şehir, p. 210.

143
did I realize that we are a nation of coffee drinkers. Be it in the village,
in the neighborhood, in front of the school or the masjid, coffee cooks
the national and religious sense in its pot, brews the collective conscience
in its ewer, and connects the public and the intellectuals at its counter.
Simple as it is primordial, yet profound and alive as it is customary, it is the
single and most complete center of community.2
Recognized as one of the cofounders of modern poetry in Turkish
literature, Yahya Kemal had settled in İkbal Kıraathanesi in Nuruosmaniye
with his students at Darülfünun during the years of the Armistice. The
coffeehouse was used as the headquarters of the Dergâh magazine
published under his guidance. During the ten years he spent in Paris in
his younger days, he had frequented coffeehouses such as Soufflet and
Vachette and had carried to İstanbul the pleasure of the final days of
literary causerie he had enjoyed in these coffeehouses.
Abdülhak Şinasi writes that Yahya Kemal initially visited the cafés in
Quartier Latin and that he mostly preferred Closerie des Lilas after 1908.3
Frequented by numerous poets, writers, and intellectuals from Nerval
to Verlaine, from Mallarmé to Valéry, and from Rodin to Lenin, this café
had granted Yahya Kemal the pleasure of coffee and causerie.4 According
to A. Adnan Adıvar, as some of the cafés in Paris acted as the venues in
which poets, writers, and artists once convened, they were known by
the name cénacle, the room where the Last Supper took place. However,
after World War I, this tradition almost completely vanished; the habit
of stocking newspapers at cafés was only maintained in one or two large
cafés foreigners frequented in Montparnasse, which kept at hand a couple
of long-haired poets and artists to draw in foreigners who learned about
the French lifestyle from novels.5
Upon his return from Paris (1912), Yahya Kemal discovered
coffeehouses across various neighborhoods of İstanbul, where he could
spend time and write poetry. In this regard, İkbal Kıraathanesi holds

2 Peyami Safa, “Gençlik ve Kahve”, Yeni Mecmua, v. V, no. 87, 27 Birincikânun 1940.
3 Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, Ahmet Haşim-Yahya Kemal’e Veda, Varlık Yayınları, İstanbul 1969, pp.
159-166.
4 Nameplates are affixed to the tables where the famous individuals once sat at the
abovementioned coffeehouse. The first attempt to put Yahya Kemal’s name on his table
was made by Taha Toros in the early 1960s. His wish was fulfilled almost twenty years
later, on 28 February 1980. Through the efforts of Melih Cevdet Anday, who was serving as
the Cultural Advisor in Paris at the time, a ceremony was organized under the auspices of
Ambassador Hamit Batu and the nameplate bearing Yahya Kemal’s name was affixed to a
table at Closerie des Lilas. On the occasion of this ceremony, a small book entitled, Yahya
Kemal 1884-1958 was published in French. See, Sermet Semi Uysal, Şiire Adanmış Bir Yaşam:
Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, İstanbul 1998, pp. 118-119
5 A. Adnan Adıvar, ibid., pp. 198-199.

144
 Beyazit I (Y. Çaglar)

a special place in Kemal’s life. Described at length in Ahmet Hamdi

Tanpınar’s Beş Şehir, this coffeehouse6 served as a refuge for university
students during the years of Armistice.
Located at the end of Nuruosmaniye Caddesi, on the left corner,
İkbal accommodated several generations of intellectuals until the 1960s. It
was first discovered by Hasan Âli [Yücel] from the philosophy department
of Teacher’s College and his friend; once it became a popular meeting
point among Darülfünun students, it began to rival the coffeehouses
of Sultanahmet and Divanyolu. As the Darülfünun students listened to
the songs a uniformed White Russian officer played on his mandolin,
they would lunch on simit and tea for five kuruş, share the pains of the
occupation in their camaraderie, secretly read the newspapers issued
in Anatolia despite the permanent presence of British soldiers, and
receive the latest –and censored– news about the National Struggle
for Independence from their journalist friends, who would stop by the
coffeehouse late at night. The majority of Darülfünun professors and the
generation of literary figures who would release their works during the
early years of the Republic were all denizens of İkbal.
The marble table where Yahya Kemal and his admirers sat was
located on the left side of the entrance. When the discussions got heated,
the circle would expand and take over one side of the coffeehouse.
Amidst the sounds of billiard cues, backgammon checkers, and screaming
waiters, the crowd would discuss French poets like Baudelaire and
Verlaine, divan poets such as Fuzuli, Nedim and Şeyh Galib, the conquest
of İstanbul, the French Revolution, Bergson’s philosophy, daily politics, the
incidents in Anatolia, and produce brilliant projects, most of which would
be forgotten on the same day.
6 Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Beş Şehir, pp. 210-211.

