F, AND BLOSSOM AT THE
SAME TIME]

After the dervishes, the bowl was passed to lay members of the
congregation. In this way coffee came to be so associated with the act
of worship that "they never performed a religious ceremony in public and
never observed any solemn festival without taking coffee."

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Mecca became so fond of the beverage that,
disregarding its religious associations, they made of it a secular drink
to be sipped publicly in _kaveh kanes_, the first coffee houses. Here
the idle congregated to drink coffee, to play chess and other games, to
discuss the news of the day, and to amuse themselves with singing,
dancing, and music, contrary to the manners of the rigid Mahommedans,
who were very properly scandalized by such performances. In Medina and
in Cairo, too, coffee became as common a drink as in Mecca and Aden.

_The First Coffee Persecution_

At length the pious Mahommedans began to disapprove of the use of coffee
among the people. For one thing, it made common one of the best
psychology-adjuncts of their religion; also, the joy of life, that it
helped to liberate among those who frequented the coffee houses,
precipitated social, political, and religious arguments; and these
frequently developed into disturbances. Dissensions arose even among the
churchmen themselves. They divided into camps for and against coffee.
The law of the Prophet on the subject of wine was variously construed as
applying to coffee.

About this time (1511) Kair Bey was governor of Mecca for the sultan of
Egypt. He appears to have been a strict disciplinarian, but lamentably
ignorant of the actual conditions obtaining among his people. As he was
leaving the mosque one evening after prayers, he was offended by seeing
in a corner a company of coffee drinkers who were preparing to pass the
night in prayer. His first thought was that they were drinking wine; and
great was his astonishment when he learned what the liquor really was
and how common was its use throughout the city. Further investigation
convinced him that indulgence in this exhilarating drink must incline
men and women to extravagances prohibited by law, and so he determined
to suppress it. First he drove the coffee drinkers out of the mosque.

The next day, he called a council of officers of justice, lawyers,
physicians, priests, and leading citizens, to whom he declared what he
had seen the evening before at the mosque; and, "being res