ufti who was unfriendly to coffee. The religious
fanatics argued that Mohammed had not even known of coffee, and so could
not have used the drink, and, therefore, it must be an abomination for
his followers to do so. Further, coffee was burned and ground to
charcoal before making a drink of it; and the _Koran_ distinctly forbade
the use of charcoal, including it among the unsanitary foods. The mufti
decided the question in favor of the zealots, and coffee was forbidden
by law.

The prohibition proved to be more honored in the breach than in the
observance. Coffee drinking continued in secret, instead of in the open.
And when, about 1580, Amurath III, at the further solicitation of the
churchmen, declared in an edict that coffee should be classed with wine,
and so prohibited in accordance with the law of the Prophet, the people
only smiled, and persisted in their secret disobedience. Already they
were beginning to think for themselves on religious as well as political
matters. The civil officers, finding it useless to try to suppress the
custom, winked at violations of the law; and, for a consideration,
permitted the sale of coffee privately, so that many Ottoman
"speak-easies" sprung up--places where coffee might be had behind shut
doors; shops where it was sold in back-rooms.

This was enough to re-establish the coffee houses by degrees. Then came
a mufti less scrupulous or more knowing than his predecessor, who
declared that coffee was not to be looked upon as coal, and that the
drink made from it was not forbidden by the law. There was a general
renewal of coffee drinking; religious devotees, preachers, lawyers, and
the mufti himself indulging in it, their example being followed by the
whole court and the city.

After this, the coffee houses provided a handsome source of revenue to
each succeeding grand vizier; and there was no further interference with
the beverage until the reign of Amurath IV, when Grand Vizier Kuprili,
during the war with Candia, decided that for political reasons, the
coffee houses should be closed. His argument was much the same as that
advanced more than a hundred years later by Charles II of England,
namely, that they were hotbeds of sedition. Kuprili was a military
dictator, with nothing of Charles's vacillating nature; and although,
like Charles, he later rescinded his edict, he enforced it, while it was
effective, in no uncertain fashion. Kuprili was no petty tyrant. For a
first violati