145
 Acclaimed modern Turkish poet Ahmet Haşim occasionally visited
İkbal. However, even his closest friends were not aware that Haşim
preferred neighborhood cafés to literary coffeehouses. Enjoying his
narghile at Acem’in Kahvesi on Kadıköy İskele Caddesi, Haşim would
gossip –sometimes using foul language– about the people he disliked.
In the eyes of his coffeehouse friends who did not know what a great
writer and poet he was, Haşim was nothing more than a foul-mouthed,
facetious, loud lampooner with a hearty laugh—an unconventional local
who entertained them with his strange, funny, and racy remarks.7 Haşim
once explained to his close friend Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu his need to
mingle with ordinary people at ordinary coffeehouses:
I always spend my spare time at tea- or coffeehouse corners, chatting
with strangers and drinking tea, coffee, and smoking narghile. How
comforting it is to live like the simple folk. Yes, a man of the people may be
ignorant and philistine, but this saves him from complicating his life. The
creature we call an intellectual is a wretched soul suffering from endless
worries; his conceit and his complacency make him nothing more than a
grotesque puppet.8
Yakup Kadri also recounts that after every love affair, Haşim sought
refuge at Acem’in Kahvesi on Kadıköy’s İskele Caddesi, spent his time
drinking tea and playing backgammon, and occasionally listened to
neighborhood tattle, sometimes joining in with the most salacious gossip
to console himself.9
Once Dergâh magazine was closed and its staff was scattered to
the four winds, İkbal was left to journalists for a long time. In the 1950s,
the coffeehouse became a popular haunt for novelist Orhan Kemal and
his friends. Known to write his novels in coffeehouses, Orhan Kemal’s
coffee journey, which began at a coffeehouse in Adana, continued in the
coffeehouses of Kasımpaşa, Fener and Eyüp after he arrived in İstanbul.
Next came Meserret... Meserret Kıraathanesi held a significant place in
Turkish political history, as Committee of Union and Progress supporter
Yakup Cemil had planned a coup d’état in this coffeehouse. Meserret
Kıraathanesi also marked the beginning of Orhan Kemal’s “endeavors to
earn a living in Babıâli.”10 Striving to write his novels amidst the rattle of
backgammon pieces, rustling papers, and the smell of cinder, a young
7 Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, Ahmet Haşim-Yahya Kemal’e Veda, pp. 67-72.
8 Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Gençlik ve Edebiyat Hâtıraları, p. 117.
9 Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, ibid., p. 130. Yakup Kadri ascribes Haşim’s “consort with
people who represent despair, misfortune, material and spiritual impoverishment and
disclosure of his private life to such types” to his hatred of intelligent and powerful figures.
10 Nurer Uğurlu, Orhan Kemal’in İkbal Kahvesi, Cem Yayınevi, İstanbul 1972, p. 9.

146
Kemal once noted that countless budding writers such as Sait Faik,
Yaşar Kemal, Haldun Taner, and Melih Cevdet, who would eventually
become leading names of Turkish literature, frequented this coffeehouse.
Once Meserret Kıraathanesi was shut down and converted into a
baklava-pastry shop, the young writers tried out various coffeehouses
in the neighborhood and finally settled down at İkbal Kıraathanesi in
Nuruosmaniye. İkbal was popular among writers, printers, poets, novelists,
and painters who earned their bread at Babıâli. Orhan Kemal recalls that
his father once frequented this historically appealing coffeehouse that
he and his friends fondly referred to as “Kahvetü’l-İkbal.” “They say,” adds
Kemal, “that this coffeehouse is quite old and that the likes of Namık
Kemal once passed through its doors; we built such dreams on these
questionable pieces of information. Some even remembered the days of
Ahmet Rasim and Mahmut Yesari.”11
During the years Orhan Kemal and his friends frequented İkbal
Kıraathanesi, Küllük Kahvesi was the most popular summer joint among
the Turkish and foreign professors of İstanbul University, as well as the
famous poets and writers of the period. Renowned for its delectable
dishes, the presence of the legendary Emin Efendi Lokantası (Restaurant)
in the same location had granted this coffeehouse additional prestige.
Küllük was located on the side of Beyazıt Mosque facing Ordu Caddesi,
in an area shadowed by chestnut, locust, and plane trees; although its
patrons enjoyed playing backgammon and domino, they mostly preferred
to discuss philosophy, art, and literature. In his long poem published as
Küllükname (1936) in small book format, poet Sıtkı Akozan introduces
the elite denizens of this coffeehouse in the 1930s with their most
distinguishing characteristics.12 Also popular among the group of figures
known in the history of Turkish literature as the “1940 Generation,” Küllük
is often mentioned in literary memoires and novels written after the 1940s.
Apart from great names, young writers and poets representing new
trends also frequented Küllük. While the coffeehouse served as a second
university for students interested in literature, it was also a dangerous trap
for others. After having graduated magna cum laude from Konya High
School and directly admitted to Medical School, when Tarık Buğra came
to İstanbul, he happened upon his Turkish teacher from Akşehir –and
Esafil-i Şark member– Rıfkı Melul Meriç, who immediately took him
to Küllük. Here, the young literature enthusiast met some of the most

11 Nurer Uğurlu, ibid., pp. 9-15.

12 For further information on the names mentioned in Sıtkı Akozan’s Küllükname ve
Külllükname, see Ali Birinci, “Kesriyeli M. Sıtkı ve Küllükname’si”, Müteferrika, no. 19, Summer
2001, pp. 35-49.

147
famous poets and writers of the period and soon fell under the spell of
Küllük as one of its most devoted regulars. Skipping classes and feeling no
need to take the final examinations, he failed his first year and was thrown
out of the Medical School Dormitory. Once homeless, Buğra pulled the
chairs together, used the backgammon board as a cushion, and made
Küllük his home for a month and a half. In his short story entitled, “Küllük,”
Tarık Buğra offers a detailed account of this coffeehouse, which holds a
crucial place in his life. Nonetheless, Buğra never regretted the years he
spends at Küllük. In fact, like many other, he considered himself a Küllük
graduate. In writing, “Küllük is an epoch all by itself. Those who are familiar
with it regard Küllük as a complement to Darülfünun –and the university-
and even consider it a university on it own,”13 Buğra quite possibly hints
at Sait Faik’s essay on kıraathanes. In the essay in question, Sait Faik notes
the following:
If a student has never set foot in a kıraathane, I consider his university
education incomplete. Someone who sees the scenes and hears the
sounds these entirely autonomous universities with no deans, professors,
budget, or faculty amidst the rattle of backgammon pieces can keep their
fingers on the pulse of a nation; whether that pulse is beating fast or slow,
or if there is any intermittence, he can make his observations without
needing a degree in medicine.14
As Küllük was an outdoor coffeehouse, it would be as busy as a
beehive between spring and early winter. In his short story “Küllük,” Tarık
Buğra likens the regulars of this coffeehouse to swallows migrating to
coffeehouses of Aksaray and Şehzadebaşı in wintertime and describes the
quiet and gloomy air that prevails in their absence.15
The “swallows” that preferred the coffeehouses –particularly
Darüttalim– in Şehzadebaşı, were mostly members of Esafil-i Şark.
The most distinctive feature of this group that we briefly mentioned
in the previous section was the fact that it encompassed a number of
intellectuals who suffered through the pains of Balkan Wars, World War
I, and the Armistice period and eventually came to relax and look at life
from a humorous perspective. In the presence of this group comprised
of university professors, poets, writers, doctors, lawyers, educators, and
even unemployed intellectuals, no serious subject could escape the fate
of being ridiculed eventually.

13 Tarık Buğra, “Küllük”, Politika Dışı, Ötüken Neşriyat, İstanbul 1992, p. 204.
14 Sait Faik Abasıyanık, “Kıraathaneler”, Yedigün, no. 22, 14 August 1948, p. 20.
15 Tarık Buğra, Yarın Diye Birşey Yoktur, İstanbul 1952, pp. 6-9.

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 XX
FROM COFFEE TO TEA

I
n his novel Çamlıca’daki Eniştemiz (Our Uncle in Çamlıca),
Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar writes that the crazy gourmet uncle, who
is keen on upholding old customs and habits pertaining to food,
and the people in his household drink a cup of morning coffee as soon
as they get out of bed, without even taking off their nightgowns. After
roaming around the mansion, the residents decide to have breakfast, but
pay no attention to tea; instead, they prefer to drink coffee, milk, and –if
it is wintertime– sahlep and eat olives, cheese, jam, and bread, making fun
of younger family members for drinking tea.1
The oldest record on the custom of tea drinking in İstanbul is found
in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels. A serious coffee and tea opponent,
this charming traveler highly recommends drinking spicy sherbet, tea,
and sahlep, which he finds more beneficial than coffee.2 17th-century
traveler Ovington also mentions tea among
popular drinks in Turkey, which indicates that
Turks were introduced to tea much earlier
than the Europeans were. Nonetheless,
it is certain that the culture of tea and
samovar became widespread after the

1 Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, Çamlıca’daki Eniştemiz, p. 82.

2 Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi I, p. 274.

149
 Tanzimat era. Particularly the
teahouses Iranians and Azerbaijani
Shiite Turks opened in Beyazıt and
Şehzadebaşı constitute important
venues in Turkish literary history.
The teahouse of Çaycı Hacı Reşid
that Ahmed Rasim harps on in
Şehir Mektupları was among the
famous gathering places of literary figures during the reign of Abdülhamid.
The proliferation of tea and tea drinking culture in Anatolia as
a breakfast ingredient (ore more precisely the preference of tea over
chickpea coffee) can possibly be attributed to coffee shortages during
World War I. In a pleasant dialogue from Âsım, Mehmed Âkif describes
how tea was drunk with grapes due to the sugar shortage of the same
period.

Thank God, tea is finally here.

Shall we find sugar, if you care for some?
- Four hundred?
- There is no way I’m buying that, long live the grapes of İzmir;
They are both cheaper and more delicious!
- And have no seeds.
- After you.
- Go ahead, no need for formalities!
- First, you chew the grapes, then you drink the tea…
Let us drink in the love of God!
- Aye aye! 3
Based on the information he conveys in several of his essays, Yahya
Kemal preferred tea in addition to alcoholic beverages. The word “kahve”
(coffee) always denotes “kahvehane” (coffeehouse) in his poems. He
speaks of tea only in a single poem, entitled
“Ric’at,” (Retreat) in which he drinks tea
with a beautiful woman in a lovely corner
of İstanbul.
In the poem that begins with the
verse,
He was drinking Chinese tea from
chinaware

3 Mehmed Akif, ibid., p. 340.

150
 Yahya Kemal first describes the mesmerizing beauty of the woman
seated across from him and then expresses his burning desire to experience
a new love affair in İstanbul. Just as he begins to dream of completing his
life with the taste of this love amidst the unparalleled beauties of İstanbul,
he feels that his heart cannot endure such an affair and he “retreats.”4
As seen in its reflections in literature, tea became increasingly more
widespread and took over the throne of coffee, gradually creating its own
culture and aficionados over time. Considered as one of the cofounders
of modern Turkish poetry, Ahmet Haşim was a tea aficionado who made
tea drinking a refined pleasure. Thus, he was the first to immediately
notice Japanese scholar Okakura Kakuzo’s Book of Tea. Haşim first briefly
introduced the said book in an essay and later translated the chapters
entitled “Flowers” and “Tea Room” and published them in Akşam
newspaper in 1926.5 Evidently, Haşim had identified a similarity between
Japanese tea culture and rituals and his own enjoyment of tea. Haşim
also smoked cigarettes and narghile, and drank coffee, but he was only
addicted to tea. His friends fondly recall the evening hours during which
he brewed tea with much pleasure and meticulousness and offered it in
Chinese cups (piyale) in front of his window. As Ruşen Eşref conducted his
famous interview with Haşim, a Russian samovar was boiling on the green
table and the teapot was emanating the delicious aroma of tea from its
delicate spout. Haşim explained why he wrote poetry whilst he sipped
his blood-red tea from the Chinese porcelain
cups with blue decorations: “I write poetry
for the same exact reason I drink tea from
this China cup. It is simply a question of
savor!”6 Perhaps, the rose-colored cup
(piyale) he described as “full of fire, do not
hold it or you will burn” in his poem, entitled
“Piyale” was a tea cup.
Teatime was one of the pleasures that lent
meaning to Haşim’s impoverished life. One day, he reprimanded a friend
who failed to brew the tea properly and on another day, he made another
friend walk for hours on the streets of İstanbul and Beyoğlu, just to be
able to find some good tea. After noting that Haşim’s passion for tea
began to develop during the time he frequented the Persian teahouses

4 Yahya Kemal, Kendi Gök Kubbemiz, Yahya Kemal Enstitüsü Yayınları, İstanbul 1961.
5 Ahmet Haşim, Bütün Eserleri III, Gurabahane-i Laklakan-Diğer Yazıları (eds. İnci Enginün-
Zeynep Kerman), Dergâh Yayınları, İstanbul 2004, pp. 324-332.
6 Ruşen Eşref Ünaydın, Bütün Eserleri I, Röportajlar I (eds. Necat Birinci-Nuri Sağlam), Türk Dil
Kurumu Yayınları, Ankara 2002, pp. 185, 190.

151
in Direklerarası, Yakup Kadri describes how offering tea became a ritual
for Ahmet Haşim:

Looking at the meticulous way with which he prepared, brewed and

poured the tea into the cups he rinsed with boiling water, it was impossible not
to recall teahouse owner Şahin Efendi. In order to complete this recollection,
one had to imagine Ahmet Haşim alone, in front of a brightly shining samovar.
Unfortunately, poor Haşim lacked a samovar, like many other things he was
deprived of, and he longed for one until the day he died.7

Much like his friend Haşim, Refik Halid Karay was also a scrupulous
tea aficionado. In an essay, he expresses his preference of dark and crimson
colored tea brewed in a samovar over colorless and unseasoned European
tea, “on the condition that one has to brew the tea himself, listen to the
crackling sound of boiling water, and swallow until it reaches that proper
consistency…” Refik Halid, who could imagine a more peaceful place than
a warm room with a boiling samovar, once admitted that when he was
immersed in the steam of the samovar and began to sip his delicious tea,
he became an eloquent, joyful, companionable, gracious, and optimistic
man, who utterly enjoyed life particularly if the weather was rainy, foggy,
or stormy. So, how should one brew and drink a fine cup of tea, according
to Refik Halid?
Tea is of no value unless it is brewed with much care and sipped in
a slow, comfortable manner. On the condition that one drinks it in loose-
fitting clothes, lounging on comfortable cushions in the most informal

7 Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Gençlik ve Edebiyat Hâtıraları, Bilgi Yayınevi, Ankara 1969, p.
105.

153
manner, tea is the most delicious beverage in the world. However, its
water must be pure, its color fiery, its cup crystalline, its sugar low, and
its aroma light. Most unfortunately, few among millions of tea drinkers
pay attention to these fundamentals. Those who think it simple to brew
tea are mistaken and thus fail to drink good tea. Boiled in a common
porcelain pot with lukewarm water -in other words the tea we generally
drink- is so tasteless and unpleasant; one should pity those who swallow
this for tea and resent the ones who brew it as such.8
As much as
Refik Halid lauded
tea, he never betrayed
coffee. He would get
up every morning at
6 o’clock, eat a piece
of Turkish delight,
and make himself a
cup of Turkish coffee.
If he was not hung
over and had decided
on his subject of the
day, he would sit at
his desk to begin working, make himself another cup of Turkish coffee
at 11 o’clock, and continue working until noon.9 It is quite a loss for
Turkish literature and Turkish coffee culture that Karay, who combined
the traditions of the old and the young in his daily habits, never penned a
single essay on coffee, as he did on tea. The Yıldız Porcelain Factory coffee
cup he preserved in a corner of his living room can be interpreted as the
symbolic expression of the predicament that from now on, Turkish coffee
culture will be confined to private collections and museums.10

8 Refik Halid Karay, Ay Peşinde, Semih Lütfi Kitabevi, İstanbul 1939, pp. 43-46.
9 Necmi Onur, ibid., p. 6.
10 Gavsi Ozansoy describes the coffee cup he saw in Refik Halid Karay’s living room during an
interview as follows: “Apparently, this cup was of a series specially manufactured during the
reign of Sultan Abdülhamid to be offered as a gift to dignitaries of the state. One could read
the following dedication inscribed in gold by a master calligrapher: ‘To the eminent wife of
the Grand Financial Treasury Chief Treasurer Halid Bey.’ See, Gavsi Ozansoy, “Refik Halid’in
Kaşık Koleksiyonu”, Amatör, no. 9, September 1945, pp. 10-11.

154
